Language Change and Language Acquisition as Windows to ...Language Acquisition and Language Change...

Michael Pleyer

English Department, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg Heidelberg Graduate School for Humanities and Social Sciences

www.replicatedtypo.com

Stefan Hartmann

Deutsches Institut, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

Language Change and Language Acquisition as Windows to Cognition

The Case of Linguistic Construal Operations

Overview 1. Cognitive Foundations of Language: A Very Brief Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics

2. Construal Operations in Language and Cognition

3. The Acquisition of Linguistic Construal Operations — The Case of Perspectivation

4. Construal Operations as Basis of Linguistic Innovation and Language Change

5. Conclusion

Cognitive Foundations of Language: A Very Brief Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics • CL sees language as inextricably connected to human cognition (↔ autonomy

of language / grammar / syntax) • Primacy of semantics (e.g. Geeraerts 1997: 8) “The basic function of

language involves meaning” (Geeraerts & Cuyckens 2007: 5) • Language as “a structured collection of meaningful categories” (Geeraerts &

Cuyckens 2007: 5) Psychological research on categorization as one root of Cognitive Linguistics (cf. e.g. Harris 1993: 156)

• Perspectival nature of linguistic meaning: Language does not mirror the world objectively, but imposes a specific structure on the perceived world

Cognitive Foundations of Language: A Very Brief Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics

Categorization Perspectivation

Conceptualization Construal

Language Perspectivation Construal

organizes conceptual content with respect to a particular vantage point and perspective (Langacker 1987; Talmy 2000)

is a a structured inventory of constructions, which enable language users to construe a situation in many different ways and from multiple perspectives (e.g. Goldberg 1995; 2006; Croft 2012; Evans 2012)

prompts for the allocation of attention to a particular aspect of the cognitive representation evoked in the listener (cf. Talmy 2007)

foregrounds certain aspects of a situation and backgrounds others (Langacker 1987; Talmy 2000)

Language…

Construal in Language and Cognition: Profiling

• Language enables us to single out, foreground, or profile a particular focus of attention against a general conceptual background or general viewing attention (Langacker 1987)

The boy kicks over the vase

The vase is kicked over

The vase smashes into bits

languages have evolved structured and highly elaborated construal operations that enable speakers to alternate between and express different perspectives on the same topic

there is a significant flexibility in terms of alternative representations and construals in each language

speakers employ different construal operations, thus making use of the perspectival potential inherent in language

Using these in interaction draws on general cognitive resources, capacities and constraints, which Cognitive Linguistics seeks to uncover (e.g. Bybee 2012; Pleyer 2012).

e.g. Bybee 2010; Beckner et al. 2009; Croft & Cruse 2004; Croft 2009, 2012; Hruschka et al. 2009; Langacker 1987, 1991, 2008; Radden & Dirven 2007; Talmy 2000, 2007; Verhagen 2005, 2007

Linguistic construal operations as instances of general cognitive processes

I.

Attention/

Salience

II. Judgement/

Comparison

III.

Perspective/

Situatedness

IV.

Constitution/

Gestalt

Croft & Cruse 2004: 45 “If linguistic construal operations are truly cognitive, then they should be related to, or identical with, general cognitive processes that are postulated by psychologists.”

How do children acquire

• the structured inventory of perspectival constructions of their language

• the capacity to employ different construal operations to suit their communicative needs

General cognitive capacities as instances of general cognitive processes

What are the (socio-) cognitive foundations of the acquisition of construal operations?

Sociocognitive Capacities & Motivations

•e.g. perspective-taking (e.g. Clark 1997; Tomasello 2003)

•shared intentionality (e.g. Tomasello et al. 2005)

• joint attention (e.g. Baldwin 1995)

•Mitteilungsbedürfnis (Fitch 2010)

General Cognitive Mechanisms

•e.g. analogy (e.g. Gentner & Christie 2010)

•statistical learning (e.g. Graf Estes 2012)

•generalization (e.g. Ibbotson 2011)

•entrenchment (e.g. Lieven 2010)

Central role of Perspectivation/Construal in Language Acquisition and Cognitive Development (e.g. Carpenter 2011; Clark 1997, 2009; Moll & Tomasello 2012; Moll & Meltzoff 2011; Tomasello 2003)

• Cognitive-functional and usage-based linguistic approaches importance of social, cultural, interactive and cognitive processes in language acquisition and learning (Beckner et al., 2009)

• Two main factors according to Tomasello (2003)

e.g. Ambridge & Lieven 2011; Beckner et al. 2009; Behrens 2009; Clark 2009; Diessel 2004; in press; Ibbotson 2011; Lieven 2009; 2010; Tomasello 2003,2006; Tomasello & Lieven 2008

14 month old children understand declarative pointing in an object choice task (Behne, Carpenter & Tomasello 2005)

14 month old children know, which toy the have experienced together with an adult. They hand her the one that is new for her but not for them (Tomasello & Haberl 2003, Moll & Tomasello 2007)

14-18 month olds use context and shared experience to interpet pointing gestures (Liebal et al. 2009)

Perspective in Cognition as a Precursor to Perspective in Language: Understanding Pointing

ATTENTION/SALIENCE (specifically: selection of relevant aspects

of our environment for cognitive processing and backgrounding of other

aspects)

Profiling/Windowing of Attention

Scalar Adjustment

Metonymy

CATEGORIZATION/COMPARISON

Metaphor

Figure-Ground/Trajector-

Landmark-Alignment

Cognitive principles that underlie the acquisition and use of construal operations

Corpus Studies

Developmental Psychology

CHILDES, Thomas-Corpus, 3-05-03.cha *MOT: Charlotte was crying at the

station . *MOT: saying let go of my hand . *MOT: I want to go on the train track . *MOT: oh gosh she'd be crying even

more if she'd run on the train track because the train would have hit her .

*CHI: all bleed@c [*] come out . *MOT: all bleed@c would have come

out ,, wouldn't it ?

Profiling and Figure-Ground/Trajector-Landmark-Alignment: Data from the CHILDES corpus (cf. MacWhinney 2000; Lieven, Salomo & Tomasello 2009)

A P B

D (1;7,1, looking at his bowl of cereal at breakfast): Food. (A little later, still at the table, looking at his own and then his parents’ bowls of cereal): Cereal.

D (1;7,20, doing his animal puzzle; D named each animal type as he took it out [e.g., lion, tiger, zebra], then, on completion, with all of them back in, pointed and said): Animal back.

Scalar Adjustment/Schematization: Diary Data (cf. Clark 2009)

Conversion:

D (3;3.26) Now turn off the lights and see if it darks it.

Mother: You shouldn’t take that. It’s very sharp.

D (3;2.9): But I didn’t blade myself.

Matthew (5,4): Mummy, I want to have a toy gun; I don’t want the baddies just to be fingered.

Creative Metonymies:

Matthew (4;11): “I love being a lunch box.” […] “I love being a sandwich, I really like being a sandwich.”

Metonymy: Selection of a different salient conceptual aspect of an event (Dirven 1999; Nerlich et al. 1999; Clark 2009).

Corpus Studies

Developmental Psychology

CHILDES, Thomas-Corpus, 4-11-06.cha

*CHI: it's a light saver .

*CHI: you kill people with it .

*CHI: <it's like a gun> [>] .

Metaphor as a Construal Operation

Source Concept: TV Static

Target Concept:

Feet

Mapping

Source Concept:

Gun

Target Concept:

Light Saver

Mapping

Construal Operations as Basis of Linguistic Innovation and Language Change Basic questions of Historical Linguistics: • WHY do languages change? • HOW do languages change?

“Ce n’est pas un paradoxe de dire qu’une langue change parce

qu’elle fonctionne” (Martinet 1974: 103)

Construal Operations as Basis of Linguistic Innovation and Language Change

• Language as a complex adaptive system

global behaviour arises from local

interactions among a large number of

agents evolves in response to a changing

environment

no “unstructured set of equiprobable

elements” (Taylor 2012: 193)

(Beckner et al. 2009, Frank & Gontier 2010)


• Language as a complex adaptive system

(Beckner et al. 2009, Frank & Gontier 2010)


Language Use / Interaction

“Filter” 1: Integration in language system

“Filter” 2: Diffusion

Language- external factors

Language- internal factors

MOTIVATION

VARIATION

INNOVATION

CHANGE (Cherubim 2012: 44)


INNOVATION (in the narrow sense)

REANALYSIS (“language change without

innovation”, Taylor 2012: 251)

Der Deutsche Fernsehpreis ist halt auch irgendeine x-beliebige Preisverleihung. Wayne interessierts? Wayne? Ich denke die meisten haben besseres zu tun. Es ist nichts falsch daran es ist einfach nur wayne ^^ Ich weiss ja nicht was ihr hier alle für ne Generation seid, aber meinen Eltern ist das Netz ziemlich wayne! ehrlich gesagt ist es doch Wayne wie man es nennt, Knast ist Knast ob man da nun wegen eines Vergehens oder eines Verbrechens sitzt, war mir schon klar, mein lieber bzw. is eigentlich völlig wayne für meinen kommentar, http://forum.fernsehkritik.tv/search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&keywords=wayne https://forum.piratenpartei.de/search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&keywords=wayne

http://forum.fernsehkritik.tv/search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&keywords=wayne




https://forum.piratenpartei.de/search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&keywords=wayne

https://forum.piratenpartei.de/search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&keywords=wayne


INNOVATION (in the narrow sense)



• e.g. colloq. German wayne • e.g. semantic reanalysis:

causal (< temporal) since (Hopper & Traugott 22003)

• syntactic reanalysis: e.g. emergence of German perfect (Szczepaniak 22011)




þa siþþan he irre wæs & gewundod, he of slog micel ‘then, after/since he angry was and wounded, he slaughtered much þæes folces. of-that troop.’ (from Hopper & Traugott 22003: 83)




phīgboum habēta sum gipfanzōtan in sīnemo wīngarten (Tatian 102,2)

‘(A) Fig tree had/owned so. (as) planted in his vineyard’

(from Nübling et al. 2006: 246)


• How do new meanings (and new functions) occur?

a) strong conceptual relations metaphor, e.g. UNDERSTANDING IS GRASPING (Lakoff/Johnson [1980]

2003: 20): Lat. capere ‘(to) catch’ > It. capire ‘(to) understand’ metonymy, e.g. totum pro partes: Lat. focus ‘fireplace’ > ‘fire’ b) pragmatic factors sociocultural change, e.g. family terms: Lat. avunculus ‘mother’s

brother’ > Fr. oncle ‘uncle’ (> German Onkel, English uncle) emotionally marked concepts, e.g. taboo words “euphemism mill”

(Allan & Burridge 2006), e.g. German Neger > Schwarzer > Farbiger > ...

(examples from Blank 1999; Hartmann in press)


• In line with the Cognitive-Linguistic view of language as a “collection of meaningful categories”, all instances of language change outlined above can be explained in terms of categorization

• More specifically, domain-general construal operations such as profiling and windowing of attention play an important role in the emergence of new meanings via metaphor and metonymy

• The importance of perspectivation becomes obvious in the domain of pragmatic change: The speakers’ perspective on the extra-linguistic world determines their choice of words (as well as, ultimately, the meanings and connotations of the respective words).

• In sum, language change can be seen as change in the availability of construal options


Language Acquisition and Language Change

• It can be assumed that the same cognitive principles underlie both

language acquisition and language change (cf. Diessel 2012) • This hypothesis is corroborated by some striking parallels between

language acquisition and language change (e.g. Meibauer et al. 2004, Szczepaniak 2011, Diessel 2012)

• However, the view that language acquisition is the primary locus of language change is unsubstantiated (cf. e.g. Meibauer et al. 2004, Diessel 2007, Diessel 2012)


(Croft & Cruse’s “comparison”) Analogy

• “Structural analogy is the psychological mechanism that underlies the creation of novel forms in both language acquisition and diachronic change” (Diessel 2012: 1610)

classification of both forms and meanings Categorization

• dynamic form-concept-mapping

• Acquisition: “Discovery” of adult meanings; Change: pragmatic inferences

determines availability of construal options Entrenchment

• Frequent linguistic entities more deeply entrenched in memory deeply entrenched entities less likely to be regularized by analogy (e.g. Bybee 1985, Nübling 2000)

(Diessel 2012)

Conclusion • Analyzing linguistic construal operations in language acquisition

and change offers us a window to cognition • A typology of construal operations can prove a helpful tool for

studying dynamic aspects of language that become apparent in language acquisition and change

• The CAS approach highlights the fundamentally dynamic nature of language as well as the “intrinsically diachronic aspect of language as a system” (Frank & Gontier 2010: 48)

• The construal approach of Cognitive Linguistics, the CAS framework, and usage-based theories in cognitive, functional, and constructional analyses complement each other and provide an excellent basis for further research.

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Thank you for your attention!

“[P]hrases [like Language as a Window to Cognition] raise the expectation that it's transparent: just look through language and you'll see what thought is like. [But] language is actually more like a "cubist mirror" or a "funhouse mirror" […]. It turns out that if you look at the details of [the] "window," language is more like a collection of small and oddly shaped peepholes with distorting lenses. If we squint through them all the right way, we can assemble the various perspectives into a sense of the larger schema behind them. And that's what we need linguistics for" (Jackendoff 2012)

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