Department of Liberal Arts, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad.
Cogn Sci. 2022 Sep;46(9):e13200. doi: 10.1111/cogs.13200.
Natural language meaning has properties of both (embodied) cognitive representations and formal/mathematical structures. But it is not clear how they actually relate to one another. This article argues that how properties of cognitive representations and formal/mathematical structures of natural language meaning can be united remains one of the puzzles in cognitive science. That is primarily because formal/mathematical structures of natural language meaning are abstract, logical, and truth-conditional properties, whereas cognitive/conceptual representations are embodied and grounded in sensory-motor systems. After reviewing the current progress, this work offers, in outline, the general formulations that show how these two different kinds of representations for semantic structures can (potentially) be unified and also proposes three desiderata for testing, in brain dynamics, the mathematical equivalence between formal symbolic representations (and their transitions), and neuronal population codes (and their transitions).
自然语言意义具有（体现的）认知表征和形式/数学结构的属性。但实际上它们如何相互关联尚不清楚。本文认为，认知表征的属性以及自然语言意义的形式/数学结构如何统一仍然是认知科学的难题之一。这主要是因为自然语言意义的形式/数学结构是抽象的、逻辑的和真值条件的属性，而认知/概念表征则是体现于感觉运动系统的。在回顾了当前的进展之后，这项工作概述了一般性的表述，表明如何将这两种不同的语义结构表示统一起来，并提出了三个理想条件，用于在大脑动力学中测试形式符号表示（及其转换）和神经元群体代码（及其转换）之间的数学等价性。
