Truth Beyond Grammar: Hermeneutic Implications of Chomsky’s Linguistic Theory
Wrendolf
C. Juntilla
Introduction
The old, traditional,
philosophical debate between a system of beliefs which describes the human mind
as a tabula rasa, a passive receptor
of data acquired from experience, on one hand, and a system of beliefs which
describes the human mind as database of structures and contents that allow
varied experiences to be arranged coherently, on the other hand, has found a
new arena in linguistics. One man, Noam Chomsky, has stood to be the
torch-bearer of this new Olympics.
Chomsky’s
influence in the new studies of language is too far from halting. He started a
new revolution and brought the birth or new paradigm in linguistics. It is a
paradigm which now takes away scientific methodology from the clutches of
empiricism and makes it a friend of the rationalists. He claims that, contrary
to the traditional belief under empiricist assumption, language is not a system
of habits and skills (Chomsky and Putnam 1995), and hence knowledge of language
is not derived from experience (Chomsky 1971). In fact, it is a system of
innate schematizations which find expression in verbal utterances (Chomsky,
1964).
The
notion that language is not learned from the outside but is discovered from
within is what makes Chomsky an official opponent of the empiricists. His
willingness to revive old traditional rationalist doctrines even if they now
seem bizarre is one of the many things that make Chomsky a sensational,
intellectual figure of the 21st century.
This
paper, however, will not sentimentalize on these attractive features of
Chomsky’s linguistic theory. Rather, it shall focus on features that were not
so attended at the height of Chomsky’s overwhelming influence. This paper is
about the implications of Chomskyan linguistics in the notion of understanding.
This, I suppose, is not that much attractive, but it will nevertheless offer us
insights into Chomsky’s major assumptions and its plausibility within the
framework of another branch of philosophy which takes language seriously, too,
namely, hermeneutics.
The
reason for this investigation has been propelled much by Chomsky’s associating
himself with the old people in philosophy called rationalists like Plato,
Descartes, and Leibniz, and Berkeley. I, for instance, saw Chomsky’s
linguistics to posses almost the exact doctrine with that of Kant’s. Like Kant
who claimed that for stimulus to be intelligible, experience has to be filtered
through universal innate structures of the mind (Kant 1971). Chomsky also
suggests that mind (or “brain” as he would usually add) possesses some innate
structures and schematizations under which experience will be interpreted
(Chomsky 1971). However, unlike Kant, on one hand, who despaired about ever
knowing the world as it is in itself outside the human, Chomsky, on the other
hand, feels awe at the marvellous discovery of the infinite richness of the
human mind (Chomsky 1971, 50-51).
Nonetheless,
such humanistic and positive conclusion does not excuse Chomsky from dismissing
his theory’s implications to other disciplines like hermeneutics which, like
linguistics, also has a profound view of language. For example, Chomsky’s view
about the innateness of linguistic competence allows him conclude that language
is not a mirror of the world but of the mind (1971, 48). This tells us that
language may not necessarily tell us anything about the world in which we live,
and if it does, such a function of language is only accidental to its nature.
Another important claim of Chomsky is that language is not necessarily for
communication (Chomsky 1971, 19), and the well-formed sentences may be uttered
even without presupposing meaning. This undermines the traditional view that
language is essentially a medium of communication.
What,
then, is its implication in the notion of understanding?
In
this paper, I shall be presenting Chomsky’s view on language, his innateness
hypothesis, and his notion of language as a property of the mind. I shall,
then, be drawing implications from this view within the framework of
hermeneutics, specifically for the perspective of Hans-Georg Gadamer.
Afterwards, I shall be posing some refutations which I think might undermine
Chomsky’s notion of the independence of grammar and of language as a property
of the mind. Much of the discussion on this part will come from my own analysis
of Chomsky and Gadamer. In the conclusion, a significant claim will be
proposed, one which tries to correct the notion of a well-formed sentence.
Chomsky’s View of Language
It
is not quite safe to say that Chomsky has a definite philosophical view of
language other than what he has presupposed in his linguistic theory. To say
that someone has a philosophical view of language would entail that this someone has
entertained different philosophical notions about the relation between language
and cognition or knowledge, reality, and culture (Shaff 1973). Nonetheless,
Chomsky did speak about knowledge in his linguistic theory, but it is not a
kind of knowledge that is the center of attention of most epistemologists.
Rather, this kind of knowledge he is referring to is about a person’s knowledge
of her language. Specifically, Chomsky wants to answer the question the old
Platonic problem posed by Bertrand Russell, namely “how comes it that human
beings, whose contacts with the world are brief and personal and limited, are
nevertheless able to know as much as they do know?” (Chomsky 1971, 43). What
knowledge is for Chomsky here is the knowledge we have of our language. Under
normal conditions, we learn words by a limited exposure to their use. Chomsky
takes it to be a fact about language that children, upon reaching a particular
age, has mastered their native language despite their varying personalities and
intelligences, and are able to produce and/or understand sentences which, in
principle, is infinite in number, most of which they have never encountered in
their past experiences. Thus, for a linguistic theory to be an adequate
explanation about the speakers’ knowledge of their language, this creative
aspect of language must have to be taken into account (Chomsky, 1964).
Before the publication of Chomsky’s
revolutionary book, Syntactic Structures (1957) the mainstream explanation of language acquisition was
very much influenced by structuralist view of linguistics and the empiricist
and behaviorist account of human psychology. For our purpose, we shall be
briefly discussing Chomsky’s refutations of behaviorist/empiricist account on
language-learning and traditional or structural linguistics.
The questions which interest Chomsky
and propel his re-evaluation of mainstream linguistic theory are the following:
(1) What is it that we know when we know a language? (2) How is this knowledge
acquired? (3) How is this knowledge put to use? (Chomsky, 2005). According to
him, in the early 1950s (that is, before the publication of Syntactic Structures) the typical
answers to these questions are the following (Chomsky and Putnam 1995, 328):
(1) A language is a system of habits and skills; to know a language is to know
to have mastered these skills. (2) Knowledge of language is acquired by such
mechanisms as conditioning, association, practice in exercising skills, etc.
(3) Use of language is exercise of the skills that have been mastered.
Apparently, these answers assume a behaviorist learning theory. The concept of
language learning here is that of induction: by being exposed to the data from
experience, the learner is able to make generalizations about her language’s
grammar. From the experience of how people around her talk, she is said to have
assimilated the grammar by which she is able to construct sentences of her own.
However, this account for language acquisition breaks down once contrary examples
from the natural use of language are examined. Consider the following sentences
(Chomsky 2005):
(1)
John
ate an apple
(2)
John
ate
(3)
John
is too stubborn to talk to Bill
(4)
John
is too stubborn to talk to
Sentence
(2) means that John ate something or other, a fact that one might explain on
the basis of a simple inductive procedure: ate takes an object, as in (1).
Applying the same inductive procedure to (3) and (4), it should be that (4)
means that John is so stubborn that he (John) will not talk to some arbitrary
person, on the analogy of (3). But the meaning is, in fact, quite different:
namely that John is so stubborn that some arbitrary person will not talk to him
(John). This knowledge of the meaning of sentence (4) is acquired without training or relevant evidence. This
simple demonstration shows that knowledge of language is not simply a system of
skills acquired during the child’s exposure to how sentences are used and
understood.
Consider
another example:
(5)
John
is too stubborn to expect anyone to talk to Bill.
(6)
John
is too stubborn to expect anyone to talk to.
Sentence
(5) is analogous to sentence (3) in that it is John who is too stubborn that he
(John) would not expect anyone to talk to Bill. Sentence (6) is analogous to
sentence (4) in that John is too stubborn that some arbitrary person would not
expect anyone to talk to him (John). A behaviorist might claim that this is how
we form sentences, namely, by analogy with other sentences. By analogy, then,
we can expect the following to have the same sense like that of (3) – (6):
(7)
John
is too stubborn to visit anyone who talks to Bill.
(8)
John
is too stubborn to visit anyone who talks to.
Sentence
(7) have the same structure with that of (3) and (5). Thus it means John is too
stubborn that he (John) would not visit anyone who talks to Bill. If the
behaviorist account of language learning is correct, then we can expect
sentence (8) to have the same sense as that of (4) and (6), namely that John is
so stubborn that some arbitrary person would not visit anyone who talks to him
(John). Apparently, however, sentence (6) does not have that meaning. In fact,
it is gibberish.
To
account for this fact, a behaviorist might claim that perhaps it is because we lack the skill in understanding (8)
in comparison to (4) and (6). However, Chomsky claims that it is not because we
lack the skill to do so. It is rather because sentence (8) is not meaningful at
all.
Though
the examples are trivial, what Chomsky wants to show is that knowledge of
language is more than mere analogy and inductive generalization. It is more
likely, then, that we have an intuitive knowledge of our language.
Most of our linguistic experience,
both as speakers and hearers, is with new sentence; once we have mastered a
language, the class of sentences with which we can operate fluently and without
hesitation is so vast that for all practical purposes…we may regard it as infinite. Normal mastery of language
involves not only the ability to understand immediately an indefinite number of
entirely new sentences, but also the ability to identify sentences and, on
occasion, to impose an interpretation on them. It is evident that rote recall
is a factor of minute importance in ordinary use of language, that “a minimum
of the sentences which we utter is learnt by heart as such – that most of them,
on the contrary, are composed on the spur of the moment” (Chomsky 1964, 7-8).
In
almost the same vein, the structuralists follow the same notion about language
by behaviorism in its linguistic methodology, which was that of taxonomy. Since
linguistics is concerned more on structures rather than content, meanings of
sentences are of no interest as it was thought to be patterns of
behavior determined by stimulus and response, and are properly speaking the
subject matter of psychologists. Accordingly, analysis
of language means extracting the elements from the data gathered from a large
number of utterances (called “corpus”), and then classifying its elements
starting from phonemes (sound), morphemes (word), noun, verb, and adjectival
phrases, then to sentences. The aim of linguistic theory was to provide the
linguist with a set of rigorous methods, a set of discovery procedures which he
would use to extract from the "corpus" the phonemes, the morphemes,
and so on (Searle 1972, I).
However,
for Chomsky, classification of the elements in utterances cannot provide us adequate
evidence in order to describe the speaker’s knowledge of her language expressed
in the grammar. First, this methodology cannot account for the internal relations
within sentences. For example, consider the sentences “John is easy to please”
and “John is eager to please”. Using the taxonomic model of classification of
elements, it would appear that both of these sentences have the same
grammatical structure. Yet, upon analysis we find out that they do not actually
have it. In the first sentence, "John" functions as the direct object
of the verb to please; whereas in the second "John" functions as the
subject of the verb to please. This fact cannot be accounted for using the
structuralist model (Searle 1972, I).
Second, the
structuralist model is also inadequate to handle the existence of certain types
of ambiguous sentence. For example, the sentence “I like her cooking” is
ambiguous. It can present different meanings. One possible meaning would be
that “I like that fact that she is cooking”, another would be “I like the way
she cooks”; and still another meaning could be “I like the fact that she is
being cooked”. If we focus simply to phonemic and morphemic structures, i.e.
the arrangement of words in the sentence (also called as surface structures),
we can only discover one grammatical structure. However, from the fact that
this sentence may have different meanings proves that there are indeed
different underlying grammatical structures in that single string of words.
Lastly,
if structuralist model does not allow us to discover these hidden structures in
a sentence, it also fails to show us the similarity of structures among two
sentences that do not have the same surface structures. Consider the sentences,
“The boy will read the book” and “The book will be read by the boy”. Surface
structure does not account for the similarity of meaning of these two
sentences.
This is
only to show that language is far beyond mere arrangement and positioning of
words (surface structures) and that language learning is more than mastering
how words are to be arranged in producing sentences. Moreover, using surface
structures will still be inadequate no matter how extensive are the data
gathered, for sentences are said to be infinite in number: despite our limited
number of phonemes and words, we can in fact create infinite number of
sentences. Thus, for Chomsky, a theory of language must be able to account for
this fact, and it can only be done once description of grammar goes beyond
surface description and explores the underlying structures of syntax (Chomsky
1965, 3-9).
It
follows that a linguistic methodology which attempts to gather a large number
of data from any speaker’s use of language will never be adequate in order to
characterize the person’s knowledge of her language. From this point, it is
important to mention the distinction Chomsky made between linguistic competence
and performance. Traditional linguistics reduces linguistic competence, i.e.
the speaker’s knowledge of her language, to that of performance, i.e. the
actual use of language. For Chomsky, investigation of the actual use of
language which structuralists have been employing will always be inadequate for
characterizing linguistic competence. It only means that a speaker’s knowledge
of her language is always more than what manifests in her use of language
(Chomsky 1965, 4).
“This
competence can be represented, to an as yet undertermined extent, as a system
of rules that we can call the grammar
of [her] language” (Chomsky, 1964, 9). Thus,
“the aim of the linguistic analysis of a language
L is to separate the grammatical sequences which are the sentences of L from
the un-grammatical sequences which are not sentences of L. The grammar of L
will thus be a device that generates
all of the grammatical sequences of L and none of the ungrammatical ones”
(Chomsky, 2002, p.13).
Such analysis will no longer be
about mere collection of data from a corpus of language, but of discovering the
grammar by testing different sentence structures against evidences which the
linguist, who masters that language she is investigating, already possesses.
Thus, the methodology will be in a form of hypothesis-testing, and it relies
heavily on the linguist’s “intuition” of her own language. Such a method,
Chomsky believes, will not get us far from characterizing linguistic competence
through grammar. This grammar is “to be distinguished from descriptive
statements that merely present the inventory of elements that appear in structural
descriptions” (Chomsky 1964, 9), one that structuralist linguistics uses.
Rather, it is in a form of a generative grammar “which generates all
grammatical sentences of a language” and “specifies the infinite set of well-formed sentences”. It would be in a form of
syntax (syntactical structure) that generates other well-formed sentences using
what he calls “transformational rules”. On this basis, a structural description
which cannot account for the generative aspect of linguistic competence cannot
be the grammar of a language.
By
introducing transformational rules, Chomsky is able to take into account the
creative aspect of language competence which enables a speaker to produce and
understand infinite number of sentences in her language. Thus, for
example, in a given a ‘kernel’ sentence (e.g., "The men have bought the
farm"), we may generate a passive sentence ("The farm has been bought
by the men"), a negative sentence ("The men haven't bought the
farm"), a "yes-or-no" interrogative sentence ("Have the men
bought the farm?"), two "wh-" interrogative sentences
("What have the men bought?" and "Who has bought the
farm?"), and even combinations of these sentences (e.g., a
negative-passive: "The farm hasn't been bought by the men").
Furthermore, with still other transformations we may introduce adverbs,
adjectives, and prepositional phrases into any or all of these sentences
("Who has final-ly bought the old farm on the hill?"). Given a kernel
sentence of a particular form, then, any and all related non-kernel sentences
can be generated by applying the appropriate transformational rules (Thomas,
1962).
Chomsky’s linguistic theory is now famously known as
Transformational Generative Grammar, or simply, Generative Grammar. The details
about how Chomsky proceeds with his linguistic analysis using this theory are
rather complicated and cannot be dealt with properly in this paper.
A.
Knowledge
of Language as Innate
In
the previous discussion, we have discussed Chomsky’s refutations against
behaviorist-structuralist view of language and language learning. All of these
criticisms spring from Chomsky’s view that knowledge of language is innate and
is not derived from experience (Chomsky 1971). To prove further this claim, let
us go back the examples about ambiguities of sentences which structuralist
linguistics cannot account. Suppose I am asked whether I like the way someone
cooks, I may give the following sentence as my answer:
(9) I
like her cooking.
From
this context, we know very well what the sentence mean, and that is “I like the
way she cooks”. If knowledge of language is derived from experience, then
sentence (11) should have the meaning “I like the way someone cooks”, since it
was the meaning I intended when I made that sentence. However, we cannot
actually make this generalization. Someone who analyzes sentence (9) but does
not have any knowledge about the context in which I made that statement, will
eventually realize that (9) is ambiguous. It can mean either one of the
following:
(10)
I
like the way she cooks.
(11)
I
like what she cooks.
(12)
I
like the fact that she cooks.
(13)
I
like the fact the fact that she is being cooked.
The
fact that we can consider sentence (9) to be ambiguous proves that knowledge of
language is not derived from experience. It is because if we have not
experienced the context that would make sentence (9) mean any of the sentences
(10) – (13), we still know that (10) – (13) are the possible meanings of (9).
Also, from the fact that we may not have encountered this sentence in our
previous experience but are nevertheless able to realize its ambiguity once
this sentence is presented to us, then it proves that knowledge of language is
not derived from experience. This is very true in the case of children who have
lesser experience compared to adults, but are nonetheless able to master their
language. Hence, Chomsky believes that it is more likely that knowledge of
language is innate and is part of our biological endowments.
…the poverty of experience (my emphasis) leads one to suspect that it is
at best misleading to claim that words that I understand derived their meaning
from experience... On the other hand, we can easily imagine how an organism
initially endows with conditions on the form and organization of language could
construct a specific system of interconnections among concepts, and conditions
of use and evidence, on the basis of scanty evidence (Chomsky1975, 17-18)
Thus, Chomsky concludes that “a
system of knowledge and beliefs results from the interplay of innate mechanism,
genetically determined maturational processes, and interaction with the social
and physical environment” (1975, 21). This mechanism determines the structures
of language (i.e. grammar), and Chomsky considers these structures as “a priori
for the organism, in that they define, for him, what counts as a human
language, and determine the general character of his acquired knowledge of
language” (1975, 31).
Language, then, is a “biological
phenomenon” in that for there to be a language, there must be something in the
genetic constitution of an organism, a “faculty of language”, so to speak. So
it is not simply because there is a general intelligence among humans which
animals do not have that explains why we have a language. Even if there is a
general intelligence in human species, it does not follow that all members of
the species should have a language, just as it does not follow that all
geniuses should be able to know algebra. But from the fact we all have
language, then there must be a distinct faculty in us which, despite our varied
intelligences, interests, and personalities, cannot let us not have a language.
Just as there must be a genetic explanation why we cannot not have a heart or
brain, so too must there be a genetic explanation why we cannot not have a
language. Language, therefore, is part of our biological endowments. And, it is
as innate as having lungs, heart or brain.
B.
Knowledge
of Language as Distinct from Knowledge of Things
Another
important view of Chomsky about language is that it is not necessarily a
“mirror of the world”. The traditional view of language is that our words are
images of objects in reality. However, Chomsky believes that there does not have
to be objects in reality for us to have a language. In fact, we can develop our
linguistic capacity without increasing our knowledge about the world.
Chomsky
suggests this claim when he tries to demonstrate the independence of grammar
from meaning. By pointing out that we can have grammatical or well-formed
sentences that are not meaningful, Chomsky is able to prove that
distinctiveness of knowledge of language from knowledge of things. Consider
Chomsky’s famous example (2002, 2.3):
(14)
Colorless
green ideas sleep furiously.
(15)
Furiously
sleep ideas green colorless.
Even
if one knows English very well, she may not be able to make sense of any of
these sentences. Yet, one cannot but admit that sentence (14) is grammatical,
and is therefore a well-formed sentence. This is not to say, of course, that we
actually make sentences like (14) in natural language. What it points out,
however, is that we can make sentences like (14) and consider them grammatical,
hence part of our language.
This
undermines the traditional view that language is essentially a medium of
communication. There can be a sentence without any purpose of communicating any
meaning or thought (Chomsky 1971, 19). In fact, communication of meaning may
proceed without having well-formed sentences. This is evident, for instance, in
text-messaging in which we do not type complete sentences to relay our message.
This
view also construes the notion that language may not be a mirror of the world.
Instead, language is a mirror of the mind (Chomsky 1971, 45-51). If language
may not reflect the world, and may persist in the absence of data from the
world, then it follows that language is a unique property of the mind. That is
why, Chomsky views his investigation of language as an investigation of human
nature (Palmarini, 1980).
The
traditional view holds that language is a social phenomenon. It entails that
the human person, by using language, becomes a social being. There is a truism
in this view in that we do not have a language in which only we, ourselves, can
understand. Language is always a language of a group of people. Nevertheless,
this does not undermine Chomsky’s position; in fact, it confirms it. For
instance, birds of a certain species emit a particular pattern of sound which
they use to communicate to each other. This pattern of sound, then, is a
property of that species of bird. Yet, it, too, confirms that there is a
certain a genetic constitution in that species which gives them that pattern of
sound and not another. In the same way, language as a social phenomenon does
not alter the fact that there has to be a certain genetic constitution in the
human person that accounts for the phenomenon of language.
It
is also important to point that not only is language genetically determined,
but also all our sentences in natural language are structure-dependent (Chomsky
1971, 28). For example, in English, we do not formulate questions like “Is the
dog that in the corner hungry?” Instead, we formulate it as “Is the dog that is in the corner hungry?” In Cebuano,
for another example, we formulate sentences like “Tugnaw ang kabuntagon” (The
morning is cold/It is a cold morning), but not “Kabuntagon tugnaw ang”. The
point is that most of us were not told that this is the way we have to
formulate sentences. In fact, there is no good reason for there to be a
particular sentence formation than other else, just as there is no necessary
reason for our brain to be placed inside our head. Yet, it just happens, so to
speak. Language, therefore, is part of our biological constitution, and more
importantly, it is a property of the mind.
Implications of Chomsky’s Theory in
the Notion of Understanding
Chomsky
claims that all sentences in our natural language are structure-dependent, and
these structures are characterized by the grammar of that language. More
importantly, these structures are independent of meaning or content. Still more
important is that all languages whether be English or Cebuano, has a grammar,
and their sentences are all structure-dependent. By pointing that grammars are independent of meaning and is true to every language, Chomsky suggests that
there is a universal grammar, a
linguistic structure common to every language that is independent of cultures
and beliefs (Chomsky 1971, 28). That is why, basing on this view, it is easy to
accept the claim that language is a biological phenomenon. Thus, the separation
of form from meaning allows Chomsky to conclude that investigation of
linguistic structures will give us insights about the structure of our brain,
that is, it will give us insights on the way our brain works.
This view leads us to the conclusion
that meaning is only accidental to language. By accidental, we mean that
meaning is not the organic source of language. I think it is not Chomsky’s
point that language, i.e. natural language, may not be a good medium for
communication. The purpose of communication is a motivational factor that
determines the way we form our sentences. What Chomsky wants to point out,
however, is that what really constitute language are the innate schematizations
of our mind. It is like simply saying that it is not our desire to eat that
makes us eat. Rather, it is the fact of being hungry and the biological
mechanisms that are implied thereupon that determines the desire to eat, hence
makes us eat.
If structures are independent of
content, will the reverse be true? That is, can content be independent of grammar? Chomsky may not have seriously attended to this question, but we can
nevertheless infer from his views his very probable answer to it. Let us
consider what follows:
(16)
I like her cooking.
Chomsky
would explain that (16) is ambiguous and has therefore many possible meanings
because there are deep structures
that underlie this single phonetic structure which allow it to represent different
meanings. Consider again the following:
(17)
John
is easy to please.
(18)
John
is eager to please.
Although
these sentences have the same surface structure, i.e. same sentence-pattern,
each of them has, in fact, a distinct underlying deep structure. That is why in
(17) John is the object of the verb to please, while in (18) John is the
subject of the same verb. Consider another example:
(19)
The
boy will read the book.
(20)
The
book will be read by the boy.
These
sentences have different surface grammar, but they have the same deep grammar,
which explains why they have the same meaning.
All
of these points to what I take to be Chomsky’s position that meanings or
semantic interpretation can only be represented by a fixed, deep structures. In
fact, in his theory, he enumerated three components that constitute a grammar:
syntactic component, and two interpretive components, a phonological component
and a semantic component (Chomsky 1964, 9). Phonological component is that
which specifies syntactic structure into a phonetic (or physical)
representation. The semantic component assigns a semantic interpretation to an
abstract structure generated by the syntactic component. That is why
phonological and syntactic components are interpretive in that they map a
syntactically generated structure onto a “concrete” phonetic and semantic
interpretation. In other words, in the case of meaning which is our concern
here, Chomsky is saying that semantic interpretation is determined by an
abstract structure (or deep structure) concretized by a semantic component. For
instance, the Maguindanaon sentence “Bagulan saguna” and the Tagalog sentence
“Umuulan ngayon” give us two different phonological interpretations but same
semantic interpretation (“It is raining”). It must follow that if these
sentences have same meaning, then that meaning must be derived from some
abstract (non-physical or mental) structures which are then concretized in
these two different sentences. What it points out ultimately is that meaning is
determined by structure.
From
the fact that despite the differences of our languages we still have the same
meaning, then it follows our mental structures are common to each of us who are
members of the same species. In other words, the way we think is the same.
What
is the implication of this ‘implication’ of Chomsky’s linguistic theory, in the
notion of understanding? The issue here is whether it is possible or not to
reach understanding with regards to a particular subject matter despite our
differences. And it seems that Chomsky’s theory may give us a positive answer.
We shall consider these points. Much of our analysis in what follows is inspired
by Gadamer’s hermeneutical view of language.
Since
definite structures give us a specific semantic interpretation, Chomsky’s
theory implies that one of the conditions for the possibility of understanding
(i.e. getting the same meaning) is the uniformity of structures. However, what
is assumed here is that understanding is reduced into the level of grammar or
structures. That this is problematic is apparent when for example, I told a
child that “life is suffering”. Under the condition that both of us speak the
same language, the view that understanding is a uniformity of structures would
imply that the child has understood what my assertion really means. However,
this may not be the case. Even if the child has mastered the language, it does
not follow that she understands what is being said. This is because there is
something more than grammar that is at play in understanding.
Also,
by reducing language into a biological phenomenon, it would appear that human
communication is simply a transfer of information much like that of
communication between two computers. In addition, since language may not
necessarily be a mirror of the world, it will also imply that in communication,
what is understood is not a worldview but simply a sentence. Worldview, here,
means a particular orientation or relation with the world. Thus, to say that
what is understood may not necessarily be a worldview means that understanding
in language can be detached from our particular world-orientation. If we
situate that, for instance, in reading historical or religious texts, or
poetry, what is said or written may not tell anything about the kind of world
the text is situated.
All
these implications are drawn from Chomsky’s view that structures are
independent and are not determined by content. The truth of this view, as we
have shown, has crucial implications in the notion of understanding. However, I
would like to challenge this view. Doing this, I believe, will give us insights
about how significant language really is in understanding – an analysis that
may lead us beyond grammar.
It
is important to note, however, that I do not take these implications to be the
view of Chomsky about language. In fact, he may not have thought about this in
his linguistic investigation. Nevertheless, deriving these implications from
Chomsky’s is a legitimate claim insofar as we bear in mind that we are no
longer working within linguistics, but hermeneutics.
The Dependence of Grammar on
Meaning
Chomsky
legitimizes linguistic investigation by making a distinction between a
well-formed sentence and a meaningful sentence. A well-formed sentence is a
sentence that is grammatically correct, but not necessarily meaningful. However,
many of Chomsky’s students reject the view that grammar is independent of
meaning. In fact they claim that it is not abstract structure, but meaning that
generates well-formed sentences (Searl 1972, IV). The following refutation of
Chomsky’s view will most likely be the same with basic argument with generative
semantics (as what their theory is now called).
Let us return to the famous example
of Chomsky that is supposed to prove that grammar is independent of meaning:
(14)Colorless green
ideas sleep furiously.
(15)Furiously sleep
ideas green colorless.
Both
of these, as Chomsky claims, are meaningless, but only (14) is grammatical. But
I think it is too hasty to conclude that (14) does not presuppose any meaning.
The basis for the judgement of its meaninglessness is because it is composed of
words that contradict each other: “colorless” and “green”, “sleep” and
“furiously”.
If
we follow the logic, we must also regard the following sentences as
meaningless, though they are all grammatical:
(21)
Suffering
is life’s darkest light.
(22)
When
you lose yourself, you gain it.
(23)
I
am rich by being poor.
All
these sentences contain contradicting terms, but they are meaningful. The
following, however, is neither grammatical nor meaningful:
(24)
2x hyalbt gi 3z abd.
In fact, it is not even a sentence.
We can only say that it is meaningful given that we understand what the words
that compose the ‘sentence’ mean. In the same way sentence (14) is judged as
grammatical only in presupposition that we understand “colorless” and “green”
are adjectives, “ideas” is a noun, “sleep” is a verb, and “furiously” is an
adverb. But we cannot know that something is a noun or an adjective unless we
know what it is!
This is only to show that for
something to be grammatical, it has to presuppose meaning. This refutation will
undermine the view that linguistic structures are innate. If grammar has to
presuppose content, then it must follow that grammar in one way or another is
determined by what is objectively the case, that is, by what is in the world.
Moreover, Chomsky thinks that the
mind works within structure and that this structure is not only innate but also
has a definite character. Thus, we are able to judge grammaticality or
ungrammaticality of sentences which we have not encountered before. That is
why, we are ‘genetically’ inclined to make sentences like “The dog is hungry”
rather than “Hungry the dog is”. Suppose, however, that we have a Martian
neighbor who has learned all the words in our English language, but the case is
only that he speaks in reverse. Thus, if we have the sentence “We come in
peace”, it will have a corresponding Martian English sentence “Peace in come
we”. And if we have the sentence “Colorless green ideas sleepp furiously”, it
will have an equivalent grammatical formulation in Martian English as
“Furiously sleep ideas green colorless”.
The point of this thought experiment
is that the knowledge of grammaticality may not be innate. It is possible that
we may not be genetically determined to make sentences like “The dog is hungry”
rather than “Hungry the dog is”. Although we do not actually formulate
sentences like the latter, it does not follow that it cannot be grammatical.
So, it implies that linguistic structures may not be mental structures.
This argument, however, does not
undermine the fact that all our sentences are structure-dependent; that is,
they obey certain grammatical rules. But to say that these grammatical rules
are genetically determined is refutable and may not therefore be true. It is
true that the human person follows structures in sentence-formation but it does
not follow that these structures are innate in the mind.
The argument postulated above
undermines Chomsky’s view that language is a property of the mind. Putnam’s
comment in the debate between Chomsky and Piaget (Palmarini 1980) suggests the
same view when he said that grammar is rather a property of language than of
the mind. To this, Chomsky’s immediate reply was since language is a property
of the mind, then grammar is a property of the mind. But I think, Chomsky
misses the point of Putnam’s comment. What can be grammatical is maybe a
characteristic feature of language but not of the mind. Arguably, language is a
structure in itself, independent of mental processes. If this conclusion is
true, then linguistic communication is not simply a biological event, but
something which allows someone to get outside
of herself into the realm of commonality of meanings which are not simply a
configuration of what is happening within.
Language is not a property of the
mind
Our
refutation against Chomsky’s innateness hypothesis does not totally undermine
his view that language is a mental reality. True in its sense, nothing happens
in the human person that could not be accounted for by his biological
constitution. Even religious experience has a corresponding effect on the body.
Comparing language to other aspects of human life, however, does not make
language simply a part of a larger biological system. The heart, for example,
is only one of the organs in the nervous system; it is not the system itself.
On the contrary, language, as shown by Chomsky, is a system in itself. It
contains definite structures through which we form and understand sentences.
Our refutation, however, strikes against reducing language to a biological phenomenon.
For instance, there are biological processes that occur when we feel joy in
seeing a loved one, but one cannot say that joy is simply a biological
phenomenon. In the same way, there are certain biological requirements that
must be met so that one can learn a language, but we cannot simply reduce
language into a biological product. The point is, there are certain components
in our humanity that is beyond biology. Language is one of those.
We have pointed out previously that
one important criterion for structurality in language is content. What can be
called grammatical will always presuppose meaning. Meaning, however, is not an
individual property, rather it is communal. Using words which I alone can
understand can hardly be called a language. Even if we invent another language
(in making symbolizations and algorithms, for example) it has to presuppose a
natural language. For instance, instead of writing “The dog is hungry”, I have decided
for the purpose of convenience to replace it with the symbol “DH”, this new
‘sentence’ would not make any sense for me if I have not derived it from
natural language.
Natural language, the human language (in contrast to invented
symbolizations and computer language), is not our creation. We always find
ourselves already situated in a particular linguistic community. That entails
that even before we were born and became linguistically competent, things
already have their names, and language is already is system of meanings.
For
Gadamer, this implies that “language has a life of its own independent of the
individual; and as he grows into it, it introduces him to a particular
orientation and relationship to the world as well” (1975, 440). In other words,
when we come to know a language, we also come to know a particular relation
with the world – a worldview. For example, a community of fishermen and women
knows many terms for fishes and have many terms for the behaviors of the sea compared
to those who live in the mountains. If one only knows one term for “fish” and only
one term for behavior of “sea”, we can say that that someone is not so familiar
with the kind of world that a fisherman lives. Thus, in knowing language, we
also come to know the world (Schaff 1973, 79-141), and this knowledge is a
particular world-orientation.
To
say that we do not create language does not mean that there is something other
than the human species that creates language for the human person. It is only
that we do not speak here of language that has to be explained biologically.
Rather, we speak of language as a particular human experience, and it is an
experience that does not reduce language to mental processes. That this is a
valid view of language arises from our refutation on Chomsky’s separation of
grammar from meaning. Meaning is not accidental to grammar; there has to be
meaning for there to be grammar at all. But linguistic meaning, from the
context of linguistic experience, is not something that someone possesses
innately. Rather, it is something that one learns by learning a language.
Meaning, therefore, is a property of language. And it is a language in which we
already find ourselves situated even before we realize that we are in a
particular world orientation. Thus, we find ourselves ‘thrown’ in a particular
language. We are thrown into a particular world of meanings.
Since
grammar is fundamentally related to meanings, and since meaning is a property
of language, then grammar does not simply express the structure of our mind,
but fundamentally the structure of our particular world orientation. For
example, in some language we do not normally find the word “weather” to be predicated of “life”, but in Filipino we
find the common expression “Ang buhay ay weather-weather lang” (“Life is like a
weather”). People who live in the desert do not experience many changes in the
weather, and so they do not have this expression. But we, Filipinos, do, and it
is because of our particular orientation with our world, that is, we experience
the world in a different way, and this experience is an experience of the world
in language.
Language as World-Experience
To
say that language is experience of the world is not to affirm a behaviorist
stand on language. If it is true, then each of us should speak the same way
since we receive the same data from experience. Apparently, we do not speak the
same way. It is not because we only experience part of the world, and others
experience the other part. It is rather that we experience the world as a whole
from our own linguistic angle. It is language, itself, that gives a particular
orientation with the world (Gadamer 1975, 428).
Language, as a reality beyond
ourselves, does not make us prisoners of it, such that we say that language
defines for us what can ever become meaningful. It is rather the other way around:
in language, everything is brought to the world of meanings. However, there are
times when we feel that we cannot find in our language that which can truly
express what we mean. Gadamer says that it is not because of the absence of
expressions that limits meaning, but on the “conventionality of meaning
sedimented in expression” (1975, 401). In other words, it is ideology, not
expression which can freeze what Chomsky calls the “the creative aspect of
language use”. This can be true, for instance, when religious expressions
become ideologies. Using the name of God for a wrong cause such as terrorism,
or reducing “offerings to God” to “mass collections” are examples of how
meanings can be abused by ideologies.
This points to an important notion
that language is always ‘in-the-making’. In other words, language is a constant
movement, and the world that we meet in language is always in constant
formation (Gadamer, 1975, 401-403). Seeing the world in language is not the
same as seeing the different sides of an object. The sum of what we see in the
different sides constitutes the whole image of an object. In language, however,
the world can never be completed; it is always in the making. In language, the
world becomes inexhaustible. This is because of the inexhaustible richness of
verbal-expressions.
This is only to point out that
meaning fixed in structures is not the nature of language. Working within the
same syntactical structure does not grant us same understanding of meaning.
Hence, for instance, if the Church is really serious in preaching the Gospel to
the youth, it must translate the Gospel into the language that the youth
understand. And it entails entering into the world orientation of the youth if the
Word of God is to be significant for them. This is also true in pedagogy;
teachers who can be easily understood are those who do not stick to fix
terminologies. Rather, they simplify things by translating the lesson into the
language which the students can understand. And this would always mean entering
into the students’ world.
Conclusion
These
discussions lead us to into a very important insight about understanding in
language: understanding really means dialogue (Gadamer, 1975, 443). People
truly understand each other when they have entered into each other worldviews
and are able to affirm the truth of what each other say. It means that the
realm of understanding is a realm that is beyond grammar. Thus, it maintains
the traditional view of language as essentially for communication. What
transforms and generate sentences, is not the grammar of the language but the
motivation to communicate. With grammar alone, nothing is worth telling. But
precisely because language is for communication that grammar becomes
meaningful. Through it that we are able to express what needs to be expressed.
And grammar reaches its ideality when it bridges people together in meaning,
discovering each other’s truths that takes place in dialogue.
We
must emphasize that we do not engage
in dialogue, as if to mean that dialogue is something that we plan, and whose
terms of understanding we have already set beforehand. Rather, it is more
appropriate to say that we let ourselves be
engaged into dialogue. This means that we do not simply reach understanding
by just reading the data, the literal meaning, of other person’s utterance, as
if meanings are fixated in the data. Rather, it means that reaching
understanding is an open-ended quest of speaking and listening. It is
open-ended because we are in language. Being in language does not t mean
that we have in us the infinite set of sentences embedded in our genetically
determined linguistic structure. Rather, being in language means that we go
outside our own individualities in order to reach into each other worlds. There
we discover new sentences, hence new meanings.
Chomsky seems to put grammar at the
core of language. That is why well-formed sentences for him are those that are
grammatical, even if meaningless. But this should not be the standard of a
well-formed sentence. Parents who throw curses against their children do not
make well-formed sentences. A judge who convicted an innocent man did not make
a well-formed sentence. A politician who persistently lies about his being
involved in corruption is not making a well-formed statement.
The
standard of a well-formed sentence, then, should be truth, not grammar.
The
capacity to discover truth, to reach understanding, and to be in a communion
with others in meaning are perhaps the reasons why language is biological
phenomenon in the first place.
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