Cognitive constraints on type polymorphism in the language of science

The language of science, in particular scientific English, has been investigated in analytic philosophy and applied linguistics, but a cognitive science perspective is still missing. Scientific languages might differ from everyday language in ways that have consequences for ease of processing and learnability, and conversely cognitive considerations may be useful to explain properties of scientific languages. Here, I argue that cognition constrains the variety of argument types that some expressions in the language of science can accept (type polymorphism), keeping processing difficulty in check. I examine some implications of this hypothesis for complement coercion with aspectual verbs, propositional attitude verbs, generalized coordination, and concealed questions. I present the results of a corpus study on type polymorphism for aspectual verbs in biomedical language, corroborating the main hypothesis. Finally, I consider the feasibility of a research program on the cognitive science of scientific language.