Forwarded: Re: Rejected posting to FUNKNET at LIS

[Carl Mills]

Regarding Professor Osten Dahl's query on the derivability of grammar,  I am inclined to answer both yes and
no.  The question of Prof. Dahl poses depends on at least 2 presuppositions:  (1) that language exist and (2) that
the notion of 'grammar' (or 'a grammar' or 'grammars' or 'theory of grammar') is necessary or even useful.
Frankly, I don't think there is any grammar, derivable or otherwise, and I don't think there is anything
corresponding to "language" except as epiphenomenon.  Yngve (1996) questions whether 'language' is the proper
subject matter of linguistics.  Except as a convenient shorthand for referring to humans' ability to produce and
comprehend utterances, tell stories, and represent a portion of the outside world, 'language' appears less than
useful.

The brain appears to instantiate a ragbag collection of special-purposes devices that have been
modified/distorted/drafted into the service of other purposes as the need developed.  What we call language (and
the 'grammar' subserving language) seems, I believe, to grow out of mental faculties originally serving
perception, attention and arousal, and (especially) movement.  Notice the interesting "Prologue" in the "Handbook
of Neurolinguistics" on 'noun-deficits' vs 'verb-deficits' and the corresponding brain regions that are implicated
in these phenomena.  I doubt that there is a unified language faculty.

Instead, we have brain modules devoted to the production and reception of utterances, which seem to have
developed out of the brain structures, including some subcortical ones, especially with regard to what we might
call syntax (if we must) that were adapted from their earlier functions.  In addition, parts of the brain involved in
planning and attending to the consequences (immediate, past, and future) of actions, including speech--chiefly the
frontal lobes, I gather, are probably implicated in discourse planning and sociolinguistic aspects of language use.

One could say with David Tuggy 'that grammar is "established by" language use and "modified by" changes in
usage, and that it "functions for the purpose of" systematically structuring meaning' if one wanted to talk about
grammar or language.  Or one could say with George Lakoff 'that principles of grammar commonly make
reference to, and are often motivated by, aspectsof communicative function in context and embodied meaning in
context (ascharacterized via embodied cognition).'

I would say that 'grammar' is a story made up by Gazzaniga's (1997) "interpreter" in one's left parietal lobe,
which has as its main function the construction of narratives, little stories that help us make sense of our
experience.  One might say that that which we call 'grammar' is shaped by Lakoff's communication function in
context and embodied meaning in context.  But I suspect that current notions of 'communicative function' or
'language use' are too "coarse grained" to be of much theoretical use.

 Carl Mills


>
> ---=?iso-8859-1?B?1nN0ZW4gRGFobA==?= <oesten at ling.su.se> wrote:
> >
> > In a recent Swedish introduction to generative grammar, it is said
> that
> > generative grammar, in the miminalist version, postulates an
"internal
> > grammar", acting as an independent cognitive module. The author then
> goes on
> > (my translation): "There are other current theories of grammar that
> do not
> > assume an independent internal grammar, such as functional grammar,
> > according to which grammar is derivable from language use..., and
> cognitive
> > semantics, according to which grammar is derivable from meaning...."
> >
> > It would be interesting to know whether FUNKNET subscribers agree
> with these
> > characterizations.
> >
> >
> > /sten Dahl
> >
> >
>
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