@misc{cogprints1602,
          editor = {B. Velichkovsky and D. Rumbaugh},
           title = {The Origin of Words: A Psychophysical Hypothesis},
          author = {Stevan Harnad},
       publisher = {NJ:Erlbaum},
            year = {1996},
           pages = {27--44},
         journal = {Communicating Meaning: Evolution and Development of Language},
        keywords = {word origins, symbolic representation, symbol grounding, meaning, underdetermination, translation},
             url = {http://cogprints.org/1602/},
        abstract = {It is hypothesized that words originated as the names of perceptual categories and that
two forms of representation underlying perceptual categorization -- iconic and categorical
representations -- served to ground a third, symbolic, form of representation. The third form of
representation made it possible to name and describe our environment, chiefly in terms of categories,
their memberships, and their invariant features. Symbolic representations can be shared because they
are intertranslatable. Both categorization and translation are approximate rather than exact, but the
approximation can be made as close as we wish. This is the central property of that universal
mechanism for sharing descriptions that we call natural language. }
}

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