Grammar and System

Wolfgang Schulze W.Schulze at LRZ.UNI-MUENCHEN.DE
Wed Mar 31 14:42:59 UTC 1999


Rob Freeman wrote:

> Let's not all get so caught up in the artifacts or our art that we forget we > are all proposing systems. It's not system or not, it's one or another.

Let me briefly ask you: Which kind of system to you talk about? Do you
refer to the cognitive reality "linguistic knowledge 'system'" or to
some kind of artefact that is established by the systematization of what
is produced by this knowledge 'system'? At least since Husserl's
phenomenology is has become clear that "systematic thinking" is a
problematic kind of scientificism that often aims at the creation of
"systems" in order to construe realities instead of understanding them.
Hence I would sharply distinguish between metalinguistic "grammars" that
construe a linguistic reality in order to make it interpretable or
usefull in some sense or another from the linguistic knowledge bases
that generate this reality. On the metalinguistic level, we can apply
any kind of cybernetic assumptions, mathematical calculations and
formalization, system logics etc. But if linguistics concentrate on such
grammars then it may well be that we create nothing but metalinguistic
theories or theories of metagrammars. However, it would be good to know
more about the organization of linguistic knowledge itself. The
intentional or pragmatic use of this knowledge already creates a
interpretative "distance" between an indiviual and his/her language
which allows him/her to look at this knowledge as a "system". The less
this knowledge is articulate, the less it is systematized by a "user",
the more it is part of the overall communicative and cognitive behavior
of this indiviual, i.e. the cumulation of synergetic activities of a
polycentric knowledge cluster. In this respect, real (or tacit)
"grammar" is much less systematic than generally thought.

Wolfgang

--
_____________________________________________________
| Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze
| Institut fuer Allgemeine und Indogermanische Sprachwissenschaft
| Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen
| Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
| D-80539 Muenchen
| Tel:  +89-21802486 (secr.)
|       +89-21802485 (office)
| Email: W.Schulze at mail.lrz-muenchen.de
|
http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/
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