Instructor: Rick Grush
Course Number: Phil 2421, Ling ??? (I hope that it will be cross-listed,
but I do not have a number yet).
PLEASE NOTE NEW TIME: Monday, 4:30 - 7, Philosophy Seminar Room. (Note
that since this time falls across prime food-eating hours, we
may make a habit of having pizza delivered to us.)
Description:
The purpose of this seminar is to explore and gain a familiarity with work in a subfield of linguistics known as cognitive linguistics, largely, but not exclusively, by way of Ronald Langacker's Cognitive Grammar (CG) framework (surely the most well-articulated and systematized of the cognitive linguistics field). I expect a mix of participants, some with philosophy backgrounds and others with linguistics backgrounds (and perhaps others as well). I should point out that even though the literature we will be reading comes from linguists, non-linguists should not feel at a disadvantage compared to the linguists, since CG is by no means commonly or widely studied by linguists at large -- I will be frankly quite surprised if any of the linguists involved has any substantial familiarity with CG. In particular, philosophers should not feel in any way intimidated by the topic, but rather should expect to have their eyes openned to some of the truly amazing and wonderful intricacy of natural language.
Because I anticipate mixed participation, I expect to focus on an understanding of the material at hand, rather than expending much effort to relate the material to traditional philosophical semantics or philosophy of language (which would be of minimal interest to non-philosophers), or to relate the material to other paradigms in linguistics (which would be of minimal interest to non-linguists). A certain amount of this will be unavoidable to be sure, and students are free to explore these points of contact in the papers they write, of course.
Cognitive Grammar is a theoretical framework for understanding and describing what it is in virtue of which someone is a competent speaker of a language. The first of the two guiding principles are that language is driven by semantics. CG not only denies a distinction between semantics and syntax, but can be interpreted as denying a role for syntax altogether -- the work that is sometimes thought to be done by syntax is done by semantics instead. This much it has in common with the generative semantics movement of the early 70s. The second guiding principle (setting it apart from generative semantics) is that semantics is to be understood as a relation between an expression on the one hand, and a mental/psychological/cognitive representation in the head of the individual language user on the other hand. Two remarks about this. First, this relationship holds not only for words and morphemes (entities that would typically be thought of as being in the lexicon), but for higher-order (phrasal, clausal, discourse) constructions as well. So, not only does the phonological entity 'cat' in English have as its meaning (to a rough approximation) a language user's very rich notion of a cat (or of cats as a type, as the case may be), but, e.g., the clausal argument structure NP VP NP PP(dir) has as its meaning a schematically conceived caused-motion event in which an agent acts on something and as a result causes it to move in some direction (Karen kicked the ball out of the house, Bill frightened the cows off the cliff, Frank sneezed the napkin off the table, The audience laughed the actor off the stage, The agent badged his buddy out of the local jail, etc.). The second point is that the 'cognitive' semantic import of expressions is heavily influenced by a number of factors, including (but not limited to) i) our neurally-based psychological ability to structure and maintain complex cognitive representations (which involves heavy use of attentional mechanisms, and shifts of focus from one entity in a conceived event or relationship to another, for example); ii) image-schematic structure derived in large part from our embodied experience as agents entering into temporally extended force-dynamic interactions with other objects; iii) our ability to conceive of events in different ways from the same perspective, or from more than one viewpoint or perspective (both physical/perceptual viewpoints, and viewpoints of other agents); and iv) our ability to categorize events into a small number of event-types common to human experience (perhaps culturally specific to some degree), such as an agent acting on something so as to place it at the disposal of another agent, or an agent acting on something so as to cause it to move.
Though it will be difficult for many (especially philosophers soaked in neo-Fregean formal syntax and semantics) to believe that one could get very far with such a program as I have briefly described it, the fact of the matter is that it has been successfully applied to a tremendous range of linguistic phenomena, including pronominal anaphora, quantification, lexical semantics, morphosyntactic phenomena, argument structure constructions, and many many others. In the course, we will pay special attention to three linguistic phenomena: anaphora, quantification, and compositionality (or more specifically, lack of compositionality), mostly because philosophers and formal semanticists have been obsessed with these phenomena, and so it will be of rhetorical interest to see how the theory fares with respect to them. A great many other phenomena will come up along the way.
Readings:
1. Introduciton to course, and to Cognitive
Grammar
2. Langacker: 'Introduction' to Concept, Image and Symbol
(CIS)
3. Langacker 'Nouns and Verbs' in Concept, Image and Symbol
(CIS)
4. Langacker 'The English Passive' in Concept, Image and Symbol
(CIS)
5. van Hoek, Chs. 1&2.
6. van Hoek, Ch. 3, Lanacker 'Reference Point Constructions'
7. van Hoek, Chs. 4&5
8. Fauconnier Mental Spaces 1 (Chapter 1)
9. Fauconnier Mental Spaces 2
10. Langacker, 'Nominals: Grounding and Quantification'
11. van Hoek, Ch. 6
12. van Hoek, Chs. 7&8
13. Goldberg Chs 1&2
14. Goldberg Chs. 3-5.
15. Goldberg Chs. 6&7
16. Goldberg Chs. 8-10
There will be two books required for the course:
van Hoek, Karen (1997) Anaphora and conceptual structure. University of Chicago Press.
Goldberg, Adele (1995). Constructions. University of Chicago Press.
In addition to these two books we will read 7 articles, all of which will be available in the philosophy department, in the box for this class. They are, in order:
1. Langacker, Ronald, (1990). Introduction. Chapter 1 of Concept, Image and Symbol: The Cognitive Basis of Grammar. Mouton de Gruyter.
2. Langacker, Ronald, (1990). Nouns and Verbs. Chapter 3 of Concept, Image and Symbol: The Cognitive Basis of Grammar. Mouton de Gruyter.
3. Langacker, Ronald, (1990). The English Passive. Chapter 4 of Concept, Image and Symbol: The Cognitive Basis of Grammar. Mouton de Gruyter.
4. Langacker, Ronald (1993). Reference-Point Constructions. Cognitive Linguistics 4:1-38.
5. Fauconnier, Gilles. 1985. Introduction. In Mental Spaces: Aspects of Meaning Construction in Natural Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
6. Fauconnier, Gilles. 1985. Chapter 1. In Mental Spaces: Aspects of Meaning Construction in Natural Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
7. Lanacker, Ronald (1990). Nominals: Grounding and Quantification. Chapter 3 of Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Volume II. Stanford University Press.
Mechanics:
We will meet once a week to discuss, in seminar style, a small number (typicaly 1, occassionally 2) of articles or book chapters. We will spend approximately 4 - 5 weeks on each book. Students enrolled for credit will be required to lead the discussion of at least one of the class sessions (i.e. do a presentation). Grades will be based on class participation, the presentation, and one or more papers (see below).
The usual MO in philosophy is to write one large seminar paper, and in linguistics is it typically (but not always) to write a small number (3 - 5) of shorter papers, or 'squibs'. Either is fine.