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A BOOK PROSPECTUS (to be published 2007)
[Comments welcome! Please send an email to Wolfgang Schulze (W.Schulze@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)]
Aspects of Cognitive Typology
[Radical Experientialism and the Grammar of Scenes and Scenarios]
Wolfgang Schulze (University of Munich)
Copyright: Wolfgang Schulze © 200-2006
Exposé: [Note: This exposé has been written in 2000 / for changes in
the framework see 'Elektronische Texte']
[Acronym used throughout the text: ACT (Aspect of Cognitive Typology)]
One of the basic parameters that dominate the current schism in Language and
Grammar Theory is represented by the role that ‘cognition’ plays in the
dimension of linguistic explanation. Whereas those paradigms that are related
to what can be called the ‘MIT-Orthodoxy’ refer to cognition both as a target
domain of linguistic explanation and as the descriptive (meta-)domain,
functional approaches access cognition more randomly. The orientation of these
paradigms was co-determined by the cognitive turn associated with the MIT
Orthodoxy. Some of its renegades such as George Lakoff, James McCawley,
and the psychologist George Miller became more or less pronounced advocates of
functionalism and typology and heavily influenced the way explanatory domains
were established for linguistic phenomena. Today, these anchor domains can be
identified among others with the help of the terms communication, interaction,
culture, habitus, cybernetics, and cognition. In fact, communication and
cognition represent the two most basic domains which, however, are often
though to stand in a somewhat antagonistic relationship. Features such as
culture, habitus, and interaction are thought to represent secondary domains
that should be explained by both the communicative and the cognitive paradigm.
In more recent years, the diachronic perspective as a device to explain
linguistic data has gained special interest both with respect to system
immanence and the dynamics of the anchor domains themselves.
Consequently, the mono-causal orientation of the MIT Orthodoxy is
contrasted by a multi-causal scenario of linguistic explanation in
functionalism and language typology. However, the strong inductive orientation
of linguistic typology prevented this discipline from developing a theoretical ‘superstructure’
that would be powerful enough to systematically incorporate possible
explanatory paradigms and to describe the internal relations in a multi-causal
network. Rather, we can observe two different types of reaction towards the
general challenge of cognitivism: One the one hand, typologists are inclined to
turn back to some kind of rigid descriptivism, as formulated for instance by
Robert Dixon in his Basic Linguistic Theory. This rollback is accompanied by
the trend to propose a categorial typology based on mere linguistic categories,
a trend that has its sources in Humboldt’s claim for a categorial encyclopedia
as well as in Bloomfieldian thinking and the post-war activities of the Sociéte
de Linguistique de Paris. One the other hand, the explanatory domain
established by cognitivism is often accessed quite arbitrarily in linguistic
typology. The linguistic discourse within the frame work of typology is
characterized by a certain reluctance towards systematic superstructures that
would formulate a deductive theory to approach the empirics of typology. Still,
such superstructures seem necessary to prevent typology from self-contained or
even self-satisfied descriptivism and explanatory haphazardness. The obvious
progress that has been achieved in the functional explanation of linguistic
structures calls for the systematization of typological experience in terms of
a ‘unified’ account. A ‘philosophical’ or deductive superstructure for language
typology cannot and should not re-invent the wheel but should try to propose a
theoretical frame work that makes the many ends of typological explanation meet
in an adequate format and that is based on the most central axiom of linguistic
explanation, namely on derivationalism.
2. OUTLINES OF A ‘GRAMMAR OF SCENES AND SCENARIOS’
2.1 Language Theory
2.1.1 Preliminaries
ACT treats the notion of ‘Cognitive Typology’ in the framework of a ‘Grammar
of Scenes and Scenarios’ (GSS), as documented in Schulze 1998. GSS tries to
explain the grammar of a language on the basis of the cognitive and (cognition
based) communicative behavior of an individual integrated in a collective. This
behavior is dominated by massive hypotheses about the self-attachment to a
collective; it represents a strongly ritualized but construing interaction
between individual and environmental stimuli. This interaction corresponds to
the linguistic habitus of a collective and takes place in form of tacit
(poiematic) and/or articulate (pragmatic) activation of an acquired (and
traditional) knowledge system as a communicative reaction on ‘event images’.
Linguistic behavior represents the individual reaction to a collective
communicative and cognitive standard which itself is predominantly historical in
nature. Hence GSS argues that language as a ‘metaphysical’ phenomenon is
strongly determined by ‘anachronistic’ features; it follows that functional and
semantic aspects of language architecture are mainly to be explained in a
diachronic perspective (though the potential to adopt newly established
communicative and cognitive routines plays an important role in this respect, too
(‘pragmatic intervention’ (PI)).
2.1.2 The general design of GSS
The theoretical framework underlying GSS can be described as a strong diachronic model that owes much to (holistic) cognitivism, constructivism, and pragmatism. Modularity is only accepted as a secondary ‘construction’ (or mental hypothesis) of users about their language [note that the folk-psychological construction of 'language' as a modular reality which itself may heavily influence the ‘gestalt’ of a given linguistic knowledge system, depending on the way it is habitualized]. Rather it is the structural coupling of adequate network components together with their emergent activities that have to be described as primary: This coupling results in language as a complex ‘cognitive event’ - as an emergent activity of this polycentric complex. According to GSS, the linguistic reaction to event images heavily depends on the cognitive and communicative defaults of such events. It is assumed that there is a (in parts strongly metaphorized) correlation between the cognitive and communicative architecture of linguistically oriented event imaging (‘scenes’ – or (in (co)textual coupling) ‘scenarios’) and their grammaticalization that is based on the Operating System of a given language (see below). The architectures of scenes (and scenarios) represent strongly ritualized systems that are metaphorized from (system) space and (system) time experience and the embodiment of environmental experience. These systems are characterized among others by a) the topology of their paradigmatic space (formal architecture or ‘blueprint’), and b) by parameters of figure-ground relations and their location in the deictic, communicative, and pragmatic space and time as well as by further strategies of modalization. Their linguistic instantiation as Operating Systems that control the dynamic organization of linguistic paradigms establishes the typological parameters relevant for the explanation of the architecture of ‘simple sentences’. Their diversification in terms of different and prototypically organized grammatical systems is mainly explained as the particularization of universal techniques of categorization within the organization of scenes and scenarios that is conditioned by history and transmitted by collective experience.
2.1.3 GSS and (Neo-)Behaviorism
GSS is close to (Neo-)Behaviorism in that it treats the linguistic reality as
some kind of conventionalized ‘state’ of the CoCo network. Environmental
stimuli are processed on the basis of the above mentioned event images in a
communicative perspective [note that ‘environment’ also encompassed ‘stored
knowledge’ that is re-stored or re-activated in the process of referring to ‘old
knowledge’]. The interaction of stimuli and scenic hypotheses (or models) leads
to a certain (unstable) cognitive state (emergence) and roughly corresponds to
the cognitive reaction towards a given stimulus. Naturally, the ‘habitualization’
of such a ‘linguistic experience’ (trained in times of language acquisition) is
also dominated by behavioral parameters [note that the term behavior plays a
major role in the description of grammatical elements and 'categories' in GSS,
too – see below].
2.1.4 GSS and ‘innateness’
GSS disclaims the existence of a language faculty. It accepts that certain regions
of the brain have become open for linguistic ‘exploitation’. GSS claims that
within the evolution of the human brain certain mental ‘capacities’ that
originally exerted relatively distinct functions gradually became networked. On
the one hand, we have to deal with sensory capacities such as vision and
audition that probably were among the first (and pre-human) components of a
more complex mental (communicative) network These sensory capacities became structurally
coupled with the evolution of motoric domains: Motoric domains themselves
evolved according to an inside->outside parameter, a process which is
sometimes called the ‘lateralization’ of motoric capacities. By this is meant
that certain functional ‘strings’ such as thigh => lower part of the leg
=> foot => toe or upper arm => forearm => hand => finger showed
an evolutionary tendency towards a shift in motorics from ‘left to right’ (in
the sense of the above-mentioned strings) or from inside to outside
(lateralization). GSS assumes that with pre-humans this kind of shift was
structurally coupled with the lateralization of the pulmonic domain: Here we
have a string lungs => trachea => epiglottis => glottis => uvulum
=> oral cavity => tongue => lips. The ‘motorization’ of the
extremities coincides with the ‘motorization’ of parts of the right side of
this string (esp. glottis, tongue, and lips). In both cases, the ‘inner’ (or
left) parts of the strings has become a more or less passive component (‘demotorization’)
that is difficult to access intentionally. The experience of lateralization created
‘new’ mental domains (or transformed older ones) that became part of the
sensomotoric network. Again we arrive at a structural coupling (or – in this
context – pairing), namely the interaction of vision and motorics of
extremities vs. audition and motorics of the pulmonic channel [in a second
step, the motorics of lips (and tongue) as parts of the mimic activities became
parallelly processes by vision]. Another obvious result is the coupling of
gesture and oral activities: Both are based on the same kind of ‘lateral experience’.
This kind of network created what GSS assumes to be the major prerogative of
any kind of linguistic activity: communication. The communicative network
represents an emergent structure which, however (and logically) does not have
modular properties. It is again structurally coupled with the evolution of
mental storage techniques which results - among others - from the experience of
perpetuated communication (hence we have to deal with a cyclic or recursive
experience). The development of storage capacities (in terms of (ultra)short
term and long term memory) allowed to store and process the experience of oral
activities just as activities related to gesture etc. This was the point when
the complex network components resulted in an emergent activity that pronounced
itself as ‘language’. Naturally, other mental capacities had to evolve
parallelly, namely the techniques of pattern recognition (paradigmatization),
conceptualization, and symbolization. All these structurally coupled ‘features’
enabled the human being to experience the oral activities of others as what the
human being had learned to be: ‘language’. The basic experience of language
acquisition slowly became integrated into the general experience of members of
a communicative group regarding the maturation of the mental capacities of a
new-born. Consequently, GSS does not assume that ‘language’ (better ‘linguistic
knowledge’) has a biological ‘substance’ of its own. Rather it is a learned
knowledge system that is imposed (by tradition) on its own cognitive
prerogatives, again a recursive process that is typical for human cognition.
GSS does not assume that the process of language acquisition starts at the age
of roughly 1.0 years because of the ‘fact’ that the brain has arrived at a
certain maturation state that establishes the language faculty. Rather, it is
hypothesized that people have become used to ‘interpret’ a certain mental
stage, namely the maturation of the corresponding senso-motoric domains as a
signal that a child is ‘ready for language acquisition’.
The collective (and very old) experience that it is best to start to ‘linguistically’
train children at a certain age let to the collective mental hypothesis (or
idealized cognitive model) that language is something more or less autonomous.
The assumption of a modular linguistic ‘substance’ (in what shape so ever)
represents a collective mental construction and constitutes an important part
of folk-psychology. In this sense, GSS has to respect two determinatives of the
ontology of language: On the one hand, language is constituted by nothing but
the emergent activities of the CoCo interface that in themselves are not ‘language’
but sensomotoric schemata related to the above-mentioned network. In this
sense, ‘language’ does not have a proper substance (not to speak of ‘essence’),
but represents cognitive ‘events’ that acquire a ‘communicative and linguistic
reading’ via mental constructions. On the other hand, the experience of these
events together with their paradigmatization during language acquisition ends
in some kind of systematic knowledge that is construed as a more or less
autonomous something. Again, both aspects are structurally coupled and lead to
what we experience as ‘language’.
2.2 Grammar theory
GSS tries to explain the grammar of a language on the basis of the acquired
cognitive and (cognition based) communicative practice of an individual
integrated into a collective. This practice is dominated by massive hypotheses
about the self-attachment to a collective; it represents a strongly ritualized
but construing interaction of the individual with environmental or world
stimuli which corresponds to the habitus of a collective and which takes place
in form of the tacit (poiematic) and/or articulate (pragmatic) activation of an
acquired (and traditional) knowledge system.
Linguistic practice is thought to represent the individual reaction to a
collective communicative and cognitive standard which itself is predominantly
historical in nature. By this is meant that the linguistic knowledge system of
an individual and its instantiation in a communicative community always
reflects strategies of linguistic adaptation that have been functionalized long
before the individual has acquired a given system. Hence, GSS argues that
language as a ‘metaphysical’ phenomenon owns strong anachronistic features: It
hardly ever meets the immediate synchronic needs of information processing and communication.
It follows that functional and semantic aspects of language architectures are
mainly to be explained in a diachronic perspective, though the potential to
adopt newly established communicative and cognitive routines plays an important
role in the dynamic potential of language systems. The assumption of an
anachronistic ontology of language systems has an important consequence for
linguistic explanation: Contrary to some other cognitive approaches, GSS does
not establish a direct synchronic and symbolic relationship between language
systems and cognition. Language systems and cognitive activities are thought to
be structurally coupled on the basis of a mainly diachronic relationship which
presupposes an adequate linguistic treatment of the data in question.
Though GSS claims that the theoretical claims made so far are valid for
all aspects of linguistic reality, it focuses on the architecture of
grammatical systems in order to meet one of the most central issues of today’s
typology, namely the typology of grammar. GSS hypothesizes that the ontology of
language is based on routinized mental constructions of event experience (event
images) that are structurally coupled with (tacit/articulate) linguistic
knowledge and activated in an intra/inter-individual communicative (linguistic)
context. From this it follows that language ensures the structural coupling of
cognition and environment (as opposed to other unilateral connections) in a
communicative perspective that aims at a mediated way to share human
experience. Consequently, the most fundamental aspects of linguistic
architecture should be described in terms of this functional relationship.
However, it should be noted that the linguistic paradigmatization of event
images is not the only parameter that organizes both linguistic knowledge and
the architecture of grammatical systems. One the one hand we have to respect
the above mentioned anachronistic aspect of language systems with respect to
their cognitive condition. One the other hand, linguistic systems are liable to
be affected by specifications of how communicative and linguistic practice is
incorporated into the dynamics of the habitus of a speech community (‘linguistic
habitus’). Still, GSS claims that the cognition<>communication interface
represents the most basic domain of linguistic organization, to which we have
to add the interface established by the CoCo domain and (world) knowledge
bases. The activities related to these two interfaces strongly influence the
way how people react on world stimuli in terms of linguistically oriented event
imaging. It is assumed that the way of how such event images are processed by
cognition is conditioned by the communicative knowledge base: Linguistically
processed pattern recognition refers to a specific grammar that interprets and
manipulates event images in a communicative perspective. In GSS, such event
images are called scenes. Scenes in GSS are regarded as a kind of cognitive
blueprint that is activated in pattern recognition. Hence, scenes do not share
any real world properties, but reflect the way how real world experience is
construed on the basis of strongly idealized cognitive models or cognitive
hypotheses. The blueprints of scenes are thought to be part of the evolution of
cognitive and communicative behavior. Their basic structure is constituted by
the architecture of those cognitive domains that have been involved in the
emergence of scenic blueprint at all. It is assumed that there is a functional
iconicity between the neurophysiological architecture of cognition and the
architecture of scenes: Scenes cannot be processed but within the general frame
of cognition. Their blueprints represent engrammatic structures that are stored
in long term memory. The input of a world stimulus activates procedures of
picturing or re-presenting such engrammatic structures in terms of scripts.
The CoCo interface establishes certain properties of scenic blueprints
that can be tentatively labeled as scenic universals. By this is meant that the
universal aspects of the CoCo interface force an universal design of scenes
irrespective of the way how a given scene is finally communicated. These
universals are embedded into the general schemes or cognitive hypotheses of
human beings regarding the communicative interpretability of world experience.
Among them, we can describe degrees of time stability (system time), object and
relational permanence, location in system space, movement, variation and
change, embodiment, and centrality. These universals are additionally characterized
by the fact that linguistic scenes are only construed in a communicative
context. Hence, we have to assume that basic parameters of intra- or
interindividual communication and interaction such as ‘role swapping’ or ‘role
exchange’ also belong to the universal design of such scenes.
All these universals constitute the kernel of a protopically organized
scenes. Such structures gain complexity because of two factors: First, the
universals can experience a different degree of particularization. By this is
meant that higher level domains as well as strategies of grammaticalizing a
scene establish a peripheral structure within the protopical organization of
the scenic blueprints. Due to these particularized blueprints some universals
may become more active or more functional than others. Second, scenic
universals are liable to a high degree of metaphorical extension. The earlier
such a metaphorical process has become routinized and conventionalized, the
more a resulting metaphor gains the status of a quasi-universal. Perhaps the
most prominent metaphorical path is that of causality that stems from the
universals of movement and change. ‘Movement’ itself seems to result from the
interaction of time experience, ‘change’, and the embodiment of figure-ground-relations
which themselves are part of the overall scheme of internality and externality
characteristic for the process of embodiment. Movement and location are
metaphorized as ‘time’ which can interfere with causality and establishes
modality.
Another universal property of the architecture of linguistic scenes is
that the original image schema or ‘gestalt’ has to be transferred into a serial
sequence of information chunks that correspond to the linearity of linguistic
expressions. In GSS, this type of linearization is called attention flow, a
termed borrowed from the fragment of cognitive grammar as proposed by Scott
DeLancey. However, attention flow has a specific semantics in GSS: It refers to
the fact that the cognitive constructive reaction on a world stimulus already
presupposes the anticipation of the final linguistic output: Accordingly, the
stimulus input is scanned with respect to possible segments. This anticipatory
behavior is called attention in GSS. Secondarily, it is construed as ‘information
flow’. Though the construction of linearity itself is a universal scenic
feature, its instantiation is highly particularized.
Depending on the communicative context, but also on the higher level
domains mentioned above, scenes are grammaticalized to a very different extent.
The term grammaticalization has a doubled reading in GSS: On the one hand, it
refers to the traditional use of this term in the context of grammaticalization
research, that is in diachronic typology. On the other hand it denotes the
process of verbalizing a construed scene. This process is characterized by a
complex interaction of different segments of the cognitive network that
encompasses (among others):
Cognition<>Communication Interface
Scenic architecture
Knowledge bases: World knowledge; cultural practices and habitus;
communicative/linguistic habitus
Routines of paradigmatization and symbolization
Conceptual network > Lexical network
Relational network > Grammatical network
Phonological knowledge
The relationship between the blueprint domain of the scenic architecture and
the grammatical network that establishes a part of the linguistic knowledge
system is not regarded as a direct relation. The grammatical network does not
simply translate the scenic architecture into a linguistic format but activates
a complex relational network that plays the role of an interface between the
two components. It shapes the paradigmatic structure of the grammatical network
especially in a diachronic perspective, and restricts the expression of scenic
information to the formal extension of the grammatical network.
This relational network is termed Operating System in GSS. It refers to
those parts of the grammatical network that constitute the verbalization of
scenes in a given speech community. Operating systems represent basically tacit
or poiematic linguistic knowledge systems and guarantee that an individual can
express its communicative requirements in a routinized and conventionalized
form. They help to grammaticalize the scenic architecture by anchoring a given
scene in the grammatical, lexical, and conceptual network components. Though
Operating Systems tend to be highly particularized reflecting the diachrony of
linguistic and communicative practices in a speech community, they have to
observe some general requirements that stem from the universal architecture of
scenes. With respect to the scenic architecture we can describe at least the
following prerogatives that are located in the kernel of this prototypical
structure:
1.Scenes are always construed according to a figure-ground scheme. Its metaphorical extension can be described as a vector relation between ‘cause’ and ‘effect’.
2. There are no empty scenes: Scenes share a minimal extension which is conditioned by the figure-ground relation. Hence, every scene is characterized by one relation and one or more participants (actors and actants). Relations and actors can be secondarily masked or disguised, actants and actors can be treated as anonymous, actors can usurp the role of an actant.
3. The population of a scene is theoretically unlimited in number, however, the CoCo interface as well as principles of perception and information processing restrict the number of possible actants (usually, not more than three to four actants per scene).
4. Scenes are always located in (system) space and (system) time.
5. Every scene shows a perspective arrangement: This arrangement can by static or dynamic.
6. Every scene shows a notion of centrality: The most central perspective is taken by the construing individual which can delegate this role to either other Speech Act Participants (role swapping) or to certain actants of a given scene.
7. Every scene is structured according to the attention flow.
8. Every scene is marked for modality.
The organization of Operating Systems copies this prototypical arrangement to a certain extent. We can observe that the Accusative Ergative Continuum (AEC) plays the most central part in the verbalization of scenes. The AEC dominates for instance figure-ground relations as well as the cause => effect vector, attention flow, time and space allocation, perspectivization, and – partly – centralization. Consequently, GSS treats the AEC as the most prominent aspect of a given Operating System and as the most central part of a Cognitive Typology. The AEC itself can be characterized as a linguistic reaction upon the dynamics of the cause => effect vector in correlation with other parameters of the scenic architecture. It is claimed that every linguistic paradigm that becomes effective with respect to the verbalization of the cause => effect vector is subjected to the AEC. The AEC allows to describe the paradigmatic, syntactic, pragmatic, and semantic behavior of a given linguistic structure in view of the weighting of actors in a scene. The more weight is laid upon the C domain, the more the paradigm behaves accusative-like. And vice versa: The more weight is laid upon the E domain the more is operates upon an ergative-like schema. Naturally, we cannot claim that an Operating System behaves totally accusative or ergative. Rather we should assume that quite often the single linguistic units are differently located on the AEC – pending on the functional value a given paradigm has with respect to the scenic architecture. Below are listed some of those linguistic ‘categories’ that are sensitive for the AEC:
Operating System Options of co-paradigmatization [exemplary]
Actor domain
Case Marking Semantic role assignment, noun classification, grounding,
topicalization ........
Agreement Semantic role assignment, grounding, topicalization, speech act
participation, semantic classification ......
Topicalization Referential tracking, (ego-)centralization .......
‘Actor domain’ Pronominalization, Speech act participation, semantic role
assignment, social deixis...
Reflexivization Grounding, semantic role assignment, logophorization .....
Diathesis Referential tracking, discourse cohesion .....
Word order Grounding (> semantic role assignment), topicalization,
discourse cohesion
Effector domain
Tense/aspect Diathesis, (de-)transitivization, (de-)referentialization ....
Aktionsart Number, verbal number
Modality Interrogation, negation
Interrogation Modality, speech act participation, focus/topic
Negation Modality, dereferentialization, (de-)transitivization
Subordination All domains of OS architecture
Criteria of cognitive and communicative dominance as well as aspects of
co-paradigmatization or structural coupling among the single paradigms help to
describe the general dynamics within the polycentric structure of the Operating
System in question and to establish a Cognitive Typology that refers to the
degree of particularization of both Operating Systems and relational behavior
in terms of the AEC.
2.3 Data base
The basically deductive approach refrains from discussing linguistic
categories in the light of a comprehensive and motivated language sample.
Linguistic categories are treated as epiphenomena that result among others from
the systematization and the construction of linguistic knowledge. This process
is supposed to be embedded into both the diachrony of a given linguistic
habitus and cognitively motivated procedures of paradigmatization. Though
linguistic categories represent a major starting point for both linguistic
description and explanation they do not serve as a descriptive target in GSS.
Rather, it is the CoCo related mechanism of how scenes and scenarios are
linguistically processed that has a more or less categorial status in GSS.
Consequently, linguistic data serve to reveal this assumed status, to
illustrate a given scenic architecture together with its underlying cognitive
motivation and to explain the formal and functional properties of data sets
(basically in terms of ‘simple sentences’) within the framework of GSS.
From this follows that ACT makes reference to what is generally known as ‘standard
typological data’ (or ‘languages of the world’). It will select data according
to the parameters proposed by Cognitive Typology (in terms of the GSS
framework) and not according to standard linguistic categories. Hence, ACT will
not refer to a typologically motivated ‘language sample’. Still, the scope of
ACT calls for a limitation of the data base. ACT will concentrate on a
Cognitive Typology of the roughly forty autochthonous Caucasian languages also
because GSS assumes that the interaction of knowledge bases and linguistic
habitus may constitute some kind ‘cognitive areas’, a short term for linguistic
and communicative routines in a sociologically and historically defined area
that refer to a common interaction of Operating Systems and scenic
architecture. There is strong evidence that several such cognitive areals exist
in the Caucasus that can be tentatively related to given Operating Systems. To
this data base ACT adds data from other linguistic areas and individual
languages in order to either discuss a specific typological feature or to
analyze specific aspects of Cognitive Typology that are not covered by the
Caucasian language families.
3. THE GENERAL ‘MAKE UP’ OF ACT
ACT is intended both as an introduction into the notion of ‘Cognitive Typology’ (CT) and the architecture of a ‘Grammar of Scenes and Scenarios’. Viewing the fact that CT still lacks a theoretical foundation that goes beyond the simple statement saying that CT is a kind of language typology that explains typological variation in terms of the paradigm of Cognitivism, ACT aims at deriving the notion of CT from both a theoretical and methodological point of view. ACT claims that CT is a project to explain linguistic variation as the instantiation of particularized cognitive events over time; hence, CT turns out to refer to a typology of those cognitive parameters that condition linguistic (and especially grammatical) variation. Chapter I of ACT will propose a set of (partly) deductive hypotheses that dominate the emergence of linguistic variation, namely
– the Cognition-Communication Interface (CoCo)
– Language as a knowledge system
– Linguistic habitus and idiosyncratic variation
– Language acquisition
– The systematization of linguistic knowledge
– The historical foundation of linguistic knowledge systems
– Subsymbolic structures, symbolization, and the problem of arbitrariness
– Metaphorization and metonymization
– Poiematics, pragmatics, and Pragmatic Intervention
These parameters are used to create an inventory of explanative landmarks that serve as the basis to access the different layers of linguistic derivationalism. In a second step, they are integrated into the framework of linguistic constructivism which allows us to derive the following features:
– Constructions and Hypotheses
– The construction of linguistic signs
– The processing of world stimuli
– Linguistically processed event schemas (event images)
– Reactivating event images
– The construction of linguistic systems
– Cognitive organization: Emergence and network states
– Prototypes, radiality, and patterns: The paradigmatization of linguistic
knowledge
– Structural coupling and co-paradigmatization
In a third step, the notions of Cognitive Universals and particularization
are introduced. Both represent the prerogatives to establish a Cognitive
Typology in the Sense of GSS. In this part, ACT discusses universals of
linguistically processed event imaging; cognitive universals; universals of
embodiment; communicative universals; habitual universals; parameters of
particularization; the relationship of diachrony and system dynamics; the role
of knowledge systems; particularization, ritualization, and habitus;
particularization of event experience; constraints on particularization and
recursiveness.
The third chapter of ACT is devoted to the design of GSS as described
above. The following aspects will be addressed:
– Basic parameters: Neobehaviorism, pragmatism, and constructivism
– The architecture of a ‘Grammar of Scenes and Scenarios’
–– Scenes
–– Constructional patterns of linguistically processed event images
–– The topology of scenes: Figure-Ground relations and causality
–– The population of scenes: actors, actants, extras, and requisites
–– Weighting processes: Heaviness and lightness
–– Information and attention flow
–– Centralization: The communicative parametrization of scenes
–– Setting the scene: System space and system time
–– Disguising, spotting, and the pragmatization of scenes
–– Scene Chaining: The topology of scenarios
–– Pivots and anchors
–– Anaphorics, logophorics, and reflexives
–– Scenarios and discourse
– The ‘grammaticalization’ of scenes and scenarios
–– The architecture of linguistic knowledge systems
–– The formal architecture: Blueprints
–– Operating Systems
–– Linguistic categories vs. cognitive categories
–– Universals of Operating Systems
–– Particularization and the typology of Operating Systems
The fourth chapter demonstrates the basic parameters of the grammaticalization of scenes and scenarios with the help of the two notions ‘Operating Systems’ and ‘Accusative-Ergative Continuum’ (AEC). This chapter will represent the bulk of ACT and will be based on a rather strong empirical approach that tries to evaluate the claims related to Cognitive Typology made so far. In a first step the control mechanisms of Operating Systems are described referring to:
– The linguistics of figure-ground relations and causality: F/G, F®G and C®E
– The linearization of event images: Order of elements and information flow
– The intervention of hierarchies
– Hierarchies, anthropocentrics, and knowledge systems
– Empathy, Sympathy, Antipathy
– The social dimension of hierarchies
– Scenes in space and time
– The modalization of scenic information
The second part of this chapter will be devoted to ‘actors, actants, and the nature of relational primitives’. It will be followed by a discussion of how relational primitives (subjective, agentive, objective etc.) become grammaticalized. This topic leads to the most central aspect of GSS, namely ‘relational behavior’ or how the topology of scenes is encoded linguistically. The following topics will be addressed:
– Objective behavior: accusativity: S=A;O
– Agentive behavior: ergativity: S=O;A
– Constraints on subjective behavior: S;A=O
– Tripartide behavior: S;A;O
– Constraints on neutral behavior: S=A=O
– ‘Extras’ and relational behavior
Towards a Cognitive Typology of splits:
– Split Systems vs. Fluid Systems: Denotational and connotational features
– The semantics and pragmatics of split behavior
– Control
– Affectedness and accessibility
– Referentiality
– Space and time
– Modality, negation, interrogation
– Endocentric splits
– Exocentric splits
– Space, time, and modality: The grading of ‘reality’
Motion: The usurpation of relational behavior
– Demotion
– Promotion
– Neutralization
– The pragmatics of motion
Grounding processes
– Disguising the actants
– Highlighting
– Cohesion, chaining, and referential tracking
– Recruiting the periphery
The diachronic dimension
– Pragmatic Intervention and the AEC
– Functional load, overload, and paradigmatic reaction
– The AEC: A diachronic continuum
– The grammaticalization of relational morphology
Beyond the AEC: The periphery of Operating Systems
The final chapter is intended to summarize the implications drawn from the empirical data presented in the foregoing chapters in the light of a ‘Cognitive Typology’. This chapter aims at a more precise definition of CT as well as at the description of possible steps in developing CT, cf. (among others):
– Cognitive Typology and the question of innateness
– Cognitive Typology and Areal Linguistics
– Cognitive Typology and the Typology of Linguistic Habitus
– Cognitive Typology and historical linguistics
TABLE OF CONTENTS (preliminary version)
1. INTRODUCTION
2. FOUNDATIONS OF COGNITIVE TYPOLOGY
2.1 The current state of Language Typology
2.2 Parameters of linguistic explanation
2.2.1 The Cognition-Communication Interface
2.2.2 Language as a knowledge system
2.2.3 Linguistic habitus and idiosyncratic variation
2.2.4 Language acquisition
2.2.5 The systematization of linguistic knowledge
2.2.6 The historical foundation of linguistic knowledge systems
2.2.6 Subsymbolic structures, symbolization, and the problem of arbitrariness
2.2.7 Metaphorization and metonymization
2.2.8 Poiematics and Pragmatic Intervention
2.2.9 Summary
2.3 The linguistic construction of reality
2.3.1 Constructions and Hypotheses
2.3.2 The construction of linguistic signs
2.3.3 The processing of world stimuli
2.3.4 Linguistically processed event schemas (event images)
2.3.5 Reactivating event images
2.3.5 The construction of linguistic systems
2.3.6 Cognitive organization: Emergence and network states
2.3.7 Prototypes, radiality, and patterns: The paradigmatization of linguistic
knowledge
2.3.8 Structural coupling and co-paradigmatization
2.3.9 Summary
2.4 Cognitive Universals and Particularization
2.4.1 Universals of linguistically processed event imaging
2.4.1.1 Cognitive universals
2.4.1.2 Universals of embodiment
2.4.1.3 Communicative universals
2.4.1.4 Habitual universals
2.4.2 Parameters of particularization
2.4.2.1 Diachrony and system dynamics
2.4.2.2 Knowledge systems
2.4.2.3 Particularization, ritualization, and habitus
2.4.2.4 Particularization of event experience
2.4.2.5 Constraints on particularization
2.4.2.6 Recursiveness
2.4.3 Summary
2.5 Particularization and Cognitive Typology
3. THE ‘GRAMMAR OF SCENES AND SCENARIOS’ (GSS)
3.1 Basic parameters: Neobehaviorism, pragmatism, and constructivism
3.2 The architecture of a ‘Grammar of Scenes and Scenarios’
3.2.1 Scenes
3.2.1.1 Constructional patterns of linguistically processed event images
3.2.1.2 The topology of scenes: Figure-Ground relations and causality
3.2.1.3 The population of scenes: actors, actants, extras, and requisites
3.2.1.4 Weighting processes: Heaviness and lightness
3.2.1.5 Information and attention flow
3.2.1.6 Centralization: The communicative parametrization of scenes
3.2.1.7 Setting the scene: System space and system time
3.2.1.8 Disguising, spotting, and the pragmatization of scenes
3.2.2 Scene Chaining: The topology of scenarios
3.2.2.1 Pivots and anchors
3.2.2.2 Anaphorics, logophorics, and reflexives
3.2.2.3 Scenarios and discourse
3.2.3 Summary
3.3 The ‘grammaticalization’ of scenes and scenarios
3.3.1 The architecture of linguistic knowledge systems
3.3.2 The formal architecture: Blueprints
3.3.3 Operating Systems
3.3.3.1 Linguistic categories vs. cognitive categories
3.3.3.1 Universals of Operating Systems
3.3.3.2 Particularization and the typology of Operating Systems
3.3.4 Summary
4. THE ACCUSATIVE-ERGATIVE CONTINUUM (AEC)
4.1 Control mechanisms of Operating Systems
4.1.1 The linguistics of figure-ground relations and causality: F/G, F®G and
C®E
4.1.2 The linearization of event images: Order of elements and information flow
4.1.3 The intervention of hierarchies
4.1.3.1 Hierarchies, anthropocentrics, and knowledge systems
4.1.3.2 Empathy, Sympathy, Antipathy
4.1.3.3 The social dimension of hierarchies
4.1.4 Scenes in space and time
4.1.5 The modalization of scenic information
4.1.6 Summary
4.2 Actors, actants, and the nature of relational primitives
4.2.1 Subjective
4.2.2 Agentive
4.2.3 Clustering objective and indirect objective
4.2.4 The role of ‘Extras’
4.2.5 Summary
4.3 The grammaticalization of relational primitives
4.3.1 The ‘actor domain’
4.3.2 The ‘effector domain’
4.3.3 Summary
4.4 Coding the topology of scenes: Relational behavior
4.4.1 Objective behavior: accusativity: S=A;O
4.4.2 Agentive behavior: ergativity: S=O;A
4.4.3 Constraints on subjective behavior: S;A=O
4.4.4 Tripartide behavior: S;A;O
4.4.5 Constraints on neutral behavior: S=A=O
4.4.6 ‘Extras’ and relational behavior
4.4.7 Summary
4.5 Towards a Cognitive Typology of splits
4.5.1 Split Systems vs. Fluid Systems: Denotational and connotational features
4.5.2 The semantics and pragmatics of split behavior
4.5.2.1 Control
4.5.2.2 Affectedness and accessibility
4.5.2.3 Referentiality
4.5.2.4 Space and time
4.5.2.5 Modality, negation, interrogation
4.5.3 Endocentric splits
4.5.4 Exocentric splits
4.5.5 Space, time, and modality: The grading of ‘reality’
4.5.6 Summary
4.6 Motion: The usurpation of relational behavior
4.6.1 Demotion
4.6.2 Promotion
4.6.3 Neutralization
4.6.4 The pragmatics of motion
4.6.5 Summary
4.7 Grounding processes
4.7.1 Disguising the actants
4.7.2 Highlighting
4.7.3 Cohesion, chaining, and referential tracking
4.7.4 Recruiting the periphery
4.7.5 Summary
4.8 The diachronic dimension
4.8.1 Pragmatic Intervention and the AEC
4.8.2 Functional load, overload, and paradigmatic reaction
4.8.3 The AEC: A diachronic continuum
4.8.4 The grammaticalization of relational morphology
4.8.5 Summary
4.9 Beyond the AEC: The periphery of Operating Systems
5. PERSPECTIVES
5.1 Defining Cognitive Typology
5.2 Cognitive Typology and the question of innateness
5.3 Cognitive Typology and Areal Linguistics
5.4 Cognitive Typology and the Typology of Linguistic Habitus
5.5 Cognitive Typology and historical linguistics
Indices: Persons, languages, subjects
Bibliography