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Published on: October 13, 2018
Language as a mechanism for reasoning about possibilities
Myrto Grigoroglou1, Patricia A Ganea2
1Department of Linguistics, Cognitive Science Program, University of Toronto, Sidney Smith Hall, 4th floor, 100 St George Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 3G3.
Abstract:
The ability to entertain and reflect on possibilities is a crucial component of human reasoning. However, the origin of this reasoning-whether it is language-based or not-is highly debated. We contribute to this debate by investigating the relation between language and thought in the domain of possibility from a developmental perspective. Our investigation focuses on disjunctive syllogism, a specific type of possibility reasoning that has been explored extensively in the developmental literature and has clear linguistic correlates. Seeking links between conceptual and linguistic representations, we review evidence on how children reason by the disjunctive syllogism and how they acquire logical and modal language. We sketch a proposal for how language and thought interact during development. This article is part of the theme issue 'Thinking about possibilities: mechanisms, ontogeny, functions and phylogeny'.
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