Main profile

Xuan

Wang

Interests: 

Philosophy of Language, Psycholinguistics, Semantics

Projects: 

Graduate-IGERT

Units: 

Philosophy

Degree(s): 

MA (Linguistics) Beijing Normal University

Advisor(s): 

Paul Pietroski

Contact: 

xuanwang@umd.edu

1110C Skinner

Role(s): 

Alumni

About: 

My research combines the study of philosophy of language and psycholinguistics. The main question I ask is what the expressions of language, e.g. words, really are. Philosophers tend to answer the question based on assumptions about what the expressions of language must be, or do, given assumptions about what language is or does. For example, if words are for communication, they must have shared content among people; whereas if words refer to the internal mental states, they might reflect the speaker?s cognitive abilities. But presumably, whatever words must be, it must be what children can naturally acquire. In terms of what is acquirable for children,however, philosophers and psycholinguists seem to differ. The former focus on the social medium of communication, whereas the latter study the internal mechanism of language acquisition. But this doesn?t mean that they disagree with each other entirely. I propose to investigate what the relevance between the metaphysical study and the linguistic and psychological (descriptive and explanatory) study is and what implications they have to each other.

Collaborators: 

Alexander Williams
Jeff Lidz
Alexis Wellwood
Angela He
Georges Rey