Neuroscience and computational models are beginning to fill those gaps. Recent work shows that memory systems and temporally organized event representations provide the scaffolding that lets words lock onto stable meanings and let syntax combine units into larger, novel expressions. Framing those capacities as purely interactive risks overlooking the mechanistic link between language forms and internal cognitive architecture that enables durable reference and seemingly limitless combination.
This matters for anyone curious about human growth, learning, and inclusion. Understanding how language connects to memory and temporal structure changes how we think about language acquisition, rehabilitation after injury, and designing tools that support diverse communicative needs. Follow the link to see how bridging interactional perspectives with mechanistic accounts could reshape our ideas about what language does for the mind.
Abstract
Viewing language as a dynamic system shaped by interaction raises questions about how Hockett’s design features should be interpreted.While this shift successfully broadens the functional and semiotic scope of language, we argue that it leaves key questions about internal cognitive architecture insufficiently specified. In particular, the proposed framework underestimates the role of temporally structured event representation, hierarchical syntax, and displacement as cognitively enabled phenomena rather than purely pragmatic or interactional achievements. We suggest that without an explicit account of how linguistic forms interface with memory systems that support event indexing and temporal organization, the generative core of language—digital infinity and stable reference beyond the here and now—remains unexplained. Drawing on recent neurocomputational and biolinguistic work, we outline minimal theoretical commitments required to integrate interactional perspectives with mechanistic accounts of compositional structure and reference.
