Thursday in Polly’s syntax class, I got the most clear understanding of the endeavor of a linguistic framework of grammar attempts to accomplish.
Linguists often meet some amount of skepticism when we reveal our work to others because the theoretical claims are pitted against questions such as “People can’t actually be doing that in their heads when they say that, can they?”
The common answer is: “Well, we aren’t trying to model rules of real-time production or perception, just the rules of the grammar.” That usually quiets people, not because it is a sufficient answer, but because it is given with such dogmatic confidence that it is a sufficient answer, as very little follow-up explanation is provided. The question most people are left with after hearing this response is, “If you’re not modeling anything human, what ARE you doing? What else is there?”
I think that’s the question we’re trying to get at, the “What else is there?” part. What part of language systems relies on the human linguistic ability (and where does that come from?) and what part relies on some other sort of non-human system? How do these parts interact?
Theoretical linguistic theories are modeling the non-human part–that is, as Polly Jacobson once so aptly put in response to a question about how we are able to parse sentences if there are an infinite number of derivations: humans are not grammar! The grammar contains a set of well-formed (both syntactically and semantically) expressions, proven well-formed by a series of rules, also a part of the grammar. Somehow real-time perception and production interact with the grammar, but explicitly how that is done has yet to be explained. This explanation can only be born once we have a good understanding of the structure of the grammar and how elements such as syntax and semantics interact.
The series of rules in the grammar model the native speaker’s unconscious (somehow acquired) knowledge about the grammar of his/her language. By explicitly stating that the grammar is the unconscious knowledge is not to dismiss ultimately addressing the questions of real-time perception and production, but rather, to focus the task at hand to an already tricky set of questions to answer.
Where does the grammar come from? Is it some product of whatever is responsible for the human ability to communicate unlike any other animal? Is that ability its own unique thing? Other animals have been shown to communicate in their own way; to postulate some special human communication seems conceited and ill-motivated. Instead, what if our language ability evolved from the combination of the animal (or mammalian) gift of communication and the incorporation of logic, once humans evolved well enough to begin implicitly understand logical relations amongst objects and events in the world?
(And what is logic as it relates to human perception? More on this later…)
emma :: Jan.27.2007 ::
misc, philosophy, linguistics ::
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