Relations across Cognitive Faculties: An Addition to the Taxonomy of Cognitive Semantics

Abstract

Language is often approached as a self-contained system, one with its own specifically linguistic elements of organization, generally independent of other systems in cognition. But by the analysis here, language shares parts of its organization with other systems in cognition and could not function without their participation. For this analysis, cognition is heuristically divided into a number of cognitive faculties, each judged to perform some integrated function. Some faculties, including language, are treated as “cognitive systems” and others as “cognitive organizers”. Language is examined both in its evolutionary relation to other faculties and as an interface among them.