Cognitive-Functional Linguistics – Some Basic Tenets I

1. Cognitive-Functional Linguistics– Some Basic Tenets I Rolf Theil Bergen, June 19, 2006

2. – More juice! • Nothing could seem less remarkable than a one-year-old child requesting More juice! • But the remarkable fact is that even this baby utterance differs from the communica-tive activities of other animal species in a number of fundamental ways. RT/CFL/I

3. – Doggie gone! • Nothing could seem less remarkable than a one-year-old child commenting Doggie gone! • But the remarkable fact is that no other animals make disinterested comments to one another about missing dogs. RT/CFL/I

4. The most astounding fact • From an ethological perspective, perhaps the most astounding fact is that about 80 percent of all Homo sapiens cannot understand these simple utterances at all. • Whereas the individuals of all nonhuman species can communicate effectively with all of their con-specifics, human beings can communicate effec-tively only with other persons who have grown up in their same linguistic community. RT/CFL/I

5. Language learning • Whatever may be the reasons for this unique, indeed bizarre, situation, one immediate outcome is that, unlike most other animal species, human beings cannot be born with any specific set of communicative behaviors. • Yound children must learn the set of linguistic conventions used by those around them, which for any given language consists of tens of thousands, or perhaps even hundred of thousands, of indi-vidual words, expressions, and constructions. RT/CFL/I

6. Flexibility • The human species is biologically prepared for this prodigious task in ways that individuals of other species are not. • But this preparation cannot be too specific, as human children must be flexible enough to learn not only all of the different words and conventio-nal expressions but also all of the different types of abstract constructional patterns that these languages have grammaticized historically. RT/CFL/I

7. Many years • It thus takes many years of daily interaction with mature language users for children to attain adult-like skills. • This is a longer period of learning with more things to be learned – by many orders of magnitude – than is required of any other species on the planet. RT/CFL/I

8. The Innateness Hypothesis Our ability to speak and understand a natural language results from – and is made possible by – a richly struc-tured and biologically determined capacity specific both to our species and to this domain. […] the language faculty is a part of human biology, tied up with the architecture of the human brain, and distinct in part from other cognitive faculties. P. 216 in S. R. Anderson and D. Lightfoot (2002): The Language Organ. Linguistics as Cognitive Physiology. RT/CFL/I

9. The Language Organ The path of development which we observe suggests that the growth of language results from a specific in-nate capacity rather than emerging on a purely inductive basis from observation of the language around us. The mature system incorporates properties that could not have been learned from observation or any plausibly available teaching. Anderson & Lightfoot (2002: 2) RT/CFL/I

10. Arguments for the Innateness Hypothesis • Speed of Acquisition • Language is acquired in a remarkably short period, which would not be possible if humans did not have an innate language faculty. • Poverty of Data • The grammar acquired by children is much more complex than one should expect on the basis of the language data the children is exposed to from people around them. • Language Universals • Languages resemble each other in structural features that are not necessary properties of a language. These universal structural properties must be explained on the basis of innate knowledge. RT/CFL/I

11. Arguments against innateness I • Speed of Acquisition • In order to assess this argument, we need to know what it means to acquire language in «a remarkably short period», and this information has never been supplied. • Poverty of Data • This statement about the poverty of data, which was done years before anyone had done serious research on the nature of the speech addressed to children, has not been supported by later research. • Language Universals • The number of language universals is not that impressive, and not large enough to justify the postulation of an innate language faculty. Geoffrey Sampson (2005): The ‘Language Instinct’ Debate. RT/CFL/I

12. Arguments against innateness II • Speed of Acquisition It thus takes many years of daily interaction with mature language users for children to attain adult-like skills. This is a longer period of learning with more things to be learned – by many orders of magnitude – than is required of any other species on the planet. • Poverty of Data The principles and structures whose existence it is difficult to explain without universal grammar (such Chomskian things as the subjacency constraints, the empty category principle, and the binding principles) are theory-internal affairs and simply do not exist in usage-based theories of language. • Language Universals Virtually all linguists … involved in the detailed analysis of individual languages cross-linguistically … agree that there are very few … specific grammatical categories and constructions … present in all languages. Michael Tomasello (2003): Constructing a Language. A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition. RT/CFL/I

13. Language Universals • Of course there are language universals. • It is just that they are not universals of form – … not particular kinds of linguistic symbols or gram-matical categories or syntactic constructions – but rather … universals of communication and cog-nition and human physiology. • Because all languages are used by human beings with similar social lives, all peoples have the need to solve in their languages certain kinds of com-municative tasks … Michael Tomasello (2003): Constructing a Language. RT/CFL/I

14. The Cognitive-Functionalist Linguists – Who are they? RT/CFL/I

15. Joan L. Bybee (1945–) An active and productive scholar, in particular within the fields of phonology, morphology, typology and psycholinguistics. Recently, she was elected President of the Linguistic Society of America. In 1985, her book Morphology: a study of the relation between meaning and form became a great source of inspiration for linguists at the University of Oslo, and her work contributed greatly to the establishment of a Cognitive Linguistics group there – a group that has steadily grown to become a meeting place for new students, research fellows and visiting scholars. RT/CFL/I

16. Ronald W. Langacker (1942–) Develops the central ideas of Cognitive Grammar in his two-volume Foun-dations of Cognitive Grammar (1987, 1991), which became a major depar-ture point for the emerging field of Cognitive Linguistics. Cognitive Grammar treats human languages as consisting solely of semantic units, phonological units, and symbolic units (conventional pairings of phonological and semantic units). Cognitive Gram-mar extends the notion of symbolic units to the grammar of languages. Langacker further assumes that linguis-tic structures are motivated by general cognitive processes. RT/CFL/I

17. George P. Lakoff (1941–) The author of Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, 2nd Ed., (2002). He is also the author of Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About The Mind (1987) and co-author of Meta-phors We Live By (1980), More Than Cool Reason (1989), Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge To The Western Tradition (1999), Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics Into Being (2000) and, most recently, Don't Think of an Ele-phant: Know Your Values, Frame the Debate (2004). RT/CFL/I

18. Leonard Talmy A professor of linguistics and philo-sophy at the University at Buffalo in New York. In Toward a Cognitive Se-mantics (2000), Talmy basically de-fines the field of cognitive semantics. He approaches the question of how language organizes conceptual material both at a general level and by analy-zing a crucial set of particular concep-tual domains: space and time, motion and location, causation and force inter-action, and attention and viewpoint. Talmy maintains that these are among the most fundamental parameters by which language structures conception. RT/CFL/I

19. Adele E. Goldberg Professor of Linguistics at Prince-ton University. Her research inte-rests include argument structure, constructionist approaches to lan-guage, language acquisition, cate-gorization, and the role of infor-mation structure in syntax. Books: Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure (1995); Constructions at Work. The Nature of Generaliza-tion in Language (2006). RT/CFL/I

20. William Croft William Croft is a professor of linguistics at the University of New Mexico, from January 2006; earlier at the University of Manchester. Books: Cognitive Linguistics (2004) with D. A. Cruse; Radical Construction Grammar: Syntactic theory in typological perspective (2001); Explaining Language Change (2001); Typology and Universals, 2nd ed. (2003; 1st ed. 1990); RT/CFL/I

21. Cognitive-Functional Linguistics – What’s that? • The Cognitive Commitment • The Generalization Commitment • The Functionalist Commitment • The Embodied Mind RT/CFL/I

22. 1. The Cognitive Commitment • Language and linguistic organization should reflect general cognitive principles. • Principles of linguistic structure should reflect what is known about human cognition from other disciplines • Accordingly, cognitive linguistics rejects the modular theory of mind. RT/CFL/I

23. The Modular Theory of Mind • The human mind is organized into distinct ‘encapsulated’ modules of knowledge. • One of these is the language module. • Linguistic structure and organization are markedly distinct from other aspects of cognition. RT/CFL/I

24. 2. The Generalization Commitment • Identify common structural principles that hold across phonology, semantics, pragmat-ics, morphology, syntax, and other aspects of language. • Language is not divided into separate modules. RT/CFL/I

25. The Modular Theory of Language • Language is divided into distinct subsystems or modules – e.g. the phonology module, the syntax module, and the semantics module. • These modules are organized in significantly divergent ways, on the basis of different kinds of primitives. RT/CFL/I

26. 3. The Functional Commitment • The Usage-Based Thesis: Language structure emerges from language use. • Language use is integral to our knowledge of language, our ‘mental grammar’. • The distinction between competence and performance is rejected. RT/CFL/I

27. Competence and Performance • Competence: Knowledge of language. • Performance: Use of language. • Competence determines performance. • Performance does not influence competence. • Performance can be affected by language-external factors – tiredness, distraction, intoxication – and often fails to adequately reflect competence. RT/CFL/I

28. The Cognitive Commitment and its Implications for a Linguistic Theory • Principles of linguistic structure should reflect what is known about human cognition from other disciplines. • Central aspects of this knowledge about human cognition is represented by six basic psychological terms – presented on the following slides. RT/CFL/I

29. Six Basic Psychological Terms Entrenchment (innprenting) Abstraction (abstraksjon) Comparison (samanlikning) Composition (komposisjon) Association (assosiasjon) Embodiment (kroppsleggjering) RT/CFL/I

30. ENTRENCHMENTNORWEGIAN: INNPRENTING • The occurrence of psychological events leaves some kind of trace that facilitates their reoccurrence. • Through repetition, even a highly complex event can coalesce into a well-rehearsed routine that is easily elicited and reliably executed. • It equals “routinization”, “automatization” and “habit formation”. RT/CFL/I

31. Entrenchment: UnitNORWEGIAN: EINING • When a complex structure comes to be manipu-lated as a “pre-packaged” assembly, no longer requiring conscious attention to its parts or their arrangement, it has the status of a unit. • Examples: • Writing your signature • Shifting gear • Saying How do you do? RT/CFL/I

32. ABSTRACTION • The emergence of a structure through reinforcement of the commonality inherent in multiple experiences. • By its very nature, this abstractive process ”filters out” those facets of the individual experiences which do not recur. RT/CFL/I

33. Abstraction: SchematizationNORWEGIAN: SKJEMATISERING • Schematization is a special case of abstraction. • It involves our capacity to operate at varying levels of ”granularity” or ”resolution”. RT/CFL/I

34. An Example of Schematization The visual image of a person seen at a distance versus The visual image of a person seen close up RT/CFL/I

35. Another Example of Schematization A buffalo herd versus individual buffalos RT/CFL/I

36. Other Examples of Schematization • The structure of a sonnet versus the structure of an individual sonnet. • The meaning of animal versus the meaning of dog. • A consonant versus [p]. RT/CFL/I

37. Abstraction: Schema and Instance • A schema is an ‘abstract’ or ‘coarse-grained’ representation vis-à-vis its more fully specifiedinstances. • The instances elaborate the schema in contrasting ways. • A solid arrow represents the relationship between a schema and an instance: A → B means ‘B instantiates / elaborates A’ RT/CFL/I

38. Schema and InstancesFirst example RT/CFL/I

39. Schema and InstancesSecond example RT/CFL/I

40. COMPARISON • Fundamental to cognition is the ability to compare two structures and detect any discrepancy between them. • Comparison involves an inherent asymmetry: one structure functions as a standard of comparison, the other as its target. RT/CFL/I

41. Comparison(by Americans) • Standard: USA • Target: Turkey • The standard is familiar and well entrenched • The target is unfamiliar RT/CFL/I

42. Comparison:Categorization • Categorization is a special case of comparison: the standard represents an established unit and the target (at least originally) is novel. • When there is no discrepancy between standard and target, there is an instantiation relationship between them: A → B. • When there is a discrepancy between them, there is an extension relationship between them: A⇢ B. RT/CFL/I

43. Categorization: Trees oak oak instantiation oak birch extension RT/CFL/I

44. Categorization:Face Recognition Suzanne Kemmer as a good instance of Suzanne Kemmer. Suzanne Kemmer as a poor instance of Sydney Lamb. RT/CFL/I

45. COMPOSITION • The combination of simpler structures to yield a more complex structure. • It involves the integration of two or more component structures to form a composite structure. RT/CFL/I

46. The Buddhist Monk A Buddhist Monk begins at dawn one day walking up a mountain, reaches the top at sunset, meditates at the top for several days until one dawn when he begins to walk back to the foot of the mountain, which he reaches at sunset. Make no assumptions about his starting or stopping or about his pace during his trip. Riddle:Is there a place on the path that the monk occupies at the same hour of the day on the two separate journeys? 佛 RT/CFL/I

47. Arthur Koestler This is the amazing riddle that Arthur Koestler presents in The Act of Creation. […] Imagine that the monk is taking both ways on the same day. There must be a place where he meets himself, and that place is the one we are looking for. Its existence solves the riddle. Fauconnier & Turner (2002): The Way We Think. RT/CFL/I

48. ASSOCIATION • The well-known phenomenon in which one kind of experience is able to evoke another. • The smell of bananas always reminds me of my week in hospital in 1952. I always had bananas on my night table. RT/CFL/I

49. Association • The particular kind of association that concerns us is symbolization: • The association of conceptualization with the mental representations of observable entities such us sounds, gestures, and written marks. RT/CFL/I

50. Association: The Symbolic Unit An established symbolic relationship – a symbolic unit – is conveniently given as [ [ A ] / [ a ] ], where upper and lower case stand respectively for a conceptualization and a symbo-lizing structure. The slash ( / ) stands for the symbolization relationship. RT/CFL/I