28 fev: Nick Enfield, psycholinguistique, Institut Nicod, Paris

[Clara Romero]

>> De: Dan Sperber <dan at sperber.com>
>>
>>
>> Le Groupe NaSH (Naturalisme et Sciences Humaines) de l'Institut  Nicod 
>> vous invite
>>
>> le mardi 28 février de 17h à 19h à l'Institut Nicod, 1bis avenue de 
>> Lowendal, 75007 Paris, France, RdC à droite
>>  (plan d'accès à http://www.institutnicod.org/acc.htm ; si vous  n'avez 
>> pas les codes de l'immeuble, les demander à sperber at ehess.fr  ou 
>> origgi at enst.fr)
>>
>>  à une conférence (en anglais) de
>>
>> Nick Enfield
>>  (Language and Cognition Group, Max Planck Institute for 
>> Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, http://www.mpi.nl/Members/NickEnfield )
>>
>> Population thinking and “areal linguistics”
>>  Implications for language, culture, and cognition
>>
>> This paper discusses new developments in linguists' understanding  of 
>> language, as a result of research in "areal typology". The  observation 
>> that neighboring languages tend to be structurally  similar regardless of 
>> their "genealogical" relationship raises  fundamental issues for the 
>> linguist's understanding of language and  "languages". The paper looks at 
>> recent modifications to the  standard "family tree" approach to 
>> languages, and proposes that  this classical approach is a reasonable 
>> methodology but not a  reasonable theory. The generally good fit of 
>> reality to the  genealogical method is an artifact of "normal 
>> transmission" in  language acquisition. Certain types of socio-historical 
>> situation  (e.g. large-scale slavery) make it clear that a diffusional, 
>> "epidemiological" model is necessary for at least some cases.  Ockham's 
>> principle of simplicity suggests it is worth seeing if  this model can 
>> also handle the relatively neat situations like the  history of 
>> Indo-European or Austronesian language families.
>>
>>  The key is to apply population thinking to our understanding of 
>> linguistic structures and processes. Such thinking gives rise to a 
>> framework which recognizes four basic units of analysis: 1.  linguistic 
>> items (words, constructions, etc.); 2. individual  speakers and their 
>> mental representations (i.e. of individual  linguistic items and of 
>> structured systems of such items); 3.  actual communicative interactions 
>> among speakers; 4. populations of  speakers in social association. 
>> (‘Languages’ are secondary at best  as units with any causal role or 
>> analytic value.) By this  conception of language, linguistic processes 
>> are necessarily played  out in a ‘micro-macro’ nexus. That is, questions 
>> of individual  linguistic cognition cannot be understood without 
>> considering  interactions among individuals, and, in turn, emergent 
>> population  level effects. And questions of higher level convention 
>> (properties  of ‘languages’) cannot be understood without considering 
>> properties  of individual cognition, as well as the actual occasions of 
>> linguistic interaction among individuals. Population thinking makes  this 
>> explicit.
>>
>>  I discuss consequences of this kind of understanding for questions  in 
>> two disciplines closely related to linguistics. First, in  cognitive 
>> science, a major controversy centers on the nature of  linguistic 
>> categorization and semantic representation as located in  the individual 
>> mind, notably on whether such representations are  ‘innate’ or 
>> ‘constructed’. Areal typology supports a view by which  conceptual 
>> representations of linguistic categories are constructed  based on 
>> evidence available almost exclusively in occasions of face- to-face 
>> interaction. This has predictions for the kinds of  representations which 
>> will be constructed given the distinct types  of interactional contexts 
>> associated with ‘language contact’  situations versus in-group social 
>> situations. Second, in much of  sociology and social anthropology, there 
>> is a tension between the  analytic reliance on macro notions such as ‘a 
>> culture’ or ‘a  society’, on the one hand, and the rejection of 
>> social/cultural  essentialism, on the other. The paradox can be worked 
>> out by  adopting the kind of population thinking which areal typology 
>> demands. The trick is to see how individual cognitive  representations 
>> and specific occasions of communicative interaction  feed into the higher 
>> level aggregation of convention (as observed  in ‘languages’). The 
>> required conceptual framework is readily  available in research in 
>> sociology on the diffusion of behavioral  innovation.
>>
>> Pour préparer cette réunion, on pourra lire: Nick Enfield "Areal 
>> Linguistics and Mainland Southeast Asia"  in Annual Review of
>>  Anthropology 2005. 34:181–206, disponible à  http://www.mpi.nl/ 
>> world/persons/private/enfni/Enfield_Annual_Review_Anth_2005.pdf
>>
>> Gloria Origgi
>>  Dan Sperber
>>
>> -------
>> Message redirigé par le relais d'information sur les sciences de la 
>> cognition (RISC) sans virus
>> http://www.risc.cnrs.fr
>
>
>
> 



	

	
		
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