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<FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14pt'>On the question of the relationship between culture and cognition on the one hand, and language structure on the other, while there are times we can find a ‘smoking gun’ which clearly can show a relationship between some aspect of culture/cognition and some aspect of the grammar, I don’t think it is very useful to argue from these cases, as it implies that there are some aspects of grammar that are related to culture/cognition and some that aren’t, it implies that the motivation for the grammaticalisation or lexicalisation of some form is always going to be transparent, and it implies that there is always a recognisable one-to-one correspondence between some aspect of culture/cognition and language structure. <BR>
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If we take grammaticalisation seriously, that is, if we understand that all aspects of grammar are the result of grammaticalisation, and we understand that grammaticalisation (and lexicalisation) is the conventionalisation of repeated patterns of use (using the same form to constrain the addressee’s interpretation of the speaker’s communicative intention in the same way over and over again), then there must by logical necessity be a connection between all conventionalised aspects of language and the culture/cognition of the speakers, otherwise the speakers would not have used those particular forms in those particular ways over and over again to constrain the interpretation of that particular semantic domain in that particular way, to the extent that the forms became conventionalized. That is, constraining the interpretation of that particular semantic domain in that way must have been important for them, important enough for them to put the extra effort into constraining the interpretation in that way.<BR>
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It often isn’t possible to see what the motivations for the original grammaticalisation or lexicalization was, as once something is conventionalised, it will often stay in the language even after the original motivation is no longer there (e.g. using <I>dial</I> even though telephone no longer have dials), and forms can change in shape (e.g. an onomatopoetic form becoming non-onomatopoetic through sound change) or use (extended in new ways that reflect a different motivation) once they are conventionalized. There can also be competing motivations over time, such as what happened in the loss and re-creation of the singular/plural distinction of second person pronouns in English.<BR>
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As each society is unique, each language will be unique in terms of which semantic domains the speakers will decide to constrain the interpretation of (e.g. tense or no tense), in terms of the extent to which they will constrain the interpretation of that particular domain (e.g. one past tense or three?), and in terms of the particular form used to constrain it. There is no logical necessity that societies with certain characteristics will necessarily end up conventionalising the same sorts of structures.<BR>
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Randy<BR>
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Randy J. LaPolla, PhD FAHA (罗仁地）<BR>
Chair of Linguistics<BR>
Director, Research Centre for Linguistic Typology<BR>
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La Trobe University, VIC 3086 AUSTRALIA<BR>
Tel.: +61 3 9479-2555; FAX: +61 3 9479-1520<BR>
RCLT: <a href="http://www.latrobe.edu.au/rclt/">http://www.latrobe.edu.au/rclt/</a><BR>
Linguistics: <a href="http://www.latrobe.edu.au/linguistics/">http://www.latrobe.edu.au/linguistics/</a><BR>
The Tibeto-Burman Domain: <a href="http://tibeto-burman.net/">http://tibeto-burman.net/</a> <BR>
Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area: <a href="http://stedt.berkeley.edu/ltba/">http://stedt.berkeley.edu/ltba/</a><BR>
Location of RCLT: <a href="http://www.latrobe.edu.au/rclt/location.htm">http://www.latrobe.edu.au/rclt/location.htm</a><BR>
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<HR ALIGN=CENTER SIZE="3" WIDTH="95%"><B>From: </B>"Daniel L. Everett" <<a href="dlevere@ilstu.edu">dlevere@ilstu.edu</a>><BR>
<B>Reply-To: </B>"Daniel L. Everett" <<a href="dlevere@ilstu.edu">dlevere@ilstu.edu</a>><BR>
<B>Date: </B>Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:11:12 -0500<BR>
<B>To: </B><<a href="LINGTYP@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG">LINGTYP@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG</a>><BR>
<B>Subject: </B>Re: [FUNKNET] Query on structural properties<BR>
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</SPAN></FONT><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14pt'><FONT FACE="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial">Dear All,<BR>
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The remarks by Tom and Joan are, as one would expect, extremely useful and interesting. <BR>
Let me address myself first to Tom. Tom suggests that my research program is Whorfian. In fact, it is the opposite of Whorf. Whereas Whorf, Sapir, Herder, and others raised the question of the degree of influence that grammar could have on cognition, my program, suggested a bit by Boas and Sapir, is mainly concerned with how culture can affect grammar. As far as I know, Whorf never concerned himself with the effects of culture on grammar. Here is a summary of various positions:
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<SPAN STYLE='font-size:14pt'><FONT FACE="Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><B>Cognition, Grammar, Culture Connections
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</FONT><FONT FACE="Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><B>Constraint Relationship</B></FONT><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"> </FONT><FONT FACE="Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><B>Representative Theory</B></FONT><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"> <BR>
</FONT><FONT FACE="Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial">1. cognition </FONT><FONT FACE="Symbol">--></FONT><FONT FACE="Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"> grammar</FONT><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"> </FONT><FONT FACE="Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial">Chomsky's Universal Grammar</FONT><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"> <BR>
</FONT><FONT FACE="Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial">2. grammar </FONT><FONT FACE="Symbol">--></FONT><FONT FACE="Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"> cognition</FONT><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"> </FONT><FONT FACE="Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial">Linguistic Relativity (Whorf)</FONT><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"> <BR>
</FONT><FONT FACE="Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial">3. cognition </FONT><FONT FACE="Symbol">--></FONT><FONT FACE="Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"> culture</FONT><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"> </FONT><FONT FACE="Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial">Brent Berlin and Paul Kay's work on color terms</FONT><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"> <BR>
</FONT><FONT FACE="Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial">4. grammar </FONT><FONT FACE="Symbol">--></FONT><FONT FACE="Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"> culture</FONT><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"> </FONT><FONT FACE="Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial">Greg Urban's work on discourse-centered culture</FONT><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"> <BR>
</FONT><FONT FACE="Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial">5. culture </FONT><FONT FACE="Symbol">--></FONT><FONT FACE="Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"> cognition</FONT><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"> </FONT><FONT FACE="Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial">Long term effects on thinking of cultural restrictions on certain behaviors</FONT><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"> <BR>
</FONT><FONT FACE="Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial">6. culture </FONT><FONT FACE="Symbol">--></FONT><FONT FACE="Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"> grammar</FONT><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"> </FONT><FONT FACE="Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial">Ethnogrammar; individual forms structured by culture</FONT><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"> <BR>
</FONT><FONT FACE="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial"> <BR>
</FONT><FONT FACE="Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial">I believe that there are different, yet non-exclusive, relations between culture, cognition, and grammar. My program, such as it is, falls under number 6. I think that box number one is probably the null set, though it might have something in it that no one has yet discovered. The others are all active and viable connections, each associated with a different research program. I discuss this all in more detail in my book, Don't sleep there are snakes, which is now available in Korean (Courrier), in the UK (Profile) and in the USA (Pantheon and Vintage), and soon to be available in German (February - <a href="http://www.amazon.de/Das-glücklichste-Volk-Pirahã-Indianern-Amazonas/dp/3421043078/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259941204&sr=8-3">http://www.amazon.de/Das-glücklichste-Volk-Pirahã-Indianern-Amazonas/dp/3421043078/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259941204&sr=8-3</a>), French, Thai, Mandarin, and Japanese.</FONT><FONT FACE="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial"> <BR>
</FONT><FONT FACE="Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial">Grammaticalization clearly is relevant in 'freeze framing' various connections, including culture and grammar. Nothing in my own thought or research is incompatible with grammaticalization. It plays a vital role in any complete theory of diachronic or synchronic linguistics. <BR>
Tom's term - 'society of intimates' - has been very helpful to me. The Utes might be a society of intimates. The Pirahas certainly are. So why aren't all societies of intimates grammatically similar? Why doesn't Ute have the characteristics of Piraha or vice-versa? Because no single cultural value is going to be responsible for all the culture-grammar connections one might discover. Culture, like Language, is an abstraction, an idealization. In Everett and Sakel (to appear), we propose a methodology for studying linkage between grammatical chararacteristics and cultural characteristics. One must first identify cultural values, in a non-circular manner, and then identify grammatical phenomena. We then suggest ways of establishing non-circular connections and relations of causality between such pairs. Piraha is not only a society of intimates, but it has a particularly strong value of 'immediacy of experience'. I discuss such issues in more detail in Don't sleep.</FONT><FONT FACE="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial"> <BR>
If Piraha has suffered some sort of cultural trauma, e.g. the conquest by Europeans that began in the 16th century, then this certainly could have dramatically affected their culture and its connections with their language/grammar/grammatical constructions. On the other hand, we know that their culture and language today look pretty much like they did in 1784, when the first written records begin to appear. So whatever their culture & language were like before then, that is irrelevant to the fact that they have been in a relative period of stasis since then. <BR>
Diachronic studies and grammaticalization are vital to my program ultimately. This is because I simply want to understand language as well as I can. Because I do not believe in Universal Grammar or much at all in the way of genetic constraints on the shapes of grammars, I have to look to other explanans for similarities between languages of the world. This is in fact the subject of my book, Cognitive Fire: Language as a Cultural Tool, to appear in late 2010 (Pantheon in the US, Profile in the UK). <BR>
Joan - thanks for the reference!<BR>
</FONT><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial">Ultimately, I see nothing incompatible with anything Tom has said and what I have said. I simply believe that culture plays a larger part than some other linguists do in shaping grammar and other aspects of cognitive life. <BR>
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Yesterday, GEO magazine published a large story about my work in German (it will ultimately appear in all 20 languages in which GEO is published). In that story, Chomsky says that it is ridiculous to think that culture could affect grammar because three year olds know nothing/little about culture and much about grammar. That seems false. Much of culture is learned and transmitted nonverbally from birth. Perhaps before birth. I give examples in Everett (2008).<BR>
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I believe that all humans are born with a similar genetic endowment, encompassing intelligence, body size, etc. I am not 'searching for primitive languages'. I am interested in learning more about the culture-grammar interface as one part of the symbiosis between grammar, culture, and cognition. <BR>
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Cheers, <BR>
</FONT><FONT FACE="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial">Dan<BR>
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Everett, Daniel L. and Jeanette Sakel. forthcoming. Linguistic Fieldword: A Student Guide. Cambridge University Press, Red Series.<BR>
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Everett, Daniel L. 2008. Don't sleep there are snakes: life and language in the Amazonian jungle. Vintage Departure Series.<BR>
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