Proverbiallinguist EMail Series 7 2004

On Chomsky’s Learnability Hypothesis and the Analysis of Proverbs:

A Ka:rmik Linguistic Review 7
Chilukuri Bhuvaneswar, CIEFL, Hyderabad

According to Radford (1997:6), a theory of language “must provide grammars which

are learnable by young children in a relatively short period of time”.

The basic argument of generative grammar is in innateness which facilitates learning in

a short period of time effortlessly.

Not much work has been done on how proverbs are acquired by children. However, it
is widely believed that proverbs are learnt at a later stage in life, which is after three
years.

There are three important factors in the acquisition of proverbs and their use:
1. Children’s learning a language precedes the acquisition of proverbs because proverbs
are used in a context as an extension of ordinary language; 
2. Proverbs are acquired by:
        a) an exposure to them while they are used;
        b) interpretation, identification, and memorization after they are heard;
        c) mastering the skill of matching them with the contextual action via
            prototype - categorical instantiation;
        d) choosing an appropriate proverb for the context by cultural competence;
3. Proverbs are acquired only when they are used in the group in which they live
    - there are many people who may not use them in their conversation in their
    family- life and in such cases, the children may not hear them at all.
    Individual proverbs cannot be generated like normal sentences in a
    rule-governed fashion because they are minimally constrained by syntax.

Even if we assume that there is a universal grammar, such a grammar needs the
cognitive property of general intelligence for prototype - categorical instantiation. At
the same time, the cultural competence of choosing an appropriate proverb and the
pragmatic competence of identifying the contextual action as a category and using it in
a discourse sensitive structure, say as P1 (proverb alone), or P2 (proverb embedded in
an utterance ) or P3 ( proverb  appended  either before or after an utterance) ( see
Bhuvaneswar 1998 for more details ) is also essential. Otherwise, “ungrammatical(!), i.e.,
inappropriate or meaningless utterances will be formed. Therefore, proverbs require not
only grammatical competence but also pragmatic and cultural competences as well.

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Hence, generative grammar suffers from descriptive inadequacy to provide a principled

account for the learnability of proverbs.
More importantly, proverbs raise the most crucial question: Is language a monolithic
structure of formal linguistic properties as a sculpted rock of a man or is it a polylithic
structure of formal, functional, cognitive, and dispositional properties interconnected
and interdependent on one another like a human being? Since a dead man cannot
speak; since language structure cannot be without a meaning (with or without truth
value satisfied) and a function; since language reveals the svabhavam (disposition) and
is a product of the svabhavam; and since most essentially all of them go together and
are revealed at the same time like the redness(form) ,heat( function)  and light
( meaning) of fire ( language), I think, there is a need for an integrated , rather than
truncated, theory of language. What is a human being without emotions and
disposition? How can a human being use his intellect without the basis of these
principles? Surely, no man will eat and drink for the sake of eating and drinking; so also
no man will speak without being impelled by desires, whatever be they? The very
purpose of speech is rooted in these factors: to know, communicate, and experience
action for the fulfillment of desires.
Another way of looking at the acquisition of proverbs is from the perspective of their
formation and use. There are numerous proverbs that are formed from social practices,
generalizations, and particular incidents in real life or mythology. For example, “ Don’t
look a gift horse in the mouth” is a proverb derived from a social practice of checking
the age of a horse by looking into its mouth; “ The early bird catches the worm” is a
generalization formed from the action of birds in their search for food; “ As wise as
Waltham’s calf ” refers to a particular calf that ran 9 miles to suck a bull and came back
home thirsty; “ He who has turned ( brought back ) the cows (is) Arjuna” refers to the
mythological event of Arjuna ( one of the five Pandavas  in the epic Mahabharatha )
bringing back the cows stolen by the enemies when the boastful Uttarakumara was
afraid to do so. These observations and events were later on prototypicalized and
turned into proverbs. They are further used and transmitted from generation to
generation. Therefore, when a child acquires a proverb, he requires knowledge of all
these processes. How can a child understand and use the proverb “ Don’t look a gift
horse in the mouth “ if he does not know why people look a horse in the mouth and
what happens when he looks a horse in the mouth in a context of its being gifted?   The
point is, cultural knowledge is not peripheral but central to an understanding and use
of the proverb. So also in the case of Waltham’s cow and Arjuna.

i.i. Analogy, Creative Cognition, and Evolution of Proverbs 

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We also find analogy at work in the formation of new proverbs from old proverbs at the
syntactic as well as semantic levels. “ A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” is the
mother of many similar proverbs both syntactically and semantically giving rise to even
such humorous ones like  “ A girl in the hand is worth two in the car”. Many
antiproverbs are formed by semantic analogy. For example, “ Absence makes the heart
wander”.
In addition to analogy, principles of symmetry, aesthetic appeal, and mnemonicity are
also very much at work. These are observable in other areas of action also. Taj Mahal is
a classic case of symmetry and aesthetic appeal. Mnemonicity is also found in brevity of
remembering actions by their major points of action. For example, in identifying places,
major marks or special topography is noted instead of all the details.

Even the very process of the evolution of the proverb can be construed as a gradual
process. For example, “ a dog in the manger “ is as normal as a phrase as like “ a man in
the street” or “a bird in the sky”. Since a dog in the manger is found to behave in a very
peculiar way, and since it has captured the attention of the people in that community,
they have used this phrase to compare such actions in social praxis. This inter-actional
cognition of action is not a linguistic property per se but it is a property of general
intelligence as can be seen in grouping objects of similarity. Only the other day, I
overheard my neighbour, who is not well, saying, “Like a drunken man, I am faltering”.
This utterance resulted from a semiotic representation of inter-actional cognition of one
action of faltering  (caused by ill -health) with another action of faltering caused by
drunkenness at the sub-conscious level. It is a new sentence but the production of this
new sentence is achieved not because of an innately constituted rule system but because
of many factors of cognition of action. First, the speaker has seen a drunken man
faltering - she is middle-aged; second, she has observed her own behaviour; third, she
has found a similarity between the faltering of a drunken person and her own faltering;
third, she has a desire to communicate the state of her position to the listener according
to her svabhavam - she did not feel unhappy about it (self -censure ); fourth, which is
our main concern here, she has the knowledge of a mutually shared and learnt system
of semiotic representation through which she can express this knowledge as
information - she has not acquired it by innateness but by a cultural transmission of a
code in terms of phonology and lexicon, in terms of syntax, and in terms of semantics ;
and finally, she did it by that system. How did she acquire that system?- by exposure,
interaction, innately constituted properties of memory, intelligence, creativity, and
cultural norms, and physical properties of vocal organs to co-ordinate the production of
that sentence in that form, and svabhavam, in fact , by a combination of personality
traits, psychological and physical abilities, and pragmatic and cultural competence that
bring about the ability to semiotically represent that action as grammatical competence.

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All these factors are essential for the acquisition of that ability and the production of
that utterance. So ‘the dog in the manger’ has been chosen for comparison by somebody
in the society and we get the British potential proverbial expression “Like a dog in the
manger” ellipsed with a simile marker ‘like’. Later on, it catches on because of its
imagery, aesthetic appeal, familiarity, and similarity to many other such behavioural
instances. Now, it becomes a popular phrase used to compare similar actions. In other
words, a single instance of its usage percolates in the society and becomes, as it were, a
culturally accepted way of comparing similar actions with that phrase. Alternatively, to
put it technically, it becomes a cultural prototype to categorize such actions. As a result,
it is frozen, memorized, and transmitted to comment on social practices that become
categorical to it. If the society is beauty conscious, it will be polished but within the
structural constraints - that is why, it becomes difficult to preserve figures of speech
such as alliteration, etc., in translation of the proverb from one language to another.
Let us take another example “The early bid catches the worm”. It is a generalization of
the action of birds in search of food. Somebody saw that the early birds get worms -
when they are available- and birds that go late for hunting do not get them because they
already eaten by other birds or insects. So he might have made a generalization just like 
“ The sun rises in the east”. As we have already seen, we can use this sentence as a
simile: “ As the early bid catches the worm, so did I pick the flowers in the garden very
early in the morning”. But the community saw its function more in advising or
commenting rather than in clarification or elaboration or illustration. Taking brevity,
punch, and indirectness ( or politeness) into consideration, they might have turned it
into a  metaphor. We can see such a process in another example where both the simile
and the metaphor are retained: “As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool returns his
folly”; “A dog always returns to his vomit”. In yet another example, “Honesty is the
best policy”, neither a simile nor a metaphor but a literal sentence is used. In this case,
the evolution is from the literary to the proverbial in a straight leap. But in all these
instances, we observe an evolution from one stage to another stage. “Honesty is the best
policy” is the moral of a story in Aesop’s Fables. Later on, it has been adopted as a piece
of advice that is culturally accepted and then it became a prototype. Finally, it has
evolved into a proverb in a frozen form.
If this view is correct, then we can say that such cognitive processes as
prototypicalization can be placed in a hierarchy: mono-actional cognition;poly-actional
cognition; inter-actional cognition; and complex actional cognition. In mon- actional
cognition, only one type of action is represented (e.g., An apple doesn’t fall from its
tree); in poly-actional cognition, more than one action is represented (e.g., The dog has
returned to his vomit again, and the sow that was washed to her allowing in the mire).
In inter-actional cognition, one action is seen in terms of another action as in similes,
metaphors, and prototypes. That is why acquisition in proverbs is more complex as it

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involves monoactional cognition, or polyactional cognition, or even inter-actional

cognition as in the case of similaic proverbs (e.g., Good luck disappears like our hair;
bad luck lasts like our nails) but also prototypical cognition of action, in addition.
Furthermore, it involves cultural knowledge and communicative competence. In
complex actional cognition of action, there is a mixture of different types of action (e.g.,
Men walk backwards like crabs and think they are making progress; Man is straw,
woman fire - and the devil blows). In the first example, “Men walk backwards like
crabs”, there is an inter-actional cognition of similarity and in “and (men) think they are
making progress”, mono-actional cognition. In the second example, “ Man is straw”
and “ woman is fire” are metaphors and “the devil blows them” is a mono-actional
metaphorical cognition of two actions combined together - strictly speaking in the usual
sense of understanding of the sentence, “man is straw” is not an action but a cognition
of a state of being. Nonetheless, in a deeper sense all objects or states of being can be
construed as actions because they imply “being in a state of object or emotion”. Since
humans are capable of parallel processing, whether it is literal or metaphorical or
prototypical cognition, they should be able to process it at the same time. However in
gradual evolution where linear processing is employed owing to the nature of
formation of proverbs - because it involves a linear procedure of choosing a potential
proverbial utterance and later getting cultural confirmation - we are justified in saying
that proverbs are not acquired innately or are they generated by innate rules alone as
normal sentences are. We cannot produce proverbs as we produce sentences
instantaneously: “A bird in the in the hand is worth two in the bush” is a proverb but
not “A chicken in the hand worth three in laboratory/market”. Then, how are they
acquired? Are they acquired in a short time and effortlessly?
They are acquired by a combination of innately psychological, pragmatic, and cultural
processes and practice as already discussed. Memory to remember proverbs, and
prototype-categorical instantiation ability to use them effectively are innate; cultural
knowledge that an utterance is a proverb with a specific proto-typical meaning and
with a specific cultural norm of usage are not innate but retrieved from the society; and
finally, any art requires practice to acquire proficiency and so also the use and
comprehension of proverbs. There is no such provision in the learnability condition of
generative grammar and so its rule -governed generation of proverbs a la Jackendoff
(1994) fails miserably.
We will come to the issue of language as a species specific property when we deal with
The Karmik Linguistic Theory.
3.Summary and Conclusion
A. SUMMARY

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In our critique of generative grammar, we have examined how generative grammar fits
in as a model for the analysis of proverbs on the conditions of

  i) explanatory adequacy( in which universality, maximally constrained theory,

    psychological reality and learnability are included);

  ii) irregularity, change, and dispositionality  in language;

iii) analogy, creative cognition, and evolution of proverbs.

The theory of generative grammar has been critically evaluated in the light of the
formation, and use of proverbs on the one hand and an examination of the properties of
the brain as obtained in neuropsychological research.

B. Conclusion
Since proverbs are inter-categorially constructed , it is observed that a one-sided
approach to the description of proverbs as language results in explanatory adequacy.
To account for proverbs in a principled way, we require not only grammatical
competence but also pragmatic, cultural and dispositional competences.

In addition, an eclectic approach is inadvisable owing to the conflicting positions taken

in formal, functional, and cognitive linguistic theories. This results in frustration.
In order to overcome such a situation, what we require is a new approach to this
problem. An approach that can comprehensively and reasonably integrate all these
dimensions of formal, functional, cognitive, and dispositional linguistics which is called
the ka;rmik linguistic approach.
It will be shown that the Ka:rmik Linguistic Theory can provide a comprehensive,
logical, and principled account of proverbs from all these perspectives under a unified
theory of (language and) proverbs in the articles on this theory and its application.

References
Radford, R. ( ). English Syntax An introduction

Bhuvaneswar, Chilukuri (1998). “The Structure of the Telugu Proverb in I/E Exchange Structure”. A PhD
Term Paper. Hyderabad: CIEFL

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