INTRODUCTION TO COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS

Lecture 3

Last time…

De Saussurean ‘principles’ Linguistic dichotomies: Theoretical vs. applied Macro vs. micro Nature vs. nurture Unconscious vs. conscious Behaviourism vs. cognitivism Empiricism vs. rationalism … etc

Patterns

In his book Patterns in the Mind (1994) Ray Jackendoff starts his discussion by introducing three main statements that would be the leitmotif of his entire discussion.

He calls his principal ideas “fundamental arguments”. This is not really a technical term used in any linguistic school, but a phrase coming from his own stylistic decision.

Jackendoff’s Fundamental Arguments

The expressive variety of language use implies that a language user’s brain contains a set of unconscious grammatical principles (The Argument for Mental Grammar)

The way children learn to talk implies that the human brain contains a genetically determined specialization for language (The Argument for Innate Knowledge)

Our experience of the world is actively constructed by the unconscious principles that operate in the brain (The Argument for the Construction of Experience)

The Nature vs. Nurture issue Closely connected with the three

fundamental hypotheses is the question “what is it that actually makes one person shy and another sociable, one good at math and another good at art, one person lean and muscular and another chubby and flabby?” In other words, we should start thinking about why we are the way we are - are we born that way, or are we products of our environment?

This brings us to the discussion of Nature versus Nurture… and the acquisition vs. learning problem.

The Fundamental arguments are all based on…?

The fundamental arguments are based on… there being some unconscious knowledge (unconscious grammatical principles). This kind of knowledge is concerned with acquisition of language as opposed to…learning which is always conscious.

It appears that knowledge is always unconscious, and that only when you do something without being aware that you are doing it are you actually doing it! (Idea by the philosopher Plotinus, 3rd century A.D., The Enneads.)

Unconscious knowledge is true knowledge?

This means that when you, for instance, start reading you are actually so much in the process that you are simply not aware that you are reading. The moment you become aware that you are reading, you are NOT reading

The same applies to language. When you speak you are NOT aware of the complex mechanisms (both physical and mental) that make it possible for you to speak automatically, without a conscious realization of what you do.

The nature of ‘true knowledge’ as reflected in the language ability

Language is usually chosen as a focus for investigating the perennial question “why are we the way we are?”

Besides, the possession of language has always been seen as the major difference between us, humans, and the beasts.

What’s more, the last couple of decades have shown that language is a module in the human mind (ultimately in the brain) and this has implications for fields such as neuroscience, philosophy, developmental psychology, and its study promises some sort of integration of biological and humanistic views.

So what happens during a typical conversation?

The Communicative Situation

The communicative situation

Even in the simple case, in which Harry would just utter a single word to Sam (tree), the task both the speaker and the hearer need to complete is enormously complex (physically, physiologically and psychologically).

The semantic (semiotic) triangle

It’s not at all simple…

Questions that emerge right away:

Are there really ‘pictures’ in Harry’s and Sam’s head?

Are there really ‘word balloons’ in Harry’s and Sam’s head?

But, things can get much more complex right away…

Starting to get Starting to get complicated…complicated… Speakers rarely produce individual words

(one-word sentences are called holophrases). Much more often, they utter complete sentences:

A. There’s a bird in the tree. B. A bird was in the tree yesterday. C. Are there any birds in that tree? D. A bird might be in that tree. E. That tree looks like a bird. F. Birds like that tree. G. It is a bird-like tree. H. This bird trees the like.

Examples, discussionExamples, discussion

It just might be possible to draw pictures that represent the objects the speaker has in his mind if they refer to a single motionless, and timeless, object (“tree”).

However, it is not so easy to draw pictures of the complex propositions we just listed. Try to picture, if you can, the differences in the pictures that would be specific for the respective sentences we’ve just seen.

““E. That tree looks like a E. That tree looks like a bird.”bird.”

The referent is something like a bird-shaped tree??? This would be only one object, while the utterance has two noun-phrases in it!

The examples illustrate the expressive variety of language, things we can say by combining words in different ways.

Significant differences between Significant differences between human language and animal human language and animal communicationcommunication

This expressive variety seems to be only available to humans.

Indeed, none of the known animal systems (birds, bees, whales, apes) possesses an inventory of elements like words that can be combined and recombined in limitless ways to express new messages.

Comparison between animal Comparison between animal communication and languagecommunication and language

Animal signaling (Human) language

Degree of learning

Innate or only limited learning

Extensive

Conscious control

None, or limited High

Contextuality Tied to a particular context (stimulus setting)

Flexible, relatively independent from specific context

I nterpretation (Relatively) fixed response

Flexible, “negotiable”

Communicative relations

Dyadic: Environment-Subject Subject-Recepient

Triadic: Speaker-Addressee-Referent

Systematicity None, or very limited High

a

Most sentences spoken in a day Most sentences spoken in a day are completely novel (new)are completely novel (new)

Such sentences have never been heard or spoken as such before!

The same is true of most, if not all, sentences we hear.

The number of sentences we are capable of using is just too large to store individually. Look:

Amy ate two peanuts… Amy ate three peanuts… etc…

The Saga ContinuesThe Saga Continues

…Amy ate forty-three million, five hundred nine peanuts

There are as many sentences in this series as there are nameable integers.

The biggest number listed in a dictionary is a vigintillion (1063) With such a number we can create more sentences than there are particles in the universe!!!

So, obviously…

We cannot store individual sentences in our head.

What we do store is individual words plus patterns to put those words into meaningful and grammatical sentences of a given language.

The number of both words and patterns is limited, since the capacity of our brains is very limited.

However, the point about language is that these limited numbers can be used to make a practically unlimited number of combinations.

This is what Jackendoff calls expressive variety of language. Chomsky would say that language is a system which utilizes finite means to create an infinite number of sentences.

Some simple patterns…

An X is not a Z. Since an A is not a B, and a B is not a C,

then an A is not a C. And then we can create larger patterns

out of smaller ones, and have ‘patterns of patterns’:

X verbs that S. W verbs that X verbs that Y is a Z.

Some simple patterns…

Of course, there are other ways to present the patterns. How about this?

The thing to remember…

… is that patterns have a life of their own, sometimes regardless of the meaning of the sentence.

The like birds the tree. This is a tree-like bird. That silly bachelor is pregnant again. My typewriter has bad intentions. Bill elapsed three times this month. The dog scattered.

Meaningfulness, grammaticality, and acceptability are categories that cannot be clearly separated from one another all the time.

How about this…

Lewis Carroll: Jabberwocky:

‘Twas brillig and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe…

Compare: ‘Twas evening and

the slimy toads Did squirm and

wiggle in the cage…

Coiled alizarine, to Noam Chomsky

Curiously deep, the slumber of crimson thoughts:While breathless, in stodgy viridianColorless green ideas sleep furiously.

John Hollander

Mental grammar

This capacity to combine words into acceptable patterns and create a limitless number of novel sentences is usually called mental grammar.

Watch it: it is not the ‘socially prescribed’ grammar that distinguishes one dialect from another.

Watch it 2: it is largely governed by unconscious processes.

The tip of the iceberg metaphor