The meaning of ‘meaning’

Language is the first broad area of human cognitive capacity for which we are beginning to obtain a description which is not exaggeratedly oversimplified. Thanks to the work of contemporary transformational linguists,† a very subtle description of at least some human languages is in the process of being constructed. Some features of these languages appear to be universal. Where such features turn out to be 'species-specific' – 'not explicable on some general grounds of functional utility or simplicity that would apply to arbitrary systems that serve the functions of language' – they may shed some light on the structure of mind. While it is extremely difficult to say to what extent the structure so illuminated…