Linguistics, Language, and Symbolic Cognition: Key Concepts Martin Irvine Communication, Culture & Technology Program Georgetown University
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This introduction provides a brief overview of the major concepts, terminology, and ongoing research questions in contemporary linguistics, especially from the generative and cognitive approaches (see bibliography for further reading). This guide is intended for those with little or no background in linguistics but who need to know the main concepts and methods for application in related fields. Key terms specific to linguistic and semiotic description (the metalanguage) are highlighted . This is only a very top-level overview. Each topic has huge bodies of accrued and ongoing research, and we can only begin to touch on some of the most important work in language and symbolic cognition. Why Knowledge of the Key Concepts in Linguistics is So Important The technical vocabulary (terminology) used in contemporary linguistics is shared with many other fields -- communications, computer science, cognitive science, psychology, philosophy of language, semiotics (to name a few). It’s impossible to advance in any of the knowledge domains without having a working knowledge of the terms, assumptions, and methods of linguistics, which provide much more precise tools for description and analysis of language, meaning, and expression in any form than the vocabulary of popular discourse. Key terms and concepts like syntax , lexicon , and semantics take on a defined conceptual scope in various schools of thought in linguistics. The whole range of linguistic concepts provide powerful conceptual models that are extensible to other forms of expression or representation that use language and other symbolic systems; that is, in any “language-like” meaning system or combination of sign/symbol systems (language, visual, multimedia, programming code, etc.).
How Linguists Study Language The fact of the human capacity for natural language (“ faculty of language ,” abbreviated as FOL ) is foundational for all disciplines and sciences concerned with communication, information, semiotics, and media. Familiarity with the concepts, terms, and assumptions of contemporary linguistics is thus essential for discussing and describing all other symbolic combinatorial systems that use language or function as language-like systems. The research questions, terminology, and categories for analysis in linguistics are now common currency in many other disciplines ( computer science, computational natural language processing, information sciences, anthropology and sociology, semiotics, history and archaeology, and cognitive sciences, to name a few) , and all students studying media technologies and communication need to be familiar with the terms and major research questions in the relevant branches of linguistics. Martin Irvine, Language and Symbolic Cognition: Key Concepts © 2014-2015
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Contemporary linguistics focuses on a cluster of fundamental questions, each of which has generated many schools of thought, approaches, and sub-specializations over the past 80 years: Primary questions of linguistic research: What is language? That is, what is the human capacity for language in general ? (The question of the Faculty of Language and natural language acquisition.) How do we explain the uniquely human capacity for acquiring a language, and the capacity for generating an unlimited set of new expressions from the finite resources of a language (words, syntax, semantics)? What is a language ? What are the features of a specific language in order for it to be a language ? How is any language structured with combinatorial rules for sequencing word units into grammatical phrases, sentences, and longer forms of connecting discourse? What does it mean to know a language ? What is the individual and collective cognitive capacity and functions involved in knowing and using a language? How does the human cognitive capacity for language enable us to map speech sounds onto meaningful strings of sounds taken as symbols (morphemes, words, and first-level semantics) in rule-governed combinations, and then continue to enable complex combinations of sentences and connected discourse in new, unlimited, complex networks of expression and meaning in language? Given that language is one branch of a general semiotics (human rule-governed meaning systems represented symbolically), is language the model, or the main modeling system , for (all) other forms of meaning-making and communication? There are also important and related follow-on questions not always addressed by linguistists but become the focus of semiotics and research on symbolic cognition as the more general study of meaning processes in any sign system: Further research questions that follow: What is the connection between language and other meaning systems?
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In what sense, then, can we describe meaningful systems of symbolic expression like mathematics, music, visual arts, film, and other media as functioning “like a language”? Is this using the term “language” by analogy, rather than strict description (according to the specifications for defining “language” scientifically); and if so, is it a weak or strong analogy? In other words, do the features of language as defined in linguistics “map onto” the features and structures of other forms of symbolic expression? We rarely use language in isolation from other media and forms of communication: how do we understand what happens when language, spoken or written, is combined with other media like film, music, video, graphic arts, and visual expression? Although it seems almost self-evident that language is the essential means of human communication and meaning-making, developing a complete model or “system map” of all the possibilities of linguistic communication in all possible situations, occasions, functions, genres, and styles of meaning-making remains perplexing and complex. The legacy communication theory models, as well as ordinary “folk linguistic” accounts of how people describe language, are obviously inadequate to account for most ordinary communication acts or events in daily life, whether ordinary conversation or highly coded social and institutionalized genres like speech acts in political discourse contexts or the script of a movie with multiple layers of speech and genre conventions. The research community generally agrees that linguistic meaning--however else we may want to define it structurally--emerges from a whole communication environment, including assumptions, collective knowledge, and a repertoire of speech genres shared by participants but not explicitly stated in the formal semantics of expressions. Language opens onto the whole question of human symbolic culture, social organization, and the many functions of symbolic cognition. Furthermore, in literate societies, language is also inseparable from writing and reading. Reading engages multiple cognitive dimensions not activated by natural language alone (acquisition of one’s own native language), especially complex and abstract symbolic thought, mathematics, and uses of externalized cognition in machines, including all kinds of artefacts, and computer technology and software. We need to expand the study of the consequences and functions of language beyond speech into all its material and mediated forms.
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Fields Using Linguistics and Linguistic Theory
The Major Categories of Linguistic Analysis Linguistics and many other sciences and fields are united by using the method for establishing the levels of abstraction necessary for being able to create knowledge in the domain of practice. This means starting with a foundational group of general categories for defining, describing, and analyzing the types of things understood as belonging to the field. (Of course, while the scope of these types and categories are always open to revision and debate, their necessity is not.) Every school of thought in linguistics proceeds by trying to be as clear as possible about the most useful levels of abstraction that help describe and analyze language and languages as systems formed from interlocking subsystems. Modern linguistics approaches natural language as a learned and naturally acquired rule-governed system of multiple nested levels , structures , or subsystems that work simultaneously and in parallel. The unit of analysis for modeling language as a system is usually the grammatically well-formed sentence (or phrases within a sentence structure), using examples of a large variety of sentences and phrases that speakers of the language would understand. The “systems architecture” of language can be mapped out as a group of interlocking parallel structures, or a set of nested levels or layers of abstraction in a hierarchy of functions. Each “level” or Martin Irvine, Language and Symbolic Cognition: Key Concepts © 2014-2015
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“subsystem” has interfaces to the others that enable language components to function as a language .
Phonology
The system of speech sounds in a language, and the human ability to make spoken sounds in a language. The minimal sound value in a language is a phoneme; the study of these is phonemics.
Morphology
Minimal meaning units as the first level mapping of spoken sounds and meaning units (considered below the level of complete words, like roots, prefixes and suffixes, though many words are minimal units).
Lexicon (Words)
The “dictionary” or vocabulary of language: words understood as minimal meaning units marked with syntactic (grammatical) and lexical functions (word class function). Syntax (or more loosely, grammar ) describes the rules and constraints for combining words in phrases and sentences (combinatorial rules) that speakers of any natural language use to generate new sentences and to understand those expressed by others. Basic approaches:
Syntax
Formal phrase-structure models (rules and procedures) for describing the abstract structures realized in actual phrases and sentences. Functional models: Sentences, phrases, and constituent parts described as grammatical functions ( constituents of a phrase/sentence = syntactic categories or grammatical functions , “parts of speech”). Syntax can be described as a map of hierarchical rule-generated, nested constituents (the word and phrase classes or categories of syntax, constituency structure or c-structure) or combined word and phrase functions (functional structure or f-structure).
Semantics
Traditionally, linguistic demarcations of the field of semantics have attempted to bracket off minimal “context-free” meanings of words, phrases, and sentences (like dictionary meanings), that is, how speakers and auditors understand words in a sentence unit (before factoring in larger contexts, assumptions, speech and discourse genres, etc.). Much theory and research now holds that word meanings are always in context and regulated by speakers’ / writers’ situations in actual use
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and meaning mappings we do to assumed encyclopedias of knowledge and expression outside a specific instance of utterance. In this view, semantics and pragmatics are not usefully separated. The larger meaning situation, codes, knowledge, speech acts, and kinds of discourse surrounding and presupposed by any individual expression. Includes the contexts, uses and genres of discourse, language users’ assumptions, implication and entailment beyond a statement; aspects of meaning provided by users’ environment and shared social knowledge which are unexpressed but presupposed.
Pragmatics
Discourse and Text Linguistics
How we use language to form chains of connected sentences in multiple genres, modes, and situations. The grammar (rules and logic) for combining sentences in longer strings of expression ( discourse = combinations of sentences ). Also the study of larger bodies of language known as corpus linguistics ( corpus : body of linguistic systems like “all the writings in England from the 15th century” or “the database of email messages sent by a group in a bounded time period”). Includes the study of discourse genres (like narrative, argument, and description). Important fields that combine linguistic theory and other research
Sociolinguistics/ Linguistic Anthropology
Language in specific social uses and exchanges; intersects with Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis. Language in cultures in specific regions and historical eras.
Cognitive Linguistics
The study of language and processes of the brain and mind, the function of language in all aspects of cognition; includes neurological bases for linguistic capacity, functions, and higher cognition. Intersects with many other cognitive science research programs now in progress: cognitive anthropology, semiotics, evolution, etc.
Computational Linguistics
Analysis and interpretation of natural language, computational models of syntax and meaning, semantics. Includes indexing, searching, databases, translation, all the functions behind contemporary computation and software that employs language.
Semiotics / Cognitive Semiotics
The study of all human meaning making in sign systems and symbolic processes, increasingly understood as a research area in
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cognitive science. Specializations include information theory, biosemiotics, visual representations, multimedia meaning systems, relations between language and other symbolic systems. Central Top-Level Concepts in Linguistic Theory and Research Faculty of Language (FOL)
The natural human cognitive capability that enables anyone to learn a natural language, the language of one’s own native language community. Hypotheses that explain natural language acquisition and cognitive development with language.
Universal Grammar (UG)
The investigation of structural features common to all languages, the features necessary for any language to be a language. Assumed to be implemented in natural language acquisition by a cognitive selection process that gets activated in earliest childhood experience when we learn (acquire) a specific language in a language community.
Generative, Generativity (cf. Productive, Productivity)
The cognitive manifestation of the Faculty of Language and Universal Grammar in supplying the rules and constraints that enable speakers of a language to produce and understand an unlimited set of new expressions in their native language.
Combinatoriality
The rule- and procedure-governed “building-block” function of language for creating compound and complex units from simpler units. Descriptions of combinatorial processes assume language components and/or functions that can be realized in any specific instance of language use. Usually assumes generative rules.
Recursion
The looping, nesting, and embedding functions of language, enabling many forms of combinatorial strings, reflexive usage, and compounding in unlimited or free combinatorial ways. Specifies that here is no terminal length of any grammatically well-formed expression in a language. With combinatoriality , recursion is considered to be a unique feature of human language and the foundation of complex and higher symbolic cognitive functions.
Discrete Infinity, Creativity, Productivity
The recursive , combinatorial function of language is a form of “infinite productivity from finite means.” From a finite (that is,
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limited, bounded) set of grammatical functions (specified in syntax ) and a finite lexicon (fund of available words and their semantic potential), we are able to generate an unlimited series of new expressions and are able to understand unlimited new expressions by others. This is a discrete infinity because the components are limited (individuated units = discrete), but there is no limit on the number or length of new expressions possible in a language. Intersubjectivity, Collective Cognition
The fundamental feature of language is that it is an intersubjective system of meaning making dependent on collective cognition , and is not simply an individual cognitive function. (The individual-centric starting point of modern inquiry into language is a post-Cartesian legacy.) This fundamental intersubjective condition of language is not always addressed in the Chomskyan tradition, but is now well-recognized among cognitive linguists and other branches of cognitive sciences, sociology, and semiotics. How and why language emerged in the human species as the primary intersubjective system for collective cognition and meaning making in externalized symbols remains one of the hardest problems in science.
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The “faculty of language” and its relation to human symbolic cognition
The diagram above illustrates major areas of converging research, and also the relations among cognitive functions, many of which are not well-understood (marked with a “?”). Research on the faculty of language ( FOL ) develops answers to two major questions: how is a language acquired, and how do all humans by the age of 4 have the ability to generate and understand an infinite number of new sentences never experienced before. An important open question for interdisciplinary research is whether we should accept the FOL , and the cognitive “triggers” that happen in natural language acquisition, as the foundation of all human symbolic processes (all those based on combinatoriality, recursion, and intersubjective material-conceptual symbols) from writing to mathematics and multimedia; or, rather, should we research further the evidence for a more generalized symbolic faculty of which language is one major
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(or the major) implementation. Either model leads us into the central questions about communication, culture, and technology.
Components of Grammar and Meaning and the Parallel Architecture (Jackendoff) A traditional conception of language components as nested tiers or levels looks like this:
This conception has many weaknesses, and is difficult to use for explaining the central features of language: generativity and meaning. A description based on parallel and simultaneous processes is more satisfying. Ray Jackendoff has developed a useful model of the “ parallel architecture ” of language that has received much support (see Jackendoff, 2003). He uses a simple sentence to model what is happening when someone speaks it (or reverses the process to understand a spoken sentence): “The little star’s beside the big star.” To speak or understand this sentence (like all sentences), we have to set in motion all the functions of language, which need to combine their generative functions in some kind of interface for the whole. A linguist will explain how this sentence works at different levels of description: ❏ the structure of speech sounds ( phonological level), the syntactic structure (the combinatorial rules for forming a sentence and this sentence),
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❏ semantic structure (the basic meanings of words and the usage in this sentence), ❏ and a conceptual spatial representation (in this case, what happens cognitively when using words for things in space). The diagrams below (from Jackendoff, 2003) provide a description, in linguistic notation, for the basic underlying linguistic-cognitive functions that happen simultaneously and in parallel in every spoken (and understood) sentence, using the model sentences as a reference: phonological structure (using linguistic symbols for normative speech sounds); syntactic structure (using the standard syntax tree diagram for words in their grammatical functions); semantic/conceptual structure (the conceptual categories assumed in the words in their grammatical positions); and, in this sentence example, a spatial relation assumed in the conceptual structure. Note that none of these features and structures are “in” the spoken words as strings of sounds, but are supplied cognitively by those who know the language.
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The Parallel Architecture is useful for explaining how the constituent components of language are not each separately assembled as a string in a temporal sequence but have to be “multiplexed” or combined together simultaneously in units of structure, meaning units that we do express in the cognitive time sequences used for speaking and understanding phrases and sentences. Summing up, the Parallel Architecture provides a testable hypothesis for explaining that the language faculty is actually an integrator or unifier of language components and symbolic cognitive functions operating in parallel below the threshold of awareness, a hypothesis that does account for how we produce or understand the meaningful, grammatically-formed expressions that we all perceive. We can also extend Jackendoff’s model with suggestions for how language combines and Martin Irvine, Language and Symbolic Cognition: Key Concepts © 2014-2015
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interfaces with other symbolic-cognitive capabilities and systems: (Diagrams below from Jackendoff 2003 and 2007 with my annotations)
Note: From Jackendoff (2003, 2007) with annotations by Martin Irvine
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Other Important Topics for Explaining Syntax, Lexicon, and Semantics Is the syntactic function independent from the semantic function? Isolatable for description, but not independent. No, words (sets of words) have minimal syntactic functional information built-in; word class delimits possible uses. Word Classes and Adding New Words to the Lexicon Some word classes are transformable, back and forth: examples: nouns to adjectives and verbs, verbs to nouns. Some word classes are closed for adding new items (no new conjunctions, prepositions, or determiners allowed in English, for example). Other word classes are open for unlimited new additions: we add many new nouns, verbs, and adjectives to the collective lexicon formally every year, and we make them up in live speech all the time. Examples (new words and word class transformations): 1. When we use Google to Google , we are proving that something is Googleable by any Googler , and many factors determine something’s Googleability . 2. Last night we played the DVD of the play Rent on our new Blu Ray player . We had to play around with the player ’s settings before it would play by just hitting the “ play ” button. 3. Anna said the camera was a good buy at Best Buy , but I don’t buy it, so I haven’t bought it yet, and probably won’t buy it there.
Combinatoriality continued: consider all the artefacts and media genres that we make with language We not only use language as a primary communication and meaning-making system to express intersubjective, shared, and collective meanings, we also make other things with language in multiple levels of complex, organized symbolic forms in cultural genres: ❏ Music ❏ All forms of recorded and transmitted speech (radio, audio recordings) ❏ Writing, texts, literature
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❏ Film and video (TV shows, movies, language+moving images+sound) ❏ All forms of digital text (Web, email, texting, etc) ❏ Multimedia (graphics, images, text, speech)
Bridging Linguistics and Semiotics While grammar or syntax can be studied as a “context-free” system with abstract rules and constraints for forming phrases and sentences, meaning is never “context-free” and always appears as a social-cognitive event. We can reference again the important discovery of “discrete infinity” -- unlimited productivity from finite means -- as a major “design feature” of language (that is, how language and symbolic systems have evolved and taken the forms that we use). While the building-block elements of language are finite (words and rules), our ability to create and understand new context-specific meanings is unlimited and bounded only by human-scale limits like personal knowledge, time, and memory. We negotiate and “lock in” meanings in actual contexts of use -- meaning situations -- using the same sets of words and phrases that may be used in other situations but with very different meanings understood by all (the Pragmatic dimension of meaning-making). Consider the following sentence as instanced in different situations and contexts. As a sentence in a conversation, the grammatical-lexical structure is identical in each instance, but the social meaning event is not: “He’s as cold as ice.” [Said by a doctor examining someone found possibly dead in the snow.] “He’s as cold as ice.” [Said by a mother to a boy’s father after the boy was sleeping without a blanket.] “He’s as cold as ice.” [Said by a prosecutor about someone who had no response to a brutal incident.] “He’s as cold as ice.” [Said by a man’s girlfriend about a desired emotional connection.] “He’s as cold as ice.” [Said by a military commander in praise of the undistractable focus of a sniper.] These examples are only a partial set of possible meaning instances for this string of words used for various descriptive and metaphorical fields of meaning that are well-understood in their situations and kinds of possible speech genres. Identical strings of words, but multiple and potentially unlimited uses in new contexts and situations. You could easily compile your own catalogue of Martin Irvine, Language and Symbolic Cognition: Key Concepts © 2014-2015
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instances and reveal how we always use context, situation, and shared knowledge of metaphors and cliches to define precise meanings from limited elements of language. The same principles hold true for visual, musical, and multimedia expressions and genres. We will study further the multiple levels, layers, and framing devices at work in language and other meaning systems that reveal more fully how meaning systems work and inter-connect to form multimodal and multimedia meaning systems.
Some Central Open Research Questions in Linguistics and Cognitive Science Human civilization is inseparable from language and technology, which are both deeply part of our cognitive and social abilities. What we don't yet know is whether language in human evolution initiated a "master symbolic switch" that generated other symbolic capabilities in a cascading series, or if language is one implementation of larger cognitive-symbolic capacity in a co-evolution of symbolic thought, representations, tools and technologies. Should research and thinking begin by assuming that the activating the faculty of language (FOL) is the foundation of all human symbolic processes (all those based on a syntax for combinations, recursion, and intersubjective material-conceptual symbols) from writing to mathematics and multimedia? Are there necessary symbolic-cognitive "triggers" that happen in language acquisition and socialization in a language community that "install" our symbolic abilities? Or, rather, should we research further the evidence for a more generalized symbolic faculty of which language is one major (or the major) implementation? Either research hypothesis or starting point leads us into the central questions about material symbols, communication and media, and technology over human history. Another way of posing the question: how much of the specification of language in cognition is domain-specific , that is, are there features internal to language, the language faculty, and language systems, and not extensible to other symbolic systems? Some are, some aren't, so we need to take care not to over-generalize. Symbolic capabilities and sign systems also have interfaces among symbolic systems for (1) translating and representing meanings (e.g., we can interpret images and other texts in words, and compose music that represents ideas, emotions, and cultural themes), and (2) creating combined symbolic expressions that require engaging two or more sign systems in parallel and concurrent structures: music (singing with words +/- many kinds of instrument sounds), visual representations with many "vocabularies" of image-making, film/video, multimedia.
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Introductory Bibliography for Further Study
Genetti, Carol, ed. How Languages Work: An Introduction to Language and Linguistics . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Jackendoff, Ray. Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution . New York, NY: Oxford University Press, USA, 2003. -------. “The Parallel Architecture and Its Place in Cognitive Science.” In The Oxford Handbook of
Linguistic Analysis , edited by Bernd Heine and Heiko Narrog, 643–668. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By . 2nd ed. Chicago, IL: University Of Chicago Press, 2003. Pinker, Steven. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language . New York, NY: William Morrow & Company, 1994. -------. The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature . New York, NY: Viking, 2007. Radford, Andrew, et al., eds. Linguistics: An Introduction . 2nd ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
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