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Paul Pietroski

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Philosophy, Faculty Member

University of Maryland, College Park, Linguistics, Emeritus

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I teach at Rutgers University, in the Department of Philosophy and Center for Cognitive Science. My primary research interests lie at the intersection of philosophy, linguistics, and psychology.
Address: Dept of Philosophy
135 Somerset St
New Brunswick, NK 08901

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School of Advanced Study, University of London

Alessandro Lenci

Juan Uriagereka

University of East Anglia

Raytheon BBN Technologies

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Kleanthes K. Grohmann

University of Cyprus

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Papers by Paul Pietroski

Précis of Conjoining Meanings: Semantics Without Truth Values

What the title says

Responses to comments on Conjoining Meanings

Mind and Language, 2020

These were my responses to a trio of very generous critical notices in the April 2020 issue of Mi... more

Semantic Internalism

The Cambridge Companion to Chomsky , 2017

Putnam summarized his main point memorably: cut the pie any way you like, meanings just ain’t in... more

Meaning Before Truth

Poverty of the Stimulus Revisited

Cognitive Science, 2011

A central goal of modern generative grammar has been to discover invariant properties of human la... more A central goal of modern generative grammar has been to discover invariant properties of human languages that reflect the innate schematism of mind that is applied to the data of experience and that might reasonably be attributed to the organism itself as its contribution to the task of the acquisition of knowledge. Candidates for such invariances include the structure dependence of grammatical rules, and in particular, certain constraints on question formation. Various poverty of stimulus (POS) arguments suggest that these invariances reflect an innate human endowment, as opposed to common experience: Such experience warrants selection of the grammars acquired only if humans assume, a priori, that selectable grammars respect substantive constraints. Recently, several researchers have tried to rebut these POS arguments. In response, we illustrate why POS arguments remain an important source of support for appeal to a priori structure-dependent constraints on the grammars that humans naturally acquire.

Think of the Children

Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2008

Semantic Types: Two is Better Than Too Many

LENLS proceedings

In studies of linguistic meaning, it is often assumed that the relevant expressions exhibit many ... more In studies of linguistic meaning, it is often assumed that the relevant expressions exhibit many semantic types: <e> for entity denoters; <t> for truth-evaluable sentences; and the non-basic types <a, b> such that <a> and <b> are types. Expressions of a type <a, b>-e.g., <e, t> or <<e, t>, <<e, t>, t>-are said to signify functions, from things of the sort associated with expressions of type <a> to things of the sort associated with expressions of type <b>. On this view, children acquire languages that are importantly like the language that Frege invented to study the foundations of arithmetic. I think this conception of human linguistic meaning overgenerates wildly, even distinguishing-as we should-competence from performance. I sketch an alternative, defended elsewhere, to illustrate a broader point: when offering theories of natural languages, we shouldn't be surprised if vocabulary designed for other purposes is inadequate, and attention to relevant phenomena motivates a spare semantic typology.

The Undeflated Domain of Semantics

Sats: The Nordic Journal of Philosophy, 2000

A reply to Horwich-style "deflationary" conceptions of meaning, focussing on the importance of "n... more

Meanings via Syntactic Structures

Syntactic Structures after 60 Year, 2017

Chomsky (1957) offered prescient suggestions about how to formulate theories of understanding for... more Chomsky (1957) offered prescient suggestions about how to formulate theories of understanding for the spoken languages that human children can naturally acquire. We can view his proposal as a prolegomenon to a theory of meaning that combines a layered theory of syntax with an account of how humans can naturally use expressions in acts of referring, asserting, querying, and so on; cp.

Vocabulary Matters

o ered prescient suggestions about how to formulate theories of understanding for the spoken lang... more o ered prescient suggestions about how to formulate theories of understanding for the spoken languages that human children can naturally acquire. We can view his proposal as a prolegomenon to a theory of meaning that combines a layered theory of syntax with an account of how humans can naturally use expressions in acts of referring, asserting, querying, and so on; cp. Austin (1961); . Though crucially, Chomsky's (1957) conception of reference di ered from more familiar conceptions of denotation, as in

Prima Facie Obligations, Ceteris Paribus Laws in Moral Theory

Ethics, 1993

... How the Laws of Physics Lie (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), the fundamental laws of physics are no... more ... How the Laws of Physics Lie (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), the fundamental laws of physics are not strict; but resolution ... somewhat better able to survive and reproduce than organisms with a competitor gene, g&amp;amp;#x27;, but there is strong drift in favor of g&amp;amp;#x27;, the result may be evolution ...

Intentionality and teleological error

Actions, adjuncts, and agency

Mind, 1998

The event analysis of action sentences seems to be at odds with plausible (Davidsonian) views abo... more The event analysis of action sentences seems to be at odds with plausible (Davidsonian) views about how to count actions. If Booth pulled a certain trigger, and thereby shot Lincoln, there is good reason for identifying Booth's action of pulling the trigger with his action of shooting Lincoln; but given truth conditions of certain sentences involving adjuncts, the event analysis requires that the pulling and the shooting be distinct events. So I propose that event sortals like "shooting" and "pulling" are true of complex events that have actions (and various effects of actions) as parts. Combining this view with some facts about so-called causative verbs, I then argue that paradigmatic actions are best viewed as tryings, where tryings are taken to be intentionally characterized events that typically cause peripheral bodily motions. The proposal turns on a certain conception of what it is to be the Agent of an event; and I conclude by elaborating this conception in the context of some recent discussions about the relation of thematic roles to grammatical categories.

On Explaining That

The Journal of Philosophy, 2000

Sentences (1) and (2) below are truth-conditionally equivalent, while and are not:

Fregean innocence

The Character of Natural Language Semantics

Epistemology of Language, edited by Alex Barber, 2003

This was my first attempt at arguing against the following idea: a compositional semantic theory ... more This was my first attempt at arguing against the following idea: a compositional semantic theory for a natural language will have theorems that specify the truth-conditions of sentences (relative to contexts). Typically, sentences don't have truth-conditions, not even relative to (theoretically tractable) contexts. And typically, the truth-conditions of utterances are not compositionally determined. Truth conditions often depend on theoretically intractable aspects of conversational situations. So the meaning of a sentence isn't a function from contexts to truth-conditions. Linguistic meanings are, as Chomsky has long urged, more "internal" than many philosophers think.

Concepts, Meanings and Truth: First Nature, Second Nature and Hard Work

Mind & Language, 2000

ABSTRACT

Character before content

Experiencing The Facts

Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 1996

critical notice of John McDowell's Mind and World

Interpreting Concatenation and Concatenates

Philosophical Issues, 2006

Précis of Conjoining Meanings: Semantics Without Truth Values

What the title says

Responses to comments on Conjoining Meanings

Mind and Language, 2020

These were my responses to a trio of very generous critical notices in the April 2020 issue of Mi... more

Semantic Internalism

The Cambridge Companion to Chomsky , 2017

Putnam summarized his main point memorably: cut the pie any way you like, meanings just ain’t in... more

Meaning Before Truth

Poverty of the Stimulus Revisited

Cognitive Science, 2011

A central goal of modern generative grammar has been to discover invariant properties of human la... more A central goal of modern generative grammar has been to discover invariant properties of human languages that reflect the innate schematism of mind that is applied to the data of experience and that might reasonably be attributed to the organism itself as its contribution to the task of the acquisition of knowledge. Candidates for such invariances include the structure dependence of grammatical rules, and in particular, certain constraints on question formation. Various poverty of stimulus (POS) arguments suggest that these invariances reflect an innate human endowment, as opposed to common experience: Such experience warrants selection of the grammars acquired only if humans assume, a priori, that selectable grammars respect substantive constraints. Recently, several researchers have tried to rebut these POS arguments. In response, we illustrate why POS arguments remain an important source of support for appeal to a priori structure-dependent constraints on the grammars that humans naturally acquire.

Think of the Children

Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2008

Semantic Types: Two is Better Than Too Many

LENLS proceedings

In studies of linguistic meaning, it is often assumed that the relevant expressions exhibit many ... more In studies of linguistic meaning, it is often assumed that the relevant expressions exhibit many semantic types: <e> for entity denoters; <t> for truth-evaluable sentences; and the non-basic types <a, b> such that <a> and <b> are types. Expressions of a type <a, b>-e.g., <e, t> or <<e, t>, <<e, t>, t>-are said to signify functions, from things of the sort associated with expressions of type <a> to things of the sort associated with expressions of type <b>. On this view, children acquire languages that are importantly like the language that Frege invented to study the foundations of arithmetic. I think this conception of human linguistic meaning overgenerates wildly, even distinguishing-as we should-competence from performance. I sketch an alternative, defended elsewhere, to illustrate a broader point: when offering theories of natural languages, we shouldn't be surprised if vocabulary designed for other purposes is inadequate, and attention to relevant phenomena motivates a spare semantic typology.

The Undeflated Domain of Semantics

Sats: The Nordic Journal of Philosophy, 2000

A reply to Horwich-style "deflationary" conceptions of meaning, focussing on the importance of "n... more

Meanings via Syntactic Structures

Syntactic Structures after 60 Year, 2017

Chomsky (1957) offered prescient suggestions about how to formulate theories of understanding for... more Chomsky (1957) offered prescient suggestions about how to formulate theories of understanding for the spoken languages that human children can naturally acquire. We can view his proposal as a prolegomenon to a theory of meaning that combines a layered theory of syntax with an account of how humans can naturally use expressions in acts of referring, asserting, querying, and so on; cp.

Vocabulary Matters

o ered prescient suggestions about how to formulate theories of understanding for the spoken lang... more o ered prescient suggestions about how to formulate theories of understanding for the spoken languages that human children can naturally acquire. We can view his proposal as a prolegomenon to a theory of meaning that combines a layered theory of syntax with an account of how humans can naturally use expressions in acts of referring, asserting, querying, and so on; cp. Austin (1961); . Though crucially, Chomsky's (1957) conception of reference di ered from more familiar conceptions of denotation, as in

Prima Facie Obligations, Ceteris Paribus Laws in Moral Theory

Ethics, 1993

... How the Laws of Physics Lie (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), the fundamental laws of physics are no... more ... How the Laws of Physics Lie (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), the fundamental laws of physics are not strict; but resolution ... somewhat better able to survive and reproduce than organisms with a competitor gene, g&amp;amp;#x27;, but there is strong drift in favor of g&amp;amp;#x27;, the result may be evolution ...

Intentionality and teleological error

Actions, adjuncts, and agency

Mind, 1998

The event analysis of action sentences seems to be at odds with plausible (Davidsonian) views abo... more The event analysis of action sentences seems to be at odds with plausible (Davidsonian) views about how to count actions. If Booth pulled a certain trigger, and thereby shot Lincoln, there is good reason for identifying Booth's action of pulling the trigger with his action of shooting Lincoln; but given truth conditions of certain sentences involving adjuncts, the event analysis requires that the pulling and the shooting be distinct events. So I propose that event sortals like "shooting" and "pulling" are true of complex events that have actions (and various effects of actions) as parts. Combining this view with some facts about so-called causative verbs, I then argue that paradigmatic actions are best viewed as tryings, where tryings are taken to be intentionally characterized events that typically cause peripheral bodily motions. The proposal turns on a certain conception of what it is to be the Agent of an event; and I conclude by elaborating this conception in the context of some recent discussions about the relation of thematic roles to grammatical categories.

On Explaining That

The Journal of Philosophy, 2000

Sentences (1) and (2) below are truth-conditionally equivalent, while and are not:

Fregean innocence

The Character of Natural Language Semantics

Epistemology of Language, edited by Alex Barber, 2003

This was my first attempt at arguing against the following idea: a compositional semantic theory ... more This was my first attempt at arguing against the following idea: a compositional semantic theory for a natural language will have theorems that specify the truth-conditions of sentences (relative to contexts). Typically, sentences don't have truth-conditions, not even relative to (theoretically tractable) contexts. And typically, the truth-conditions of utterances are not compositionally determined. Truth conditions often depend on theoretically intractable aspects of conversational situations. So the meaning of a sentence isn't a function from contexts to truth-conditions. Linguistic meanings are, as Chomsky has long urged, more "internal" than many philosophers think.

Concepts, Meanings and Truth: First Nature, Second Nature and Hard Work

Mind & Language, 2000

ABSTRACT

Character before content

Experiencing The Facts

Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 1996

critical notice of John McDowell's Mind and World

Interpreting Concatenation and Concatenates

Philosophical Issues, 2006

Brass Tacks in Linguistic Theory

by Andrea Gualmini, Stephen Crain, and Paul Pietroski

The Innate Mind, 2005

Beyond truth conditions: an investigation into the semantics of “most.”

by Paul Pietroski and Justin Halberda

Nature, Nurture And Universal Grammar

by Paul Pietroski and Stephen Crain

Linguistics and Philosophy, 2001

In just a few years, children achieve a stable state of linguistic competence, making them effect... more In just a few years, children achieve a stable state of linguistic competence, making them effectively adults with respect to: understanding novel sentences, discerning relations of paraphrase and entailment, acceptability judgments, etc. One familiar account of the language acquisition process treats it as an induction problem of the sort that arises in any domain where the knowledge achieved is logically underdetermined by experience. This view highlights the 'cues' that are available in the input to children, as well as children's skills in extracting relevant information and forming generalizations on the basis of the data they receive. Nativists, on the other hand, contend that language-learners project beyond their experience in ways that the input does not even suggest. Instead of viewing language acqusition as a special case of theory induction, nativists posit a Universal Grammar, with innately specified linguistic principles of grammar formation. The 'nature versus nurture' debate continues, as various "poverty of stimulus" arguments are challenged or supported by developments in linguistic theory and by findings from psycholinguistic investigations of child language. In light of some recent challenges to nativism, we rehearse old poverty-of stimulus arguments, and supplement them by drawing on more recent work in linguistic theory and studies of child language.

The Meaning of ‘Most’: Semantics, Numerosity and Psychology

by Paul Pietroski and Justin Halberda

Mind & Language, 2009

The meaning of 'most' can be described in many ways. We offer a framework for distinguishing sema... more The meaning of 'most' can be described in many ways. We offer a framework for distinguishing semantic descriptions, interpreted as psychological hypotheses that go beyond claims about sentential truth conditions, and an experiment that tells against an attractive idea: 'most' is understood in terms of one-to-one correspondence. Adults evaluated 'Most of the dots are yellow', as true or false, on many trials in which yellow dots and blue dots were displayed for 200 ms. Displays manipulated the ease of using a 'one-to-one with remainder' strategy, and a strategy of using the Approximate Number System to compare of (approximations of) cardinalities. Interpreting such data requires care in thinking about how meaning is related to verification. But the results suggest that 'most' is understood in terms of cardinality comparison, even when counting is impossible.

Interface transparency and the psychosemantics of most

by Paul Pietroski and Justin Halberda

Natural Language Semantics, 2011

This paper proposes and defends an Interface Transparency Thesis concerning how linguistic meanin... more This paper proposes and defends an Interface Transparency Thesis concerning how linguistic meanings are related to the cognitive systems that are used to evaluate sentences for truth/falsity: a declarative sentence S is semantically associated with a canonical procedure for determining whether S is true (cf. ; and while this procedure need not be used as a verification strategy, competent speakers are biased towards strategies that directly reflect canonical specifications of truth conditions. Evidence in favor of this hypothesis comes from a psycholinguistic experiment examining adult judgments concerning 'Most of the dots are blue'.

6 Seeing what you Mean, Mostly

by Paul Pietroski and Justin Halberda

Idealizing, a speaker endorses or rejects a (declarative) sentence ! in a situation s based on ho... more Idealizing, a speaker endorses or rejects a (declarative) sentence ! in a situation s based on how she understands ! and represents s. But relatively little is known about how speakers represent situations. Linguists can construct and test initial models of semantic competence, by supposing that sentences have representation-neutral truth conditions, which speakers represent somehow; cp. Marr's (1981) Level One description of a function computed, as opposed to a Level Two description of an algorithm that computes outputs given inputs. But this leaves interesting questions unsettled. One would like to find cases in which ! can be held fixed, while modifying s in ways that have predictable effects on the nonlinguistic cognitive systems recruited to evaluate !. Extant work in perceptual psychology offers opportunities for eliciting judgments from speakers in highly controlled settings where something is known about the cognitive systems that speakers recruit when endorsing or rejecting a target sentence. In such settings, behavioral data can reveal aspects of how the human language system interfaces with other systems of cognition that are presumably shared with other species. As an illustration, we focus on the quantificational word 'most' and how perception of numerosity is related to the meaning of 'Most of the dots are blue', in the hope that studies of other perceptual systems may provide analogous opportunities for investigating how words are related to prelinguistic representations.

More & Most: spatial vision affects word understandings on an iPad

by Paul Pietroski and Justin Halberda

Journal of Vision, 2012

Number and Area Perception Engage Similar Representations: Evidence from Discrimination Tasks

by Paul Pietroski and Justin Halberda

Journal of Vision, 2010

Meaning more or most: evidence from 3-and-a-half year-olds

by Paul Pietroski and Justin Halberda

An interface between language and vision: Quantifier words and set-based processing

by Paul Pietroski and Justin Halberda

Journal of Vision, 2010

Young children's understanding of “more” and discrimination of number and surface area

by Paul Pietroski and Justin Halberda

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2013

The psychology supporting the use of quantifier words (e.g., "some," "most," "more") is of intere... more The psychology supporting the use of quantifier words (e.g., "some," "most," "more") is of interest to both scientists studying quantity representation (e.g., number, area) and to scientists and linguists studying the syntax and semantics of these terms. Understanding quantifiers requires both a mastery of the linguistic representations and a connection with cognitive representations of quantity. Some words (e.g., "many") refer to only a single dimension, whereas others, like the comparative "more," refer to comparison by numeric ("more dots") or nonnumeric dimensions ("more goo"). In the present work, we ask 2 questions. First, when do children begin to understand the word "more" as used to compare nonnumeric substances and collections of discrete objects? Second, what is the underlying psychophysical character of the cognitive representations children utilize to verify such sentences? We find that children can understand and verify sentences including "more goo" and "more dots" at around 3.3 years-younger than some previous studies have suggested-and that children employ the Approximate Number System and an Approximate Area System in verification. These systems share a common underlying format (i.e., Gaussian representations with scalar variability). The similarity in the age of onset we find for understanding "more" in number and area contexts, along with the similar psychophysical character we demonstrate for these underlying cognitive representations, suggests that children may learn "more" as a domain-neutral comparative term.

Innateness and Universal Grammar

Brass Tacks in Linguistic Theory: Innate Grammatical Principles

The Language Faculty

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2012

The article illustrates that humans have a language faculty, a cognitive system that supports the... more The article illustrates that humans have a language faculty, a cognitive system that supports the acquisition and use of certain languages, with several core properties. The faculty is apparently governed by principles that are logically contingent, specific to human language, and innately determined. A naturally acquirable human language (Naturahl) is a finite-yet-unbounded language, with two further properties that include: its signals are overt sounds or signs, and it can be acquired by a biologically normal human child, given an ordinary course of human experience. Any biologically normal human child can acquire any Naturahl, given an ordinary course of experience with users of that language. An E-language is a set of signal-interpretation pairs, while an I-language is a procedure that pairs signals with interpretations. The I-languages that children acquire are biologically implementable, since they are actually implemented in human biology. A function has a unique value for ea...

Innateness and Universal Grammar

Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, 2006

Why language acquisition is a snap

by Paul Pietroski and Stephen Crain

Linguistic Review, 2002

Nativists inspired by Chomsky are apt to provide arguments with the following general form: langu... more Nativists inspired by Chomsky are apt to provide arguments with the following general form: languages exhibit interesting generalizations that are not suggested by casual (or even intensive) examination of what people actually say; correspondingly, adults (i.e., just about anyone above the age of four) know much more about language than they could plausibly have learned on the basis of their

A “should” too many

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1994

Euthyphro and the Semantic

Mind and Language, 2000

First-person authority and beliefs as representations

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1993

Natural number concepts: No derivation without formalization

by Paul Pietroski and Jeffrey Lidz

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2008

The conceptual building blocks suggested by developmental psychologists may yet play a role in ho... more The conceptual building blocks suggested by developmental psychologists may yet play a role in how the human learner arrives at an understanding of natural number. The proposal of Rips et al. faces a challenge, yet to be met, faced by all developmental proposals: to describe the logical space in which learners ever acquire new concepts.

Knowledge by ignoring

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1999

Some cases of implicit knowledge involve representations of (implicitly) known propositions, but ... more Some cases of implicit knowledge involve representations of (implicitly) known propositions, but this is not the only important type of implicit knowledge. Chomskian linguistics suggests another model of how humans can know more than is accessible to consciousness. Innate capacities to focus on a small range of possibilities, thereby ignoring many others, need not be grounded by inner representations of any possibilities ignored. This model may apply to many domains where human cognition “fills a gap” between stimuli and judgment.

Journal of Philosophy, 2010

Review: Matters of Mind: Consciousness, Reason, and Nature

Mind, 2002

... An Introduction to Feminist Epistemologies, by Alessandra Tanesini. Oxford: Blackwell,  P... more

Chomsky on Meaning and Reference

for a Wiley-Blackwell handbook