What are linguistic meanings, and what must they be if they are represented in the mind? This course introduces the problem of connecting formal semantic theory with the broader enterprise of cognitive science. We begin with Fodor’s desiderata for an adequate theory of concepts — compositionality, atomism, publicity — and the Language of Thought framework in which they are embedded. We then survey influential models of concepts from psychology, including prototype and exemplar theories, and evaluate them against these desiderata, finding that the properties that make such models useful for explaining categorization behavior are not obviously the properties that make meanings useful for building thoughts. This raises a sharp question: if word meanings aren’t prototypes or exemplars, what are they, and how do they connect to the cognitive systems that anchor language in perception and action? We approach this question initially through the case study of how adults and children verify and acquire quantificational expressions like more and most. We then examine how comparative constructions more generally interact with the mass/count and telicity distinctions to reveal connections between sentence structure and ontological commitment, introducing dimensional resolution as a window onto the interface between linguistic meaning and domain-specific cognition. The course closes by developing a “two concepts” view motivated by converging evidence from word learning: general-purpose concepts (G-concepts) are the stable, compositional representations that serve as word meanings, while special-purpose concepts (S-concepts) store rich categorical information and anchor cognition in the world. The two are connected but not identical; so, what is the nature of each, and what mediates between them? The course equips participants with the theoretical and empirical tools to begin answering these questions.

Initial draft reading list:
Fodor (1998). Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong. [selections]
Fodor & Pylyshyn (1988). Connectionism and cognitive architecture.
Machery (2009). Doing without Concepts. [selections]
Lidz, Pietroski, Halberda & Hunter (2011). Interface transparency and the psychosemantics of most.
Pietroski (2010). Concepts, meanings, and truth.
Knowlton et al. (2021). Linguistic meanings as cognitive instructions.
Wellwood (2020). Interpreting degree semantics.
Wellwood, Hacquard & Pancheva (2012). Measuring and comparing individuals and events.
Christensen & Wellwood (in prep). Syntax determines dimension.
Horst & Samuelson (2008). Fast mapping but poor retention by 24-month-old infants.
Wang, Akshi, Keil, Kim & Bedny (2026). Constructing meaning from language. Annual Review of Linguistics.
Wellwood (in prep). Two concepts for cognitive science.