Description : Lecture 4. Language as Shared Intentionality
Human linguistic communication has same social-cognitive, social-motivational infrastructure as pointing and gestural communication - but attention-directing done with conventions.
NOT written, but spoken language. [Intuitions come from written.]
NOT meaning as thing, but use of linguistic forms for communicative functions
Direct att. in shared conceptual space - like gestures (but w/conventions)
NOT grammatical rules, but patterns of use => schemas
Constructions themselves as complex symbols "She sneezed him the ball"
NOT 'a grammar' but a structured inventory of constructions: continuum of regularity => idiomaticity è grammaticality = normativity
Many complexities = "unification" of constructions w/ incompatibilities.
NOT innate UG, but "teeming modularity" (1) symbols, pred-arg structure, social intentions/speech acts, speech/phonology, categorization, etc. (2) diff. functions
not many language universals, but some due to universals of: human cognition, social cognition/attention, vocal-auditory processing.
4.1. Common Infrastructure of Pointing and Language
Primacy of the utterance: Holophrases - reference + expr. of motive
referents here & now = pointing => demonstratives (direct att. in space)
referents not here & now = characterizing gestures => content words
noun = 'thing'; verb = 'event': categories
ape att-getters ------
co-operative
pointing
demonstratives
& deictics
ape int-movements ------
characterizing
gestures
content words
[nouns, verbs]
Others outside CG/JAF (children) imitatively learn: convention > use
drift, arbitrariness => generalization of conventionality (money)
Grammar: Two aspects of a situation symbolized
"Eat" ...... "Berries" => then mental combination under one contour
e.g., after non-comprehension? breakdown and repair
Utterance Semantics = Event (incl. state) + Participants (+ setting)
role of imitation in construction of event categories
also: topic introduction (w/ demonstratives)
Utterance Pragmatics = (i) speaker motives & attitudes
(ii) structuring of info for A's perspective/knowledge/expectations
referential choice for NPs and VPs (referential newness)
topic-focus for information structure of utterance (relational newness)
Grammaticalization of constructions = pre-fab. packages for recurrent comm. situations - constructions themselves as complex symbols "She sneezed him the ball"
incl. both semantics & pragmatics
incl. both utt.-level and phrase-level: NPs & VPs & PPs as modular
Emergence of second-order symbols (gramm. morphemes from Ns, Vs, demonstratives) via grammaticalization, as "relational glue" in constructions
(1) relating referents to one another or designating role in whole utterance
case marker or word order for semantic role
external agreement (e.g., subj-verb) for semantic role
internal agreement (e.g., determiner-adj-noun) for phrase grouping
(2) grounding referents in ongoing JAF [N = 'space'; V = 'time']
Nouns = determiners, possessives, relative clauses, etc.
Verbs = tense-aspect-modality
Indefiniteness & Non-finiteness
Example = car wreck: C motive = quest, inform; A perspct. = agent, patient
- agent-focus inform: "Mary hit Jerry." [She hit Jerry] [Mary hit him]
- patient-focus inform: "He got hit (by Mary)." [The guy in the hat got hit]
- agent Q: "Who hit him?" "Whom did she hit?" [Whom was she hitting?]
- patient Q: "Who got hit (by her)?" [Who ought to have gotten hit?]
- agent cleft: "It was Mary that hit him" "It was Jerry whom she hit."
- patient cleft: "It was Jerry who got hit (by her)"
- agent cleft Q: "Was it Mary that hit him?" "Was it Jerry whom she hit?"
- patient cleft Q: "Was it Jerry that got hit (by her)?"
Example of process:
- He pulled the door and it opened => He pulled the door open (resultative construction)
- I am going to see my bride => I'm gonna see the next century (go-future)
- I want it ... I buy it => I want to buy it (infinitival complement)
- I believe that !... Mary will wed John => I believe that Mary will wed John (S-complement)
- My boyfriend ... He rides horses ... He bets on them =>
My boyfriend, who rides horses, bets on them (relative clause)
"Yesterday's discourse is today's syntax"; "Yesterday's syntax is today's morphology" (T. Givón): processing, predictability, prag. inferences
Many problems created by "unification" of constructions w/ incompatiblties
EG: extraction constraints (Goldberg, 2006)
Discourse
narratives as motivation for complex TAM marking
noun classes for reference tracking in narratives
Universals = universals of human cognition, communication, v-a processing
no Universal Grammar ( what is it, anyway?).
4.3. Ontogenetic Origins
Primacy of utterance; initial holophrases [often final word of adult utt.]
request or indicate objects (e.g., by naming them with a requestive or neutral intonation);
request or indicate the recurrence of objects or events (e.g., More, Again, Another-One);
request or indicate dynamic events involving objects (e.g., Up, Down, Open, Close);
request or indicate the actions of people (e.g., Eat,Kick, Ride, Draw);
indicate the location of objects and people (e.g., Here, Outside);
ask questions (e.g., Whats-that? or Where-go?);
indicate a property of an object (e.g., Pretty or Wet);
mark specific social events and situations (e.g., Hi, Bye, Thank-You, No).
Cultural (imitative) learning of holophrase: form => function (role reversal)
Extracting Words
Child hears whole utterances; to extract word must:
comprehend overall comm. act
blame assignment of components: segment comm. act
JAF + word learning studies (summarized in T 2001)
way Mom uses words inside JAF matters; outside no
experiments in hiding/finding JAF: (e.g., T & Barton, '94)
Known words in utterance (syntagmatics) => helps blame assignment
Known alternatives (paradigmatics) => construal (dog vs pet vs pest)
Referential choice exps: shared-new [C,B,T 2000; W&T, 2005
Conventionality, imitation, normativity
Historically = conventions; developmentally = norms (laugh)
Abstracting Constructional Patterns
After holophrases => verb islands, item-based constructns (not a grammar)
abstract slots based on function
first without and then with syntactic marking
Abstract constructions => grammaticality as normativity
syntagmatic categories: analogy based on function: Subj-Obj
paradigmatic categories: distributional analysis: Ns & Vs
constraint based on entrenchment & pre-emption.
Summary: Linguistic Communication
Same social-cognitive, social-motivational infrastructure as pointing [Fig. 2]
Symbols = gestures, drift to arbitrary => conventions
ontogeny: observe use (function) in utterances & imitate: normative
Grammar = constructions and their creative combination [grammaticalization]
ontogeny: find patterns (function) and generalize: normative
Phylogeny + History in Ontogeny
Ontogeny = dual inheritance: genes and utterances.
Some References
Campbell, A., Brooks, P., & Tomasello, M. (2000). Factors affecting young children's use of pronouns as referring expressions. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearning Research,43, 1337 - 1349.
Lohmann, H., Tomasello, M., & Meyer, S. (2005). Linguistic communication and social understanding. In J. Astington & J. Baird (Eds.), Why Language Matters for Theory of Mind. Oxford University Press.
Tomasello, M. (1992). First Verbs: A Case Study of Early Grammatical Development. Cambridge University Press.
Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition. Harvard University Press.
Tomasello, M. (1998). Cognitive linguistics. In W. Bechtel & G. Graham (Eds.), A Companion to Cognitive Science. Basil Blackwell
Tomasello, M. (2000). Do young children have adult syntactic competence? Cognition, 74, 209-253.
Tomasello, M. (2000). First steps in a usage based theory of language acquisition. Cognitive Linguistics, 11, 61-82
Tomasello, M. (2000). The item based nature of children's early syntactic development. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 156-163.
Tomasello, M. (2001). Bruner on language acquisition. In D. Bakhurst & S. Shanker (Eds.), Jerome Bruner: Language, Culture, Self. Sage Press.
Tomasello, M. (2001). Perceiving intentions and learning words in the second year of life. In M. Bowerman & S. Levinson (Eds.), Language Acquisition and Conceptual Development. Cambridge University Press.
Tomasello, M. (2004). What kind of evidence could refute the UG hypothesis? Studies in Language, 28, 642-44.
Tomasello, M. (2005). Beyond formalites: The case of language acquisition. The Linguistic Review, 22, 167-181
Tomasello, M. (2006). Acquiring linguistic constructions. In D. Kuhn & R. Siegler (Eds.), Handbook of Child Psychology. New York: Wiley.
Tomasello, M. (2006). The social-cognitive bases of language development. In K. Brown (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics (2nd ed.). Elsevier.
Tomasello, M. (Ed.). (1998 = Volume 1; 2003 = Volume 2). The New Psychology of Language: Cognitive and Functional Approaches to Lanuage Structure. Lawrence Erlbaum.
Wittek, A. & Tomasello, M. (2005). Young children's sensitivity to listener knowledge and perceptual context in choosing referring expressions. Applied Psycholinguistics, 26, 541-58.