Linguistics as a Model for the Cognitive Approaches in Biblical Studies. Conference talk given at: International meeting of SBL, July 4-8, 2011, London, UK. Slides. (Download presentation as pdf. Download the
handout.).
Abstract:
Linguistics was the first field in humanities that took a cognitive turn, and in the earliest days of the cognitive revolution, at that. Therefore, linguistics not simply adapted to the cognitive sciences, but also influenced the cognitive enterprise. In my talk, I shall review different research strategies for doing linguistic research within a cognitive framework. Psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics focuses on 'language in vivo', language technology on 'language in silico', whereas theoretical linguistics combines century-old linguistic scholarly traditions with the modelling methodology of the cognitive sciences. Within the latter, I shall briefly compare three approaches to language vs. cognition, namely, that of Noam Chomsky, Ray Jackendoff and Paul Smolensky. While reviewing linguistics within the cognitive sciences, we shall keep a constant eye on the lessons derivable for the emerging field of cognitive approaches in Biblical Studies.