Re[4/6]: Cladistic language concepts

[John Hewson]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
On Tue, 1 Sep 1998, Scott DeLancey wrote:
 
>  Michael Ghiselin's question of Aug. 31:
>
> >                One point that I still would like clarified is the
> >           relationship between the speaker of the language and the
> >           language itself.  The speaker is a part of a language
> >           community and the vocabulary, grammar etc. are parts of the
> >           language.
>
> A basic ontological problem with all the human sciences is the nature
> of constructs like "language", "culture", etc.  The individual nervous
> systems in which these are represented are part of the physical world,
> and in some sense, which someday we may understand, the representations
> of language (for example) in these nervous systems is also an aspect of
> the physical world.  But the abstract "language" which is "shared" by
> all members of a speech community is not something which can be located
> in the physical world--so, where and what IS it?  I think, in fact, it
> is very much the same kind of thing as a species, which likewise does
> not exist--what do exist are individuals and populations.
 
It is useful to think of a language (Saussure's langue) as a means of
production, and the discourse that vibrates on the air waves (Saussure's
parole) as the product. Only the former is a permanent possession of the
native speaker, and it has a location in the physical world as the brain
surgeons well know. In fact it can be damaged by physical intervention, by
brain trauma. The means of production is finite (a language) whereas the
product is unlimited (language, not a language).
 
Is the speech community an abstraction or something concrete? To start to
answer that question it is useful to first decide if there is any
difference between a brick wall and a pile of bricks with a bag of cement.
The wall differs in that it is an alignment that can form a barrier or a
support, a physical presence that a random pile of bricks lacks.
 
A community language is also an alignment of sorts: individuals adapt
their "means of production" to community norms. This type of alignment can
also be a barrier to outsiders (remember the shibboleth), and a support
for community projects that otherwise might be difficult if not impossible
to achieve. And a speech community can also be destroyed by physical
intervention: you simply kill off the appropriate individuals just as the
brain surgeon tries to excise the cells with lesions in brain surgery, and
not touch the healthy cells.
 
The Bloomfieldians, because they were so influenced by positivism, left us
with the naive idea that what was not concrete was abstract. I think the
image of the brick wall shows that reality is much more subtle. There are
all kinds of structures and substructures that are not "concrete" but
every bit as much a part of the real world (I was tempted to write "real")
as the keyboard that my fingers are pounding. I prefer to keep the term
_abstract_ for mental constructs that are purely imaginary, like unreal
numbers in mathematics.
 
I sometimes think however that the Bloomfieldians did us a favour by
making such a mess of things that we really have to start again at the
beginning...
 
 
 
 
John Hewson, FRSC                               tel: (709)737-8131
University Research Professor                   fax: (709)737-4000
Memorial University of Newfoundland
St. John's NF, CANADA A1B 3X9