 CONTEMPORARY THEORIES IN COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS

Notes 1
 THE BASICS FOR TODAY
 .
 A discussion of the legacies of generative grammar and a brief est survey of some purely linguistic theories
which have emerged from the “cognitive revolution” in the sixties up until the present day
 Generative grammar (major versions)
 Modern semantic theories (three big approaches)
 Cognitive linguistics (in the narrower sense)
 For this class, use the materials in this Power Point, and also my texts “Half a Century of Generative Linguistics:
What Has the Paradigm Given to Cognitive Science” and “The Position of Semantics within Contemporary
Cognitive Science”.
 For a broader view (highly recommended – not because it’s mine, but because it could give you a “clearer”
picture of what’s going on), please read two texts in Serbian appended to your class 1 web page (Lingvistika
uvod & Semantika uvod).
 http://classjump.com/m/mihailoantovic/
 The legacy of generative linguistics
 58 years after Syntactic Structures
 Linguistics – one of the leading disciplines in cognitive sciences.
 This had not always been so (techne grammatike, Septem Artes Libertates, de Saussure – always on the fringes)
 But also: conflicts, resolutions, ‘linguistic wars’ and truces, and a number of ‘splinter groups’, i.e. schools that
have broken off
 … but it has changed the world of (not only) language study for good…
 Modern linguistics – today?
 Chomsky calls upon Aristotle, Galileo, Port Royal, Turing… Whatever is modern?
 De Saussure – Course in General Linguistics (1915)
 Chomsky (1957, 1965) – ‘The Standard Model’
 EST, REST, Government and Binding – 1980
 Principles and Parametres, 1986
 The Minimalist Programme, 1995
 MODERN LINGUISTICS – TODAY?
 “Splinter groups”, particularly in phonology and semantics
 1980, Lakoff and Johnson “Metaphors We Live By”, Cognitive Semantics, Cognitive Linguistics (in the narrower
sense)
 1994, 2002, Fauconnier and Turner, “The Way We Think”, blending theory
 2006, Jerome Feldman, “A Neural Theory of Language”
 The legacies of generative grammar
 Legacy 1
 The Cognitive Revolution
 A radical breakup with behaviorism
 From the 50s , reaching its height in the 1980s with people such as Daniel Dennett
 Today: cognitive science; cognitive psychology; cognitive anthropology; cognitive sociology (!); cognitive-
behavioral therapy…
 The legacies of generative grammar
 Legacy 2
 Disregard of ‘folk psychology’ (Churchland)
 Disregard of analogies, but also of induction
 A restoration of the hypothetico-deductive method as a valid approach in the science of the mind
 Postulate a hypothesis – formally develop it – see how it works in the formal system and ultimately, if ever,
check it with subjects
 The legacies of generative grammar
 Legacy 2
 Hardcore mentalism (especially Jackendoff)
 Language exists in the mind only
 There is no way we can be sure that mental processes correspond to ‘reality’
 We can only discuss the apparent reality, created through emergent mental representations in the mind brain
 This, of course, is the Matrix
 The legacies of generative grammar
 Legacy 3
 Restored interest in the mind-body problem (materialism vs. dualism) – and the rise of the philosophy of mind,
often through linguistics
 Today: the mind/brain
 The legacies of generative grammar
 Legacy 4
 The reinstitution and extension of the term “cognitive”
 Once: only a way to know the world, perhaps perception and logical thinking
 Today: a number of computationally based phenomena, from the simplest sensory perception (e.g. individual
sounds) to the creation of complex mental representations (e.g. the understanding of a complex piece of
symphonic music)
 The legacies of generative grammar
 Legacy 5
 Unfortunately, this also leads to terminological chaos, and overuse of the term cognitive
 Cognitive linguistics in the broader sense
 Cognitive linguistics in the narrower sense
 The legacies of generative grammar
 Legacy 6
 The return to the problem of language universals with a strong emphasis on the genetic (and evolutionary) side
of the language faculty
 Genetics is in, learning is out.
 Universal grammar, linguistic intuition, principles and parameters, the critical period…
 The legacies of generative grammar
 Legacy 7
 The extended usage of the term ‘grammar’
 Gramma – letter. Once: the skill of proper writing!
 Later: the ‘correct’ use of predefined, socially sanctioned rules of speech
 In linguistics today: universal, mental, TGG…
 Outside of linguistics:
 ‘Grammar’ of music, vision, social cognition…
 ‘Grammar’ of chess…
 ‘Grammars’ of computer languages/programs…
 The legacies of generative grammar
 Legacy 8
 The deletion of clear boundaries between the natural and social sciences
 Devise the hypothesis: philosophy
 Develop it: formal theory, logic mathematics
 Put it into context: linguistics, psychology
 Test it: psychology, neuroscience, medicine
 Explain it down deep: biology, ultimately physics
 “Levels” of explanation (“the basic level” – Lakoff, “the human scale” – Fauconnier and Turner)
 The legacies of generative grammar
 Legacy 9
 Dualism or monism? A tricky issue in philosophy
 Chomsky: Revived interest in language dualism and the rise of reductionist theories (deep and surface structure,
idealized and actual native speakers, competence and performance…)
 The legacies of generative grammar
 Legacy 11
 Return to Gestalt principles of perception and revival of the once forgotten Gestalt psychology
 Grice: conversational implicatures
 Jackendoff: preference rules
 Prince and Smolensky: optimality theory
 Fauconnier and Turner: optimality conditions for blending
 The legacies of generative grammar
 Legacy 12
 Insufficient credibility of formal sentence semantics and renunciation of lexical semantics and referentiality.
 Perhaps the biggest problems of formal semantics based on the generative paradigm.
 Hence alternative models (conceptual metaphor theory, blending theory)
 The legacies of generative grammar
 Legacy 13
 A return to Darwinism (remember last class)
 Moderate schools
 More radical schools
 Chomsky not too impressed here
 The legacies of generative grammar
 Legacy 14
 The revived interest in the neural functioning of the mind, and the way it integrates complex mental
representations (including those relevant to language), with modular and connectionist theories currently at
odds (to the slight favor of connectionism lately, one must add)
 The legacies of generative grammar
 Legacy 15
 Impetus to the foundation of new disciplines
 Linguistic:
 Bordering on linguistics
 Independent
 Psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, computational linguistics, musicolinguistics, Gestalt linguistics…
 IN CONCLUSION…
 Chomskyan linguistics is a “scientific revolution” in the sense used by Edward Kuhn:
 “Chronologically, Kuhn distinguishes between three phases. The first phase, which exists only once, is the pre-
paradigm phase, in which there is no consensus on any particular theory, though the research being carried out
can be considered scientific in nature. This phase is characterized by several incompatible and incomplete
theories. If the actors in the pre-paradigm community eventually gravitate to one of these conceptual
frameworks and ultimately to a widespread consensus on the appropriate choice of methods, terminology and
on the kinds of experiment that are likely to contribute to increased insights, then the second phase, normal
science, begins, in which puzzles are solved within the context of the dominant paradigm. As long as there is
general consensus within the discipline, normal science continues. Over time, progress in normal science may
reveal anomalies, facts which are difficult to explain within the context of the existing paradigm. While usually
these anomalies are resolved, in some cases they may accumulate to the point where normal science becomes
 difficult and where weaknesses in the old paradigm are revealed. Kuhn refers to this as a crisis, and they are
often resolved within the context of normal science. However, after significant efforts of normal science within a
paradigm fail, science may enter the third phase, that of revolutionary science, in which the underlying
assumptions of the field are reexamined and a new paradigm is established. After the new paradigm's
dominance is established, scientists return to normal science, solving puzzles within the new paradigm. A
science may go through these cycles repeatedly, though Kuhn notes that it is a good thing for science that such
shifts do not occur often or easily.
 SO WHAT CAUSED THE CLASH?
 One simple word:
 MEANING.
 It turned out ca. 1970 that all meaning is NOT contained in deep structure alone.
 Relative scope of quantifiers (Jackendoff, 1972):
 “Everybody in this room speaks two languages”.
 “Two languages are spoken by everybody in this room”.
 SO WHAT’S THE PROBLEM OF MEANING?
 Some important 20th century questions:
 Principle 1: meaning as psychology (the semiotic triangle)
 Principle 2: Dichotomies (“type” and “token”):
 - Sense/reference (Frege, 1894:“The morning/evening star”).
 Intension/extension (Carnap, “bachelor”=[“unmarried man]”)
 Denotation/connotation (J.S. Mill, 1900: “cat”)
 SO WHAT’S THE PROBLEM OF MEANING?
 CATEGORIZATION
 “Types” and “tokens”
 How do we categorize?
 Any ideas?
 Remember some concepts from our classes such as “chair”, or “Niš”, ор “Pera the Butcher“
 Anglo-American semantics today
 Smith and Medin (1981)1 Three approaches to categorization – hold today, too:
 Atomistic
 Probabilistic
 Exemplar
1
Smith, E. and Medin, D. (1981) Categories and Concepts, Harvard University Press
 Anglo-American Semantics
 Three schools studying the semantics of concepts:
 Atomistic (Aristotle, logical positivists, early Wittgenstein, Wierzbicka, Jackendoff – conceptual semantics)
 Probabilistic (Katz and Fodor, Chomsky – formal semantics, feature theory ) – almost does not cover individual
concepts at all!
 Exemplar (late Wittgenstein, Rosch, Kay, Lakoff and Johnson – cognitive semantics)
 FORMAL SEMANTICS
 FORMAL SEMANTICS
 LEXICAL SEMANTICS: ATOMISTIC (JACKENDOFF) vs EXEMPLAR (LAKOFF)
 Epistemological Common Ground
 Mentalism
 Gestalt principles (“proximity”, “closeness”, “figure/background”)
 Links between spatial and semantic cognition (perhaps other faculties, e.g. music)
 Preference rules (constraints)
 Lakoff contra Jackendoff: Epistemological conflict
  Conceptual semantics: “positivism”, atomism, formalism, compositionalism (conceptual primitives, conceptual
grammar)
 Cognitive semantics: “embodied mind”, “experiential realism”, cross-domain mapping, interpretivism
 The nature/nurture issue? Jackendoff mostly nativist, Lakoff neo-empiricist (both implicitly!)
 Lakoff contra Jackendoff:
Extension of meaning
 Lakoff: metaphorical extension – one conceptual structure is “primary”, the others are built from within it,
through creative thought operations based on Gestalt perception (metaphor, metonymy)
 Jackendoff: conceptual grammar – there is no “primary” structure. Polysemy derives from deeper formal
operations, where abstract, ineffable, self-referential structure of thoughts is mapped onto each of the surface
conceptual structures (and their manifestations in the language).
 Analysis 1
 GO Structures
 The road goes from London to Canterbury.
 The inheritance went from the son to the daughter.
 The light went from red to green.
 Different analysis - CogS
 Lakoff – metaphorical extension:
 STATES are LOCATIONS
 CHANGE OF STATE is CHANGE OF LOCATION
 The road goes from London to Canterbury. The light went from red to green.
 SOURCE DOMAIN: movement TARGET DOMAIN: change of state
 Initial location (London) = initial state (red)
 Target location (Canterbury) = target state (green)
 Departure (from London) = loss of initial state (red)
 Arrival (in Canterbury) = attainment of final state (green)
 motion = change of state
 Different analysis - ConcS
 Jackendoff – conceptual primitives
 [Event CHANGE([Entity X], [Path Y])] – abstract conceptual structure from which all individual actualizations are
derived:
 [Person CHANGE([London X], [Canterbury Y])]
 [Inheritance CHANGE([George X], [Phillip Y])]
 [Light CHANGE ([Red X], [Green Y])]
 Question
Which of the two analyses, if any, is more appropriate?