The Necessity of Syntax

[W. Schulze]

Östen Dahl wrote:

> ... But if one language puts
> adjectives before nouns, another puts nouns first, and a third language
> allows for both possibilities, are all these choices motivated by
> communicative needs? Or is it the existence of syntax as such that is
> motivated by communicative needs?

I guess the problem is to tell *what* is meant by 'syntax (as such)' at all.
The debate on the nature of 'parts of speech' has demonstrated that it is
difficult (if not impossible) to use these terms as categorial elements in
order to define 'syntax'. Syntax (in my eyes) is an emergent property of
utterances that reflects the cognitive- communicative need to assimilate
complex 'gestalt' experience (Outer World stimuli) to the conditions of
articulation (and connected with this, to the conditions of linguistic
conceptualization). In other words: The only thing we can tell for sure is
that 'syntax' encompasses the linearization of gestalt information. This
process can be termed 'diairesis' which means that an Outer World gestalt
experience is reduced to a number of more or less salient segments that are
linearized as articulated sequences via language in accordance with the
linguistic knowledge of a speaker. Naturally, linearization does not take
place randomly but in accordance with socio-communicative conventions
(acquired 'syntactic' blueprints) and with cognitive 'patterns' of gestalt
experience (in perception). The structural coupling of 'perception and
action' conditions that the 'action of linearization' is interpreted in
terms of secondary 'autonomy hypotheses' about the functional (and even
semantic) 'value' of the linearization patterns (e.g. in terms of
'constructions'). Such hypotheses may (and do) have again recursive effects
on the 'perception domain', and - in consequence - on the 'values' of
diairetic actions.

If these assumptions are correct, syntax is neither necessary (in terms of a
pre-condition) nor an option taken by 'languages' to a different degree.
Rather, syntax is a more or less conventionalized way of how to communicate
one's own diairetic processes.

--
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze
Institut für Allgemeine und
Typologische Sprachwissenschaft
- General Linguistics and Language Typology -
Dept. II - Kommunikation und Sprachen
F 13/14 - Universitaet München
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
D-80539 Muenchen
Tel.: ++49-(0)89-2180-2486 / -5343
Fax: ++49-(0)89-2180-5345
Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de
Web: http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/