Abstract

One important aspect of the faculty of language, as understood in generative grammar, is its capacity to form operator-variable structures. Such structures are crucial for definite descriptions, as understood in the broadly Russellian tradition. The paper proposes a research program for exploring the relation between the uniquely human ability for “knowledge” (more properly, cognition) by description and the capacity of the language faculty to produce operator- variable structures. Keywords: Merge, Internal Merge, cognition by description, theory of descriptions, knowledge by description, humaniqueness, language evolution, the language faculty.