27.4762, Confs: Gen Ling, History of Ling, Ling Theories, Philosophy of Lang/Switzerland

Sat Nov 19 20:32:48 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-4762. Sat Nov 19 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.4762, Confs: Gen Ling, History of Ling, Ling Theories, Philosophy of Lang/Switzerland

Moderators: linguist at linguistlist.org (Damir Cavar, Malgorzata E. Cavar)
Reviews: reviews at linguistlist.org (Helen Aristar-Dry, Robert Coté,
                                   Michael Czerniakowski)
Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

*****************    LINGUIST List Support    *****************
                       Fund Drive 2016
                   25 years of LINGUIST List!
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
           http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

Editor for this issue: Kenneth Steimel <ken at linguistlist.org>
================================================================

Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2016 15:32:37
From: Dumitru Cornel Vilcu [coseriu4zuerich at gmail.com]
Subject: The Tripartite Division of Language within Integral (Coserian) Linguistics: Advantages and Limitations

The Tripartite Division of Language within Integral (Coserian) Linguistics: Advantages and Limitations 

Date: 10-Sep-2017 - 13-Sep-2017 
Location: Zurich, Switzerland 
Contact: Dumitru-Cornel Vilcu 
Contact Email: coseriu4zuerich at gmail.com 

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; History of Linguistics; Linguistic Theories; Philosophy of Language 

Meeting Description: 

The aim of our worksop is to assess the advantages and limits of the threefold
theoretical/operational frame offered for the sciences of language by Eugenio
Coseriu (forth president of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, 1969-70).

Most of today's general models of language (and its functioning) are twofold.
On the one hand, we have the level of the code/idiom/system of signs. On the
other hand, we have language use - in the relationship to the participants in
the communicative exchange and/or to the world (usually seen as a unique,
coherent, all-encompassing, factual reality).

In contrast, Coseriu's model comprises, not two, but three levels (''planes'')
of language. Every linguistic act starts within the historical plane, with the
significata (as virtual, idiomatic, intuitive contents of a language),
orienting itself, in the so-called ''first semiotic articulation'', towards
the universal plane of speech where it configures (''produces'') its
designata. These are intentional objects in an intersubjectively accepted/
mutually constructed (image-of-the-) world.

But the process does not end here. When speaking, we do not only designate a
state of facts; we also position ourselves in relationship to it. Each
language act also comprises a ''second semiotic articulation'', in which
designata and significata become the expressive material for signifying the
type of content specific to the individual plane of language: sense - within
text-discourse.

Also, in ''real-life'' semiotic acts, the sense comprises a user-oriented
intent which in its turn can hold an apophantic (cognitive, descriptive,
''scientific''), pragmatic (persuasive) or poetic (''fictionalising'') nature.
Still, integral linguistics only deals with the constitution of designata and
sense in as far as they belong to logos semantikos - that is, with the
actu(alis)ation and production of linguistic contents, not with their
(''instrumental'') use in our everyday life and communication.

Linguistics, then, is also threefold. Firstly, we have the linguistics of
(historical) languages/idioms, with structuralism as the already existent
theory/methodology best fit for examining this plane of language. Then, we
need a linguistics of speech as a universal function of language - and
unknowingly, unintendendedly, generative grammar is, among the scientific
trends of the 20th century, the one which tried to deal with this kind of
phenomena. But maybe the most necessary (and the most difficult to elaborate)
linguistics of all is text linguistics having as its object-field the
individual plane of language and operating as a ''hermeneutics of sense''.
Most of the phenomena pertaining to this domain have already been studied by
(different branches of) pragmatics but the theoretical tension between
integral (text) linguistics and this general type of approach is even greater
than in the case of Coseriu's well-known polemical reference to Saussureian or
Chomskyan developments within the science of language.

How helpful is the above-described tripartition for the analysis/ description
of real, actual linguistic facts? How can we effectively differentiate between
the two planes & the two types of content which used to be treated together by
''the rest'' of linguistic theories, that is, speech vs. discourse, universal
vs. individual plane, designatum vs. and sense? Our workshop will try, on the
one hand, to make all of these distinctions clearer, and, on the other hand,
to give examples of their applicability to concrete linguistic phenomena.

Organisers:

Emma Tamaianu-Morita, Professor, Kindai University, Faculty of International
Studies, Higashi-Osaka City, Japan
Dumitru-Cornel Vilcu, Assistant professor, Babes-Bolyai University,
Cluj-Napoca, Romania

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*****************    LINGUIST List Support    *****************
                       Fund Drive 2016
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
            http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

        Thank you very much for your support of LINGUIST!

----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-27-4762	
----------------------------------------------------------
Visit LL's Multitree project for over 1000 trees dynamically generated
from scholarly hypotheses about language relationships:
          http://multitree.org/