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4 - State of the Art

from Part I - Do Bilinguals Maintain Language-Specific Conceptualizations?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2021

Evangelia Adamou
Affiliation:
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris
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Summary

Is human language necessary for the formation of concepts? Evidence from other species establishes that even the very small brains of bees are capable of forming some ‘concepts’, understood not only as perceptual classifications of real world stimuli (referred to as ‘categorizations’), but also as relational classifications that are formed while abstracting away from specific stimuli (Avarguès-Weber et al., 2012). For instance, Avarguès-Weber and colleagues found that bees are able to learn spatial relationships such as ‘above/below’ and ‘right/left’ in combination with ‘difference’. Such findings address a fundamental question that has been tackled by philosophers since ancient times by suggesting that human language is not necessary to form concepts.

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Chapter
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The Adaptive Bilingual Mind
Insights from Endangered Languages
, pp. 48 - 56
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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  • State of the Art
  • Evangelia Adamou, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris
  • Book: The Adaptive Bilingual Mind
  • Online publication: 23 April 2021
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  • State of the Art
  • Evangelia Adamou, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris
  • Book: The Adaptive Bilingual Mind
  • Online publication: 23 April 2021
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • State of the Art
  • Evangelia Adamou, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris
  • Book: The Adaptive Bilingual Mind
  • Online publication: 23 April 2021
Available formats
×