17.579, Review: Cognitive Sci ence/Pragmatics: Giv ón (2005)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-17-579. Tue Feb 21 2006. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 17.579, Review: Cognitive Science/Pragmatics: Givón (2005)

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1)
Date: 17-Feb-2006
From: Kerstin Fischer < kerstinf at uni-bremen.de >
Subject: Context as Other Minds 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2006 19:11:02
From: Kerstin Fischer < kerstinf at uni-bremen.de >
Subject: Context as Other Minds 
 

AUTHOR: Givón, Talmy
TITLE: Context as Other Minds 
SUBTITLE: The Pragmatics of Sociality, Cognition and Communication 
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2005
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-2353.html 

Kerstin Fischer, University of Bremen

The main point of the book, as I understand it, is to show that 
speakers constantly take into account their interlocutors' supposed 
mental models. Givón argues from an evolutionary point of view that it 
makes sense to constantly monitor the other's mental states because 
in this way the behaviours of others can be predicted, which has an 
adaptive value. He suggests that we know other minds because we 
know our own minds, and by feature association we can transfer 
knowledge of ourselves to the others, which makes sense in a society 
of intimates, in which we are taken to have lived until about 8000 
years ago. Givón holds grammar to exhibit the function to anticipate or 
influence the others' minds in many respects. Grammar is thus 
proposed to have evolved as a perfect adaptation to our need to 
induce others to comprehend what is in our mind.

SYNOPSIS

Chapter 1 discusses the notion of context and context-dependency on 
the basis of ''recurrent themes'', such as relevance, analogy and 
metaphor, and from a historical perspective, illuminating the 
relationship between categorisation and context in works by Plato, 
Aristotle, Kant, Peirce, and Wittgenstein, among others.

In chapter 2, Givón lays the foundations for the rest of the book by 
establishing particularly three important concepts:

Firstly, he argues that organisms in order to survive need to represent 
most tokens of the same type in the same way and to recognize 
deviant tokens as exceptional (p. 39). That is, an organism needs to 
develop context-sensitive adaptive responses. He argues that the 
tension between typical examples and exceptions is mirrored in the 
core vs. periphery distinction, the discrete vs. gradual distinction 
associated with Plato and Wittgenstein respectively, generative 
grammar vs. emergent grammar, and logical AI vs. semantic networks. 
Moreover, it corresponds to the rapid, repetitive, robust processing of 
the bulk versus the slow and error-prone contextual discrimination, 
which however is taken to have a high adaptive value.

Secondly, he introduces the mechanism of feature association as a 
form of abductive reasoning (p. 59). 

Thirdly, he argues that until recently (from an evolutionary point of 
view) we have mostly been living in societies of intimates in which we 
shared the cultural, situational and individual background with our 
interlocutors. By feature association we thus construct the others' 
minds as like our own, as a prototype-based category (p. 62). 

In chapter 3, Givón outlines his model of communication and 
discusses metaphor in some detail. The cognitive representation 
system is divided into the lexicon, propositions, and discourse. 
Communicative codes are divided into sensory-motor and grammatical 
codes. Sensory-motor codes comprise phonetics, phonology, and 
neurology, where the phonetic/phonological codes encode the 
lexicon. Grammatical codes (which should in principle also be 
encoded phonologically) encode discourse coherence, which is 
equated with communicative intention (p. 69).

The chapter continues with a discussion of metaphor, especially of 
Lakoff's notion of conceptual metaphor. Givón criticises that 
conceptual metaphors are identified out of context, whereas the 
felicity of metaphors crucially depends on the serendipity of the 
context (p. 75). In contrast, he shows how conceptual metaphors can 
be activated in discourse (p. 81).

Chapter 4 addresses in more detail the notion of the other mind. On p. 
91, Givón shows how other minds are constructed by feature 
association from self. He continues by exploring the three cognitive 
representation systems introduced in the previous chapter: 
semantics/lexicon, grammar, and discourse. The lexicon in this view 
corresponds to what is generically, culturally shared. Grammar 
represents the particular interlocutors' mental models at particular 
times that constitute conventionalized, i.e. grammaticalized, common, 
recurrent, and adaptively relevant types of contexts (p. 92).

These three kinds of representation are taken to correspond to three 
kinds of memory (p.101):

shared generic network (lexicon) = permanent semantic memory 
shared speech situation = working memory/attention 
shared current text = early episodic memory

Givón then discusses the issue of consciousness, which brain areas 
are most likely involved and what kind of consciousness is necessary 
for a representation of other minds. 

He argues that the ability to forecast the behaviour of others is the 
most important adaptive capacity for a social cooperating species (p. 
120) and that ''the systematic on-line construction of mental models of 
the current epistemic and deontic states of one's interlocutor is the 
central adaptive motivation for the evolution of grammar'' (p. 121).

Chapter 5 is concerned with referential coherence, i.e. with the 
grounding (strangely without any reference to Clark's work) of 
referents in the universe of discourse, which is equated with 
working/episodic memory. He shows how anaphoric and cataphoric 
linguistic devices are used to indicate continuity versus discontinuity 
with previously grounded referents (pp. 136-143) and ''to anticipate 
the epistemic mental states of the interlocutor'' (p. 133) respectively.

Chapter 6 addresses epistemic and deontic modality, tense, aspect, 
and evidentiality. ('deontic' is taken to mean ''matters of desirability, 
preference, intent, ability, obligation, manipulation or power'' (p. 149)) 
Givón concludes that these ''propositional modalities'' display a ''fine-
tuned sensitivity on the part of the speaker to the informational and 
social reality around them, most conspicuously to the constantly shifting 
epistemic and deontic states of their interlocutors'' (p. 177).

Chapter 7 is concerned with discourse. According to Givón, discourse 
coherence is established by the grammatical cues discussed in 
chapters 5 and 6, which together constitute ''an elaborate system of 
cues that speakers give hearers about highly specific mental 
structures and operations'' (p. 193).

Chapter 8 is an essay in the philosophy of science. It is related to the 
rest of the book by means of the question: who is the scientist's 
relevant interlocutor? The answer is of course the community of 
scholars (p. 196). First Givón discusses the two positions of 
deductivism and inductivism. Against this background, he 
establishes ''the pragmatics of empirical science'', by which he 
understands contextual, abductive reasoning (p. 205). Abductive 
reasoning can be illustrated by the following example (p. 207):

a. Puzzling facts F are incompatible with theory T, 
b. But facts F are fully compatible with Hypothesis H, 
c. whose truth value is yet to be determined. 
d. That is, if Hypothesis H were the case, 
e. then facts F would be explained as a matter of course. 
---------------------------------------------------------
f. Therefore Hypothesis H must be the case.

Abductive reasoning is taken to be contextual because it means to 
place ''erstwhile disparate facts in a wider context'' (p. 209). In his 
model the community of scholars plays important roles, for instance, 
regarding their ''deontic commitment to the status quo'' or as ''deontic 
resistance against the new hypothesis'' (p. 218), or regarding criteria 
of falsification (p. 219).

Chapter 9 concerns the concept of self. Givón argues that until 
recently (from an evolutionary point of view), an essentialist theory of 
self was ''highly predictive and adaptive'' (p. 223). He discusses 
different perspectives on the self and argues that schizophrenia and 
autism are caused by problems with the controlling self (p. 234).

Chapter 10 addresses the role of 'other minds' in martial arts, which is 
peculiar since the 'interlocutor' here is an adversary. The chapter can 
be read as an introduction to Confucian thinking and as a defence of 
Tai Chi Chuan as a martial art which ''as a discipline founded upon the 
presence of a real, on-line adversary-interlocutor, whose constantly-
shifting epistemic and deontic states, and concomitant actions, must 
be anticipated'' (p. 254) should be practised as a martial art (and not 
as a physical exercise).

 CRITICAL EVALUATION

Givón's 'Context as Other Minds' is certainly an interesting book. 
However, I would think that in order to answer the question whether 
context consists of representations of other minds, we need to invoke 
evidence on whether speakers really build up such representations, 
what these representations consist of (especially if speakers cannot 
infer the others' mental models on the basis of their own), and under 
which conditions speakers make use of these representations.

Recently, much work has been devoted to the question whether 
speakers build up models of their interlocutors, what these models 
consist of, whether speakers display attention to this kind of 
information and how interlocutors contribute to it. Thus, many sources 
of information are available to the researcher interested in the 
questions raised by Givón. In particular, there is currently a lively 
discussion in psycholinguistics on whether speakers rely on 
knowledge about their hearers and under which conditions (see 
Schober & Brennan 2003 or Horton & Gerrig 2005 for overviews). 
Moreover, there is conversation analytic work showing participants' 
orientation to subtle cues with respect to information processing and 
topic development (e.g. Gardner 2001). Furthermore, there are 
numerous linguistic studies on how people talk to communication 
partners who are in some ways different from the speaker, such as 
children, retarded adults, or even computers. Finally, work in 
pragmatics has shown that speakers do not only orient to epistemic 
and deontic modality, as Givón suggests, but that they also model 
their interlocutors' attitudes and evaluations in their utterances (for 
discussion, see Nemo to appear).

Givón does not discuss any of the above. Of the more than 500 
references, only 48 were published within the last five years, 30 of 
which are neurolinguistic or psychological papers and seven the 
author's own recent work. Only about five references concern recent 
work in linguistics or pragmatics.

However, even though Givón does not enter a detailed discussion 
with 'the community of scholars', there are many interesting things the 
book does do. In fact, Givón himself presents us with a framework in 
which to locate his scientific work (ch. 8).

The evidence presented in the book rests on arguments from 
evolutionary linguistics and on detailed analyses of grammatical 
features (especially ch. 4-7), which show that grammar can be 
interpreted as having the function to anticipate and influence the 
interlocutors' mental states, or, in Givón's words:

''a dedicated signaling system whose purpose is to induce others to 
comprehend what is in one's mind. Not only to comprehend, but 
hopefully also to spring into relevant action. Such behavior is 
inconceivable without a running on-line mental model, however 
subconscious, of the interlocutor's rapidly shifting intentional and 
epistemic states.'' (p.120)

Givón's argument can thus be understood as abductive hypothesis 
formation:

a. there are puzzling facts F on the function of grammar and on the 
tasks involved in social behaviour, 
b. facts F are fully compatible with Hypothesis H, that speakers 
subconsciously model their communication partners' mental states, 
c. whose truth value is yet to be determined. 
d. That is, if Hypothesis H were the case, 
e. then facts F would be explained as a matter of course. 
--------------------------------------------------------- 
f. Therefore Hypothesis H, that speakers subconsciously model their 
communication partners' mental states, must be the case.

Givón not only succeeds in supporting this line of argumentation very 
well, he also demonstrates the ubiquity of abductive reasoning and 
contributes thus to clarifying the kinds of evidence linguistic theorizing 
may rely on.

The book furthermore comprises many shorter discussions to which I 
cannot do justice here. One seems to be to clear Aristotle's name of 
the suspicion of being objectivist (p. 80), another one is to argue for 
the adaptive value of prototype-based reasoning (ch.2), and a third 
and fourth ones concern psychiatric diagnoses of mental disturbance 
(ch. 9) and Confucian philosophy (ch. 10) respectively. These 
discussions are not always as thorough as they could be; for instance, 
during Givón's invoking of Freud's model of self, only id and ego are 
discussed, super-ego has been dropped, although the super-ego 
would be a plausible candidate for the representation of others in our 
mind. Also the discussion of prototype theory lacks the depth of, e.g. 
the one by Kleiber (1998). Moreover, I would like to cast doubt on the 
usefulness of a discussion of ''relevant themes'' in pragmatics that, for 
instance, devotes five lines to the notion of relevance (p. 8). However, 
the discussions are certainly thought-provoking.

Regarding formal matters, the volume is a treasure for researchers 
working on garden path sentences, and it is sloppy with respect to 
references (e.g. Firth instead of Frith (p. 232), Fussell & Kreuz are 
cited as Fussel & Kreutz (p.108), Sweetser 1990 is cited as 1990 and 
1991 on the same page (p. 73), Scherer becomes Schere (p. 257) 
etc.) and typos, the most amusing of which are ''sort-term working 
memory'' (p. 107) and ''metal representation in the brain'' (p. 92). 

Besides its shortcomings, the book is interesting and inspiring and a 
useful source for everyone working on the role of the partner in 
communication.

REFERENCES

Gardner, R. (2001) When Listeners Talk. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: 
John Benjamins.

Horton, W. S. & Gerrig, R. J. (2005)  The impact of memory demands 
on audience design during language production. Cognition 96, 127-
142.

Kleiber, G. (1998) Prototypensemantik: eine Einführung. 2. Auflage 
Tübingen (= La sémantique du prototype. Categories et sens lexical. 
Paris 1990).

Nemo, F. (to appear) The Pragmatics of Common Ground. In Fetzer, 
A. & Fischer, K. (Eds.), Lexical Markers of Common Ground. 
Amsterdam: Elsevier.

Schober, M. F. & Brennan, S. E. (2003)  Processes of interactive 
spoken discourse: The role of the partner.  In A. C. Graesser, M. A. 
Gernsbacher, & S. R. Goldman (Eds.), Handbook of discourse 
processes (pp. 123-164).  Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Kerstin Fischer is assistant professor at the University of Bremen, 
Germany. She has been working on recipient design and common 
ground for several years, especially between unequal interlocutors, 
for instance, in communication with computers, robots, foreigners, or 
children. She is co-editor of 'Lexical Markers of Common Grounds', to 
appear with Elsevier this year. In the framework of the 
SFB/TR8 'Spatial Cognition', she elicits and analyses corpora of 
human-robot interaction that differ only with respect to single variables 
in order to identify the factors that influence speakers' choices for their 
artificial interlocutors.





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