Critique of Chomsky's Linguistic Theory

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.

References

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Chomsky, Noam. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory. Mouton: The Hague, 1964.

Chomsky, Noam. “Knowledge of Language as a Focus of Inquiry.” In Reading Philosophy of Language: Selected Texts with Interactive Commentary, edited Jennifer Hornsby & Guy Longworth, 156-171. USA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005.

Chomsky, Noam. Problems of Knowledge and Freedom: The Russell Lectures. USA: Pantheon Books, 1971.

Chomsky, Noam. Syntactic Structures, edited by David W. Lightfoot. Cambridge, MA: Mouton de Gruyter, 2002.

Chomsky, Noam and Putnam Lillian R. “An Interview with Noam Chomsky.” The Reading Teacher 48, no. 4 (Dec., 1994 - Jan., 1995): 328-333. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20201430.

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Schaff, Adam. Language and Cognition. USA: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1973.

Searle, John R. “Chomsky’s Revolution in Linguistics.” The New York Review of Books (1972): http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/19720629.htm

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