Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Analogies between material object exchange and communication abound in figures of speech, e.g. "exchange of ideas" But, as transfer of information entails no loss of it to the donor, the obvious analogy fails. To explicate, I consider first a formal, minimal naive theory OT M of object location/possession and transfer. Failure of the obvious analogy translates as absence of any intuitable model of communication related to OT M by an isomorphism which maps people ("possessors") to people, and objects ("possessions") to ideas ("propositions", "infons"). Isomorphisms to a counterintuitive model MC M of communication and belief are, however, exhibited which map objects to people ("believers") and persons to ideas. Under the interpretation appropriate to MCM , the schemata of crucial postulates of OT M instantiate to epistemic instances of the Laws of Contradiction and Excluded Middle. MC M features complementary ideas which, as it were, appropriate or lose adherents. Empirical instantiations of this apparently counterintuitive theory are shown to occur in the lexicologies and ideologies of possession by ideas (and, perhaps, by their yet more anthropomorphic spirit avatars) and in the grammar of expressions for a change of mind. Thematic role structure, relations to "middle' constructions and, briefly, use in verbal action are discussed. I conclude that the mental leap reflected in the linguistic data warrants use of moderately formal tools to investigate open class lexica of natural languages for underiying theories.