The origin of symbols in the brain

Deacon’s (1997) book is an interesting attempt to explain the critical aspects of the evolution of language as the learning of symbolic relationships. Deacon blurs the traditional distinction between syntax and semantics by arguing that the meaning of symbols is primarily determined via the combinatorial relations between symbols, and only secondarily via an indexical relation between a symbol and a referent (Deacon 1997, Ch. 3). However, this account of how acquisition of symbols involves multiple hierarchies of associative learning has proved rather difficult to understand (Hurford 1997), and even more difficult to incorporate into an explicit representational model. In this article, we want to use Deacon’s theory as a platform for a more elaborated and precise model of symbol learning.

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