Inferential and Referential Lexical Competence

So far, I have been concerned with the distinction between inferential and referential competence understood as a conceptual distinction, but this distinction can naturally suggest an intriguing empirical hypothesis: inferential and referential semantic abilities are actually underpinned by distinct cognitive systems. In order to assess empirically such dual theory of semantic competence we must map it onto the linguistic tasks that are routinely used in neuropsychology of language. The primary purpose of this chapter is to introduce a distinction between inferential and referential semantic tasks. A secondary aim of the chapter is to begin to discuss the structure of the inferential and referential semantic systems in the human brain. We will see that certain intuitive considerations together with some neuroscientific data suggest that the inferential and the referential semantic systems are not ‘monolithic’ entities: they consist in various, functionally interrelated sub-systems. A final aim of the chapter is to discuss some issues arising in the field of computational modelling of inferential and referential competence.