antonomy

[Wolfgang Schulze]

Johanna Rubba wrote:

> (...) I did some browsing in some foundational works of cognitive and
> functional linguistics, and several make explicit mention of autonomy of
> syntax being a central tenet of generative linguistics which they
> reject, replacing it with a tenet that claims the opposite. These ideas
> are laid out in parts of the work which are intended to summarize the
> core, central aspects of the cognitive/functional program, so I assume
> this means the autonomy thesis is a major difference between the
> research programs, at least in the view of some of the founders of these
> alternative theories.

With respect to the autonomy debate we should perhaps add another view that is
related to the cognitive program. This view claims that 'language' is the
output of cognitive routines that interprets communicative experience in its
interaction with information processing as a systematic entity (called
'language'). 'Language' is regarded as a learned knowledge system that is
imposed (by tradition) on its own cognitive prerogatives, a recursive process
that is typical for human cognition.
    This view does not propose that the process of language acquisition starts
at say the age 1.0 years _because_ of the 'fact' that the brain has arrived at
a certain maturation state that establishes the language faculty. Rather, it
is assumed that people have become used to 'interpret' a certain mental stage,
namely the
maturation of the corresponding senso-motoric domains as a communicative
signal that a child is 'ready for language acquisition'.
    The collective (and very old) experience that it is best to start to
'linguistically' train children at a certain age has established the
collective mental hypothesis (or idealized cognitive model) that language is
something more or less autonomous. The assumption of a modular linguistic
'substance' (in what shape so ever) represents a collective mental
construction and constitutes an important part of folk-psychology. In this
sense, this view has to observe two determinatives with respect to the
ontology of language: On the one hand, language is constituted by nothing but
the emergent activities of the cognition communication interface that in
themselves are not 'language' but senso-motoric schemata related to the
complex (and polycentric) network of senso-motorics, audiovision, and
information storage procedures. In this sense, 'language' does not have a
proper substance (not to speak of 'essence'), but represents cognitive
'events' that acquire a 'communicative and linguistic reading' via
mental constructions.
    On the other hand, the experience of these events together with their
paradigmatization during language acquisition ends in some kind of systematic
knowledge that is _construed_ as a more or less autonomous something. Both
aspects are structurally coupled and lead to what we experience as 'language'.

    The hypothesis that 'language' has acquired an own mental 'substance' (in
terms of Universal Grammar, part of the Language of Thought (LOT) or what so
ever) could then be regarded as a highly sophisticated 'scientifization' of
the popular hypothesis about language: It refers to a modular interpretation
of cognitive organization in which modules are treated as the substantial
'resultant' of the evolution of cognition. This is exactly what people in
ordinary life normally think about language (at least in a Western tradition).
This is understandable if we bear in mind that in Western tradition language
is strongly coupled with '(self-)consciousness' etc.: 'Language' constitutes
one of the basic parameters of human ontology in Western folk psychology. It
is declared to represent some kind of autonomous substance that is correlated
with a certain stage in language acquisition. Traditions related to the
autonomy hypothesis refer to this kind of mental construction. Naturally, this
is not done 'consciously', saying: "Oh, let's make the pop linguistic
experience scientific". In fact, the Chomskyan paradigm represents a unwanted
(?)  reaction to this folk experience, a process that in itself forms part of
the scientifization of popular experience (or folk philosophy) which started
(at the latest) in the time of enlightenment. It is 'modern' - whereas some
cognitive approaches in the sense described above have more in common with
'post-modern' paradigms. In terms of the historiography of sciences (esp.
linguistics) the Chomskyan paradigm is a 'function' of the
'functional/cognitive' paradigm: Post-modern linguistics (if you allow this
term) depend on the experience of linguistic modernity, but it tries to
overcome it in a dialectic discourse that 'explains Chomsky' just as Chomsky
'explained' pre-modern traditions. Modernity can only _react_ on post-modern
arguments (out of logical reasons) by disclaiming approaches related to this
paradigm as 'Neo-Hocuspocus' (if ever they do).

Wolfgang

--
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Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze
Institut fuer Allgemeine und Indogermanische Sprachwissenschaft
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet München
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
D-80539 München
Tel.: +89-21805343 / Fax: +89-21805345
Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de
http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/
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