The Modular Online Growth and Use of Language (MOGUL) project is the cover term name for any research on language carried out using the Modular Cognition Framework (MCF).
Basic assumptions MOGUL project research takes as its premise that the mind is modular in character, i.e. composed of functionally specialised systems. Two of these are specifically linguistic in nature and are unique to human beings. They interact with other expert systems such as vision both during the growth of language in the mind and during the processing of language (in comprehension, production, thinking, and even dreaming). Explanations are framed within a processing perspective. This, however, does not mean representations and their properties are left aside. Typically, research into linguistic theory and description avoids dealing with mental processes operating in real time; instead, the focus is on abstract structures without recourse to processing explanations. Psycholinguists, by contrast, focus on real-time activity rather than on issues surrounding abstract linguistic structure. However, despite its declared processing perspective, the framework used in this research allows issues surrounding real-time mental activity to be integrated with accounts of the representations that make up an individual’s current linguistic knowledge. The background assumption is that the functionally specialised cognitive systems that comprise the mind as a whole and which have evolved over time include two systems (or one depending on the linguistic-theoretical perspective adopted) which are responsible for human linguistic ability. Language cognition, however, engages all of the mind's systems and many at the same time. In other words, of all the systems that are engaged in language performance use only the two of them handle linguistic structure but it is the two that mark language as a specifically human ability. These two systems handle, respectively, phonological (speech or sign language) structure and syntactic structure, in other words, 1) the phonological system and 2) the syntactic system. Other cognitive systems closely associated with language processing and development are 3) the conceptual system, which handles all abstract meanings but is inevitably richly connected with the syntactic system and 4) the auditory system which handles all sound representations based on acoustic input from external environment and is inevitably richly connected with the phonological system whereby specific auditory input gets associated with phonological structures, and finally 5) the visual system which handles all visual representations based on visual input from the external environment, some of which will happen to be patterns created by writing and (language) signing. The two linguistic systems form a linear chain so that phonological structures can be directly associated and hence coactivate each other via the interface between them. The phonological system receives input from the two perceptual (visual and auditory) systems and the syntactic system receives input from the conceptual system. A single word like jump, for example, is actually a composite structure arising from an association between several different types of representation. The spoken version will be a chain of:
an auditory representation (AS) of the sound "tree" a phonological representation ((PS') of its speech structure (expressed using the conventions determined by the preferred linguistic theory) a syntactic representation (SS) of its identity as a noun, verb, preposition, etc. (expressed using the conventions determined by the preferred linguistic theory) a conceptual representation (CS) of its meaning The word chain can be displayed using the following abbreviations always using 'S' for ' "structure" (a synonym for representation): AS/PS/SS/CS Processing works in both directions depending where the initial input comes from and then after that going in both directions in principle until the overall best-fit is found. In other words, processing is parallel, incremental and bidirectional. https://online.bankofscotland.co.uk/personal/logon/login.jsp Linguists may note that what is conventionally thought of as the scope of phonetics is expressed here as the domain of auditory structure. Similarly, what is conventionally thought of as the scope of semantics and pragmatics falls within the scope of conceptual structure. None of these linguistic areas are treated here as the domain of one or other of the two linguistic systems: the term linguistic is reserved for the two above-mentioned systems that process and store linguistic structure.
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