Mobile Sequencers
Cem Bozsahin
TL;DR
The paper proposes mobile semantics as a unified framework to ground language and planned action in a common representational core focused on tracking and coping with change. It develops this through a middle-layer analysis using combinatory grammars (CCG) and the π-calculus to model concurrency and mobility, introducing Mobile Logical Forms (MLFs) as dynamic predicates for online reasoning and offline expression. The work argues that a tight syntax-semantics correspondence with local, compositional structure can account for both linguistic and planning phenomena, framing a Marr-style level-1 theory that links why/what/how/where with environment-aware representations. It further suggests practical implications for understanding the evolution of language, planning, and theory of mind by showing how mobile meanings can bridge offline linguistic competence with online action in a transparent, computable way.
Abstract
The article is an attempt to contribute to explorations of a common origin for language and planned-collaborative action. It gives `semantics of change' the central stage in the synthesis, from its history and recordkeeping to its development, its syntax, delivery and reception, including substratal aspects. It is suggested that to arrive at a common core, linguistic semantics must be understood as studying through syntax mobile agent's representing, tracking and coping with change and no change. Semantics of actions can be conceived the same way, but through plans instead of syntax. The key point is the following: Sequencing itself, of words and action sequences, brings in more structural interpretation to the sequence than which is immediately evident from the sequents themselves. Mobile sequencers can be understood as subjects structuring reporting, understanding and keeping track of change and no change. The idea invites rethinking of the notion of category, both in language and in planning. Understanding understanding change by mobile agents is suggested to be about human extended practice, not extended-human practice. That's why linguistics is as important as computer science in the synthesis. It must rely on representational history of acts, thoughts and expressions, personal and public, crosscutting overtness and covertness of these phenomena. It has implication for anthropology in the extended practice, which is covered briefly.