Part II Language Comprehension
4 Perception of language
5 The Internal Lexicon
6 Sentence Comprehension and Memory
7 Discourse Comprehension and Memory
4 Perception of Language
Main Points:
The study of speech sounds is called phonetics. Articulatory phonetics refers to the study of how speech sounds are produced. Acoustic phonetics refers to the study of the resulting speech sounds.
Speech exhibits characteristics not found in other forms of auditory perception.
The phenomenon of categorical perception suggested that speech is a special mode of perception.
Perception of speech is influenced by the contexts in which it appears. We use top-down processing to identify some sounds in context.
Visual perception of language is achieved through a succession of processing levels. Perception of letters in a word context is superior to perception of isolated or unrelated letters.
Recent models of the perception of language assume that we process information at multiple levels in an interactive way. These models can account for several findings in speech perception and visual word perception.
The structure of speech
The process of speech perception is an extraordinary complex one, for two major reasons: the environmental context often interferes with the speech signal(Under normal listening conditions, the speech we hear competes with other stimuli for our limited processing capacity. Other auditory signals, such as a conversation across the room or someone's sneezing or burping, can interfere with the fidelity of the speech signal); the variability of the speech signal itself(there is no one-to-one correspondence between the characteristics of the acoustic stimulus and the speech sound we hear).
How do we achieve stable phonetic perception when the acoustic stimulus competes with other stimuli and contains a good deal of inherent variability?
The ease with which we recognize phonetic segments suggests that listeners make a series of adjustments in the course of perceptual recognition. Some of these adjustments are based on the implicit knowledge of the way speech sounds are produced.
Prosodic Factors: stress, intonation, and rate. Ferreira(2003) has defined prosody as "a general term that refers to the aspects of an utterance' s sound that are not specific to the words themselves." Prosodic factors influence the overall meaning of an utterance. That is, we can take a given word or utterance and change the stress or intonational pattern and create an entirely different meaning. Prosodic factors are sometimes called
. The same word or sentence may be expressed prosodically in different ways, and these variations become important cues to the speaker's meaning and emotional state. With prosodic variation in mind, we can turn to the smaller speech segments on which prosodic factors are superimposed.
Articulatory Phonetics
The study of speech sounds is called phonetics. Articulatory phonetics refers to the study of how speech sounds are produced.
Speech sounds differ principally in whether the airflow is obstructed and, if so, at what point and in what way. Although vowels are produced by letting air flow from the lungs in an unobstructed way, consonants are produced by impeding the airflow at some point.
The utility of distinctive features is that they allow us to describe the relationships that exist among various speech sounds in an economical manner.
Acoustic Phonetics
One of the most common ways of describing the acoustical energy of speech sounds is called a sound spectrogram.
Each of the spectrograms contains a series of dark bands, called formants, at various frequency levels. Formant transitions are the large rises or drops in formant frequency that occur over short durations of time. These transitions nearly always occur either at the beginning or the end of the syllable. In between is the formant' s steady state, during which format frequency is relatively stable. It is a bit oversimplified but basically correct to say that the transitions correspond to the consonantal portion of the syllable, and the steady state to the vowel.
Parallel transmission: examination some of the acoustic properties of the speech signal. It refers to the fact that different phonemes of the same syllable are encoded into the speech signal simultaneously. There is no sharp physical break between adjacent sounds in a syllable.
Context-conditioned Variation: the phenomenon that the exact spectrographic appearance of a given phone is related to( or conditioned by) the speech context. Context-conditioned variation is closely related to the manner in which syllables are produced, or the manner of articulation.
Summary
Speech may be described in terms of the articulatory movements needed to produce a speech sound and the acoustic properties of the sound. Vowels differ from consonants in that the air-flow from the lungs is not obstructed during production; consonants differ from one another in terms of the manner and place of the obstruction, as well as the presence or absence of vocal cord vibration during articulation.
The acoustic structure of speech sounds is revealed by spectrographic analyses of formants, their steady states, and formant transitions. The spectrographic pattern associated with a consonant is influenced by its vowel context and is induced by the coarticulated manner in which syllables are produced. Moreover, prosodic factors such as stress, intonation, and speech rate also contribute to the variability inherent in the speech signal.
Perception of isolated speech segments
Levels of speech processing:
At the auditory level, the signal is represented in terms of its frequency, intensity, and temporal attributes as with any auditory stimulus.
At the phonetic level, we identify individual phones by a combination of acoustic cues, such as formant transitions.
At the phonological level, the phonetic segment is converted into a phoneme, and phonological rules are applied to the sound sequence.
These levels may be construed as successive discriminations that we apply to speech signal. We first discriminate auditory signals from other sensory signals and determine that the stimulus is something that we have heard. Then we identify the peculiar properties that qualify it as speech, only later recognizing it as meaningful speech of a particular language.
Speech as a modular system:
Lack of Invariance--- the perception of speech segments must occur through a process that is different from and presumably more complex than that of "ordinary" auditory perception. In other words, speech is a special mode of perception.
Categorical perception--- to comprehend speech, we must impose an absolute or categorical identification on the incoming speech signal rather than simply a relative determination of the various physical characteristics of the signal.
Two criteria determine categorical perception: the presence of sharp identification functions and the failure to discriminate between sounds within a given sound class.
The motor theory of speech perception--- listeners use implicit articulatory knowledge---knowledge about how sounds are produced---as an aid in perception. Sounds produced in similar ways but with varying acoustic representations are perceived in similar ways.
Liberman and Mattingly updated the motor theory with regard to current thinking in cognitive psychology. In the revised theory, the claim is that the objects of speech are the intended phonetics gestures of the speaker.
Summary
Various investigators have argued that speech is perceived through a special mode of perception. Part of the argument rests on the failure to find invariant relationships between acoustic properties and perceptual experiences, and part is supported by the empirical phenomena of categorical perception, duplex perception and phonetic trading relations.
The motor theory of speech perception claims that we perceive speech sounds by identifying the intended phonetic gestures that may produce the sounds. Although the status of the concept of phonetic gestures is somewhat controversial, the theory has been supported by studies of visual processing during speech perception. In addition, the theory has implications for neurolinguistics and language acquisition in children.
Perception of continuous speech
Prosodic factors in speech recognition
stress: Martin(1972) has argued that the stress pattern of speech provides cues for listeners to anticipate what is coming next and that listeners tend to organize their perception around stressed syllables.
rate: rate normalization & speaker normalization.
Semantic and Syntactic Factors in speech perception
Context and Speech Recognition: a word isolated from its context becomes less intelligible.
Phonemic Restoration: a most dramatic demonstration of the role of top-down processing of speech signals comes from what is called phonemic restoration.
The trace model of speech perception
...to be continued...
2016年9月25日星期日
My Notes for Pragmatics Huang Y. 2007
Chapter 2 Implicature
P. 23-36
The notion of implicature (both conversational and conventional) was originated by the Oxford philosopher H. P. Grice. Grice presented a panorama of his thinking on meaning and communication---what he called his "tottering steps"(Grice 1989:4) towards a systematic, philosophically inspired pragmatic theory of language use, which has since come to be known as Gricean pragmatic theory. The Gricean paradigm has revolutionized pragmatic theorizing and to date remains one of the cornerstones of contemporary thinking in linguistic pragmatics and the philosophy of language.
2.1 Classical Gricean theory of conversational implicature
On a general Gricean account of meaning and communication, there are two theories: a theory of meaningn(on)n(atural) and a theory of conversational implicature. In his theory of meaningnn, Grice (1957, 1969, 1989) emphasized the conceptual relation between natural meaning in the external world and non-natural, linguistic meaning of utterances.
Defined thus, the essence of meaningnn is that it is communication which is intended to be recognized as having been intended. In other words, meaningnn or speaker-meaning is a matter of expressing and recognizing intention.
2.1.1 The co-operative principle and the maxims of conversation
In his theory of conversational implicature, Grice (1961,1975, 1978,1989) suggested that there is an underlying principle that determines the way in which language is used with maximum efficiency and effectively to achieve rational interaction in communication. He called this overarching dictum the co-operative principle and subdivided it into nine maxims of conversation classified into four categories: Quality, Quantity, Relation and Manner.The names of the four categories are taken from the German philosopher Immanuel Kant(Grice 1989: 26).
2.1.2 Relationship between the speaker and the maxims
A speaker can straightforwardly observe the maxims.
A speaker can violate a maxim.
A speaker can opt out of a maxim.
2.1.3 Conversational implicature O versus conversational implicature F(the first Gricean dichotomy)
Assuming that the co-operative principle and its associated maxims are normally adhered to by both the speaker and the addressee in a conversational interaction, Grice suggested that a conversational implicature--- roughly, a set of non-logical inferences which contains conveyed messages--- which are meant without being part of what is said in the strict sense---can arise from either strictly observing or ostentatiously flouting the maxims. Let us call conversational implicatures that are engendered by way of directly observing the maxims conversational implicatures O.
Conversational implicatures can be generated by way of the speaker's deliberately flouting maxims. Let us call conversational implicatures thus induced conversational implicature F.
The distinction between those conversational implicatures that are generated from a simple assumption that the speaker is observing both the maxims and the co-operative principles, and those that are engendered in more complex ways on the basis of the speaker flouting a maxim but nevertheless following the co-operative principle.
2.1.4 Generalized versus particularized conversational implicature(the second Gricean dichotomy)
The second Gricean dichotomy, independent of the first, is between those conversational implicatures which arise without requiring any particular contextual conditions(generalized conversational implicature) and those which do require such conditions(particular conversational implicature).
2.1.5 Properties of conversational implicature
Conversational implicature are characterized by a number of distinctive properties.
Defeasibility or cancellability: conversational implicatures can simply disappear in certain linguistic or non-linguistic contexts. They are cancelled if they are inconsistent with semantic entailments; background assumptions; contexts, and/or priority conversational implicatures.
Non-detachability: any linguistic expression with the same semantic content tends to carry the same conversational implicature. This is because conversational implicatures are attached to the semantic content, rather that the linguistic form, of what is said. Therefore, they cannot be detached from an utterance simply by replacing the relevant linguistic expressions with their synonyms.
Calculability: conversational implicatures can transparently be derived via the co-operative principle and its component maxims.
Non-conventinality: conversational implicatures, though dependent on the saying of what is coded, are non-coded in nature(Grice 1989:39, Bach 1994a: 140). In other words, they rely on the saying of what is said but they are not part of what is said. They are associated with speaker or utterance but not proposition or sentence.
Reinforceability: conversational implicatures can be made explicit without producing too much of a sense of redundancy. This is because conversational implicatures are not part of the conventional import of an utterance.
Universality: conversational implicatures tend to be universal, being motivated rather than arbitrary.
P. 23-36
The notion of implicature (both conversational and conventional) was originated by the Oxford philosopher H. P. Grice. Grice presented a panorama of his thinking on meaning and communication---what he called his "tottering steps"(Grice 1989:4) towards a systematic, philosophically inspired pragmatic theory of language use, which has since come to be known as Gricean pragmatic theory. The Gricean paradigm has revolutionized pragmatic theorizing and to date remains one of the cornerstones of contemporary thinking in linguistic pragmatics and the philosophy of language.
2.1 Classical Gricean theory of conversational implicature
On a general Gricean account of meaning and communication, there are two theories: a theory of meaningn(on)n(atural) and a theory of conversational implicature. In his theory of meaningnn, Grice (1957, 1969, 1989) emphasized the conceptual relation between natural meaning in the external world and non-natural, linguistic meaning of utterances.
Defined thus, the essence of meaningnn is that it is communication which is intended to be recognized as having been intended. In other words, meaningnn or speaker-meaning is a matter of expressing and recognizing intention.
2.1.1 The co-operative principle and the maxims of conversation
In his theory of conversational implicature, Grice (1961,1975, 1978,1989) suggested that there is an underlying principle that determines the way in which language is used with maximum efficiency and effectively to achieve rational interaction in communication. He called this overarching dictum the co-operative principle and subdivided it into nine maxims of conversation classified into four categories: Quality, Quantity, Relation and Manner.The names of the four categories are taken from the German philosopher Immanuel Kant(Grice 1989: 26).
2.1.2 Relationship between the speaker and the maxims
A speaker can straightforwardly observe the maxims.
A speaker can violate a maxim.
A speaker can opt out of a maxim.
2.1.3 Conversational implicature O versus conversational implicature F(the first Gricean dichotomy)
Assuming that the co-operative principle and its associated maxims are normally adhered to by both the speaker and the addressee in a conversational interaction, Grice suggested that a conversational implicature--- roughly, a set of non-logical inferences which contains conveyed messages--- which are meant without being part of what is said in the strict sense---can arise from either strictly observing or ostentatiously flouting the maxims. Let us call conversational implicatures that are engendered by way of directly observing the maxims conversational implicatures O.
Conversational implicatures can be generated by way of the speaker's deliberately flouting maxims. Let us call conversational implicatures thus induced conversational implicature F.
The distinction between those conversational implicatures that are generated from a simple assumption that the speaker is observing both the maxims and the co-operative principles, and those that are engendered in more complex ways on the basis of the speaker flouting a maxim but nevertheless following the co-operative principle.
2.1.4 Generalized versus particularized conversational implicature(the second Gricean dichotomy)
The second Gricean dichotomy, independent of the first, is between those conversational implicatures which arise without requiring any particular contextual conditions(generalized conversational implicature) and those which do require such conditions(particular conversational implicature).
2.1.5 Properties of conversational implicature
Conversational implicature are characterized by a number of distinctive properties.
Defeasibility or cancellability: conversational implicatures can simply disappear in certain linguistic or non-linguistic contexts. They are cancelled if they are inconsistent with semantic entailments; background assumptions; contexts, and/or priority conversational implicatures.
Non-detachability: any linguistic expression with the same semantic content tends to carry the same conversational implicature. This is because conversational implicatures are attached to the semantic content, rather that the linguistic form, of what is said. Therefore, they cannot be detached from an utterance simply by replacing the relevant linguistic expressions with their synonyms.
Calculability: conversational implicatures can transparently be derived via the co-operative principle and its component maxims.
Non-conventinality: conversational implicatures, though dependent on the saying of what is coded, are non-coded in nature(Grice 1989:39, Bach 1994a: 140). In other words, they rely on the saying of what is said but they are not part of what is said. They are associated with speaker or utterance but not proposition or sentence.
Reinforceability: conversational implicatures can be made explicit without producing too much of a sense of redundancy. This is because conversational implicatures are not part of the conventional import of an utterance.
Universality: conversational implicatures tend to be universal, being motivated rather than arbitrary.
My Notes for Pragmatics Huang Y. 2007
1 Introduction
1.1 What is pragmatics?
1.1.1 A definition
Pragmatics is the systematic study of meaning by virtue of, or dependent on, the use of language. The central topics of inquiry of pragmatics include implicature, presupposition, speech acts and deixis.
1.1.2 A brief history of pragmatics
Pragmatics as a modern branch of linguistic inquiry has its origin in the philosophy of language. Its philosophical roots can be traced back to the work of the philosophers Charles Morris, Rudolf Carnap, and Charles Pierce in the 1930s. Influenced by Pierce, Morris(1938:6-7), for example, presented a threefold division into syntax, semantics, and pragmatics within semiotics---a general science of signs.
(Levinson 1983:1, Horn and Ward 2004a)
Syntax is the study of the formal relation of one sign with another. Semantics deals with the relation of signs to what they denotes, and Pragmatics addresses the relation of signs to their users and interpreters.
Carnap (1942) posited an order of degree of abstractness for the three branches of inquiry: Syntax is the most and pragmatics is the least abstract, with semantics lying somewhere in between. Consequently, syntax provides input into semantics, which provides input into pragmatics. (Recanati 2004b)
1950s: two opposing schools of thought emerged within the analytic philosophy of language: the school of ideal language philosophy
(originated by the philosophers Gottlob Ferge, Alfred Tarki, and Bertrand Russell; interested in the study of logic systems of artificial languages; successful application of its theory and methodology to natural language in the 1950s and 1960s ---today's formal semantics)
and the school of ordinary language philosophy
(By contrast, within the tradition of ordinary language philosophy, emphasis was placed on natural language rather than the formal languages studied by the logicians. Under the leadership of ordinary language philosophy flourished principally at Oxford in the 1950s and 1960s. Other leading thinks included the philosophers H. P. Grice, Peter Strawson, John Searle, and the later Ludwig Wittgenstein(Huang 2003, Recanati 2004a, 2004b). It was within the tradition of ordinary language philosophy that Austin developed his theory of speech acts, and Grice his theory of conversational implicature. Both theories have since become landmarks on the path towards the development of a systematic, philosophically inspired pragmatic theory of language use.
in the late 1960s and early 1970s: a campaign was launched by some of Noam Chomsky's disaffected pupils in generative semantics(as it was then called), notably Jerry Katz, J. R. Ross and George Lakoff, to challenge his teacher's treatment of language as an abstract, mental device divorced from the uses and functions of language. They helped to empty the "pragmatic wastebasket". A great deal of important research was done in the 1970s by linguistics such as Laurence Horn, Charles Fillmore, and Gerald Gazdar to "bring some order into the content of the pragmatic wastebasket". The publication of Stephen Levinson's celebrated textbook Pragmatics in 1983 systematized the field and marked the coming age of pragmatics as a linguistic discipline in its own right.
in the last two decades: new developments such as Laurence Horn's and Stephen Levinson's neo-Gricean pragmatic theories, Dan Sperber's and Deidre Wilson's relevance theory, and etc.
more recently: a newly published Handbook of Pragmatics declared--- work in pragmatic theory has extended from the attempt to rescue the syntax and semantics from their own unnecessary complexities to other domains of linguistic inquiry, ranging from historical linguistics to the lexicon, from language acquisition to computational linguistics, from intonational structure to cognitive science(Horn and Ward 2004a: xi).
1.1.3 Two main schools of thought in pragmatics: Anglo-American versus European Continental
As pointed out in Huang(2001 a), two main schools of thought can be identified in contemporary pragmatics: Anglo-American and European Continental.
see 1.1.1 above, it is known as the component view of pragmatics, namely, the view that pragmatics should be treated as a core component of a theory of language, on a par with phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. By contrast, other areas such as anthropological linguistics, applied linguistics, and psycholinguistics would lie outside this set of core components.
Within the Continental tradition, pragmatics is defined in a far broader way, encompassing much that goes under the rubric of sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and discourse analysis. Under this approach, pragmatics is general conceived of a theory of linguistic communication, including how to influence people through verbal messages(Prucha 1983) .
The Continental tradition is closer to the original view of pragmatics expressed by Morris, that pragmatics should study "the relation of signs to interpreters" . Given the degree of overlap among the phenomena dealt with in other relatively well-established interdisciplinary fields of linguistics, it is rather difficult to see how a coherent research agenda of pragmatics can be made within the wider Continental tradition. To say that "everything is pragmatics" amounts to saying that "nothing is pragmatics".(Levinson 1987a)
By contrast, the narrower Anglo-American, component view of pragmatics, which focuses on topics emerging from the traditional concerns of analytical philosophy, delimits the scope of the discipline.
1.2 Why Pragmatics?
1.2.1 Linguistic underdeterminacy
It is widely accepted that there is a huge gap between the meaning of a sentence and the messages actually conveyed by the uttering of that sentence. In other words, the linguistically encoded meaning of a sentence radically underdetermines the proposition the speaker expresses when he or she utters that sentences. This is generally known in the literature as the linguistics underdeterminacy thesis. In order to fill the gap created by linguistic underdeterminacy, pragmatic has to be included as a component in an overall theory of linguistic study.
1.2.2 Simplification of semantics and syntax
The second reason why we need a pragmatic component is because its inclusion can effect a radical simplification of other core components, such as semantics and syntax.
1.3 Some basic notions in semantics and pragmatics
1.3.1 sentence, utterance, proposition
A sentence is a well-formed string of words put together according to the grammatical rules of a language. As a unit of the language system, it is an abstract entity or construct defined within a theory of grammar.
Sentence-meaning refers to those aspects of meaning that are ascribed to a sentence in the abstract, that is a sentence independent of its realization in any concrete form.( semantics)
By contrast, an utterance is the use of a particular piece of language---a phrase, a sentence, or a sequence of a sentence---by a particular speaker on a particular occasion.
Utterance meaning, or speaking-meaning is definable as what a speaker intends to convey by making an utterance.(pragmatics)
Proposition: is what is expressed by a sentence when that sentence is used to make a statement, that is, to say something, true or false, about some state of affairs in the external world. Put the other way round, a sentence, when uttered to make a statement, is said to convey a proposition.
Relationship between sentence and proposition: the same proposition can on the one hand be expressed by different sentences; the same sentence can be used to convey different propositions on different occasions.
The relationship between sentence, utterance, and proposition may be represented schematically in the tree diagram(adapted from Hurford and Heasley 1983: 23)
A proposition, being the most abstract of the three notion, can be expressed by different sentences. A given sentence, being the next most abstract of the three notions, can itself be instantiated by different utterances, which are the least abstract of the three notion.
1.3.2 Context
From a relatively theory-neutral point of view, context may in a broader sense be defined as referring to any relevant features of the dynamic setting or environment in which a linguistic unit is systematically used. Furthermore, context can be seen as composed of three different sources:
physical context---the physical setting of the utterance;
linguistic context---the surrounding utterances in the same discourse;
the general knowledge context
1.3.3 Truth value, truth condition, entailment
The notion of truth value is associated with that of proposition, and the notion of truth condition is linked to that of sentence.
As mentioned, a proposition may be true or false. But the truth or falsity of a proposition may vary from utterance occasion to utterance occasion. However, on a particular occasion, a proposition has a definite truth value, that is, it is either true or false. It is true if and only if it corresponds to some state of affairs that obtains on that occasion, and it is false if and only if it does not. This is known variously as the "corresponding", "realistic", or "simple" theory of truth.(Bradley & Swartz 1979)
Truth conditions are the conditions that the world must meet for the sentence to be true.(S is true if and only if p).
1.1 What is pragmatics?
1.1.1 A definition
Pragmatics is the systematic study of meaning by virtue of, or dependent on, the use of language. The central topics of inquiry of pragmatics include implicature, presupposition, speech acts and deixis.
1.1.2 A brief history of pragmatics
Pragmatics as a modern branch of linguistic inquiry has its origin in the philosophy of language. Its philosophical roots can be traced back to the work of the philosophers Charles Morris, Rudolf Carnap, and Charles Pierce in the 1930s. Influenced by Pierce, Morris(1938:6-7), for example, presented a threefold division into syntax, semantics, and pragmatics within semiotics---a general science of signs.
(Levinson 1983:1, Horn and Ward 2004a)
Syntax is the study of the formal relation of one sign with another. Semantics deals with the relation of signs to what they denotes, and Pragmatics addresses the relation of signs to their users and interpreters.
Carnap (1942) posited an order of degree of abstractness for the three branches of inquiry: Syntax is the most and pragmatics is the least abstract, with semantics lying somewhere in between. Consequently, syntax provides input into semantics, which provides input into pragmatics. (Recanati 2004b)
1950s: two opposing schools of thought emerged within the analytic philosophy of language: the school of ideal language philosophy
(originated by the philosophers Gottlob Ferge, Alfred Tarki, and Bertrand Russell; interested in the study of logic systems of artificial languages; successful application of its theory and methodology to natural language in the 1950s and 1960s ---today's formal semantics)
and the school of ordinary language philosophy
(By contrast, within the tradition of ordinary language philosophy, emphasis was placed on natural language rather than the formal languages studied by the logicians. Under the leadership of ordinary language philosophy flourished principally at Oxford in the 1950s and 1960s. Other leading thinks included the philosophers H. P. Grice, Peter Strawson, John Searle, and the later Ludwig Wittgenstein(Huang 2003, Recanati 2004a, 2004b). It was within the tradition of ordinary language philosophy that Austin developed his theory of speech acts, and Grice his theory of conversational implicature. Both theories have since become landmarks on the path towards the development of a systematic, philosophically inspired pragmatic theory of language use.
in the late 1960s and early 1970s: a campaign was launched by some of Noam Chomsky's disaffected pupils in generative semantics(as it was then called), notably Jerry Katz, J. R. Ross and George Lakoff, to challenge his teacher's treatment of language as an abstract, mental device divorced from the uses and functions of language. They helped to empty the "pragmatic wastebasket". A great deal of important research was done in the 1970s by linguistics such as Laurence Horn, Charles Fillmore, and Gerald Gazdar to "bring some order into the content of the pragmatic wastebasket". The publication of Stephen Levinson's celebrated textbook Pragmatics in 1983 systematized the field and marked the coming age of pragmatics as a linguistic discipline in its own right.
in the last two decades: new developments such as Laurence Horn's and Stephen Levinson's neo-Gricean pragmatic theories, Dan Sperber's and Deidre Wilson's relevance theory, and etc.
more recently: a newly published Handbook of Pragmatics declared--- work in pragmatic theory has extended from the attempt to rescue the syntax and semantics from their own unnecessary complexities to other domains of linguistic inquiry, ranging from historical linguistics to the lexicon, from language acquisition to computational linguistics, from intonational structure to cognitive science(Horn and Ward 2004a: xi).
1.1.3 Two main schools of thought in pragmatics: Anglo-American versus European Continental
As pointed out in Huang(2001 a), two main schools of thought can be identified in contemporary pragmatics: Anglo-American and European Continental.
see 1.1.1 above, it is known as the component view of pragmatics, namely, the view that pragmatics should be treated as a core component of a theory of language, on a par with phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. By contrast, other areas such as anthropological linguistics, applied linguistics, and psycholinguistics would lie outside this set of core components.
Within the Continental tradition, pragmatics is defined in a far broader way, encompassing much that goes under the rubric of sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and discourse analysis. Under this approach, pragmatics is general conceived of a theory of linguistic communication, including how to influence people through verbal messages(Prucha 1983) .
The Continental tradition is closer to the original view of pragmatics expressed by Morris, that pragmatics should study "the relation of signs to interpreters" . Given the degree of overlap among the phenomena dealt with in other relatively well-established interdisciplinary fields of linguistics, it is rather difficult to see how a coherent research agenda of pragmatics can be made within the wider Continental tradition. To say that "everything is pragmatics" amounts to saying that "nothing is pragmatics".(Levinson 1987a)
By contrast, the narrower Anglo-American, component view of pragmatics, which focuses on topics emerging from the traditional concerns of analytical philosophy, delimits the scope of the discipline.
1.2 Why Pragmatics?
1.2.1 Linguistic underdeterminacy
It is widely accepted that there is a huge gap between the meaning of a sentence and the messages actually conveyed by the uttering of that sentence. In other words, the linguistically encoded meaning of a sentence radically underdetermines the proposition the speaker expresses when he or she utters that sentences. This is generally known in the literature as the linguistics underdeterminacy thesis. In order to fill the gap created by linguistic underdeterminacy, pragmatic has to be included as a component in an overall theory of linguistic study.
1.2.2 Simplification of semantics and syntax
The second reason why we need a pragmatic component is because its inclusion can effect a radical simplification of other core components, such as semantics and syntax.
1.3 Some basic notions in semantics and pragmatics
1.3.1 sentence, utterance, proposition
A sentence is a well-formed string of words put together according to the grammatical rules of a language. As a unit of the language system, it is an abstract entity or construct defined within a theory of grammar.
Sentence-meaning refers to those aspects of meaning that are ascribed to a sentence in the abstract, that is a sentence independent of its realization in any concrete form.( semantics)
By contrast, an utterance is the use of a particular piece of language---a phrase, a sentence, or a sequence of a sentence---by a particular speaker on a particular occasion.
Utterance meaning, or speaking-meaning is definable as what a speaker intends to convey by making an utterance.(pragmatics)
Proposition: is what is expressed by a sentence when that sentence is used to make a statement, that is, to say something, true or false, about some state of affairs in the external world. Put the other way round, a sentence, when uttered to make a statement, is said to convey a proposition.
Relationship between sentence and proposition: the same proposition can on the one hand be expressed by different sentences; the same sentence can be used to convey different propositions on different occasions.
The relationship between sentence, utterance, and proposition may be represented schematically in the tree diagram(adapted from Hurford and Heasley 1983: 23)
A proposition, being the most abstract of the three notion, can be expressed by different sentences. A given sentence, being the next most abstract of the three notions, can itself be instantiated by different utterances, which are the least abstract of the three notion.
1.3.2 Context
From a relatively theory-neutral point of view, context may in a broader sense be defined as referring to any relevant features of the dynamic setting or environment in which a linguistic unit is systematically used. Furthermore, context can be seen as composed of three different sources:
physical context---the physical setting of the utterance;
linguistic context---the surrounding utterances in the same discourse;
the general knowledge context
1.3.3 Truth value, truth condition, entailment
The notion of truth value is associated with that of proposition, and the notion of truth condition is linked to that of sentence.
As mentioned, a proposition may be true or false. But the truth or falsity of a proposition may vary from utterance occasion to utterance occasion. However, on a particular occasion, a proposition has a definite truth value, that is, it is either true or false. It is true if and only if it corresponds to some state of affairs that obtains on that occasion, and it is false if and only if it does not. This is known variously as the "corresponding", "realistic", or "simple" theory of truth.(Bradley & Swartz 1979)
Truth conditions are the conditions that the world must meet for the sentence to be true.(S is true if and only if p).
2016年9月24日星期六
My notes about Understanding Semantics(ch. 2) second edition Sebastian Löbner
CH. 2 DIMENSIONS OF MEANING
This chapter will try to convey a more precise idea about expression meaning:
descriptive meaning---the relationship between meaning, reference and truth
non descriptive meaning--- dimensions of lexical meaning that are relevant on the level of social interaction or for the expression of subjective attitudes and evaluations.
2.1 Meanings are concepts
2.1.1 The meaning of a word
The meaning of the word must be knowledge directly linked to the sound pattern of the word. The meaning therefore is a mental description. For mental descriptions in general, the term concept will be used. A concept for a kind, or category, of entities is knowledge that allows us to discriminate entities of that kind from entities of other kinds.
More generally, a word can only be considered established if its form and meaning are linked in the minds of a great number of language users.
2.1.2 The meaning of a sentence
The meaning of a content word is a concept that provides a mental description of a certain kind of entity.
The meaning of a sentence is a concept that provides a mental description of a certain kind of situation.
2.2 Descriptive meaning
2.2.1 Descriptive meaning and reference
2.2.1.1 Reference and the descriptive meaning of words
Descriptive meaning of content words: a concept for its potential referents.
2.2.1.2 The descriptve meaning of sentences: propositions
Proposition: the descriptive meaning of a sentence, its proposition, is a concept that provides a mental description of the kind of situations it potentially refers to.
The descriptive meaning of a word or a grammatical form is its contribution to the descriptive meaning of the sentences in which the word or grammatical form may occur.
2.2.2 Denotation and truth conditions
2.2.2.1 Denotations
The denotation of a content word is the category, or set, of all its potential referents.
The relationship between a word, its meaning and its denotation is often depicted in the semiotic triangle.
The arrow that connects the word with its denotation is drawn with a broken line. This is to indicate that a word is not directly linked to its denotation, but only directly via its descriptive meaning.
When a word is actually used in a concrete CoU, we deal with a token of the word, i.e. a particular spoken or written realization. The semiotic triangle then yields a relationship between the word token, its meaning and its referent: the meaning describes the referent to which the word, in the given COU, refers.
2.2.2.2 Truth conditions
There is no established term for what would be the denotation of a sentence. In analogy to the denotation of a content word it would be the set, or category, of all situations to which the sentence can potentially refer. There is another notion that is quite common and directly related to the would-be denotation of a sentence: its so-called truth condition.
The truth condition of a sentence are the conditions under which it is true.
A proper definition of the truth condition of a sentence S always takes this form:
"S is true in a given CoU if and only if..."
The connection between a sentence, its proposition and its truth conditions can be put as follows: the descriptive meaning of the sentence is its proposition, and the proposition determines the truth conditions of the sentence.
This chapter will try to convey a more precise idea about expression meaning:
descriptive meaning---the relationship between meaning, reference and truth
non descriptive meaning--- dimensions of lexical meaning that are relevant on the level of social interaction or for the expression of subjective attitudes and evaluations.
2.1 Meanings are concepts
2.1.1 The meaning of a word
The meaning of the word must be knowledge directly linked to the sound pattern of the word. The meaning therefore is a mental description. For mental descriptions in general, the term concept will be used. A concept for a kind, or category, of entities is knowledge that allows us to discriminate entities of that kind from entities of other kinds.
More generally, a word can only be considered established if its form and meaning are linked in the minds of a great number of language users.
2.1.2 The meaning of a sentence
The meaning of a content word is a concept that provides a mental description of a certain kind of entity.
The meaning of a sentence is a concept that provides a mental description of a certain kind of situation.
2.2 Descriptive meaning
2.2.1 Descriptive meaning and reference
2.2.1.1 Reference and the descriptive meaning of words
Descriptive meaning of content words: a concept for its potential referents.
2.2.1.2 The descriptve meaning of sentences: propositions
Proposition: the descriptive meaning of a sentence, its proposition, is a concept that provides a mental description of the kind of situations it potentially refers to.
The descriptive meaning of a word or a grammatical form is its contribution to the descriptive meaning of the sentences in which the word or grammatical form may occur.
2.2.2 Denotation and truth conditions
2.2.2.1 Denotations
The denotation of a content word is the category, or set, of all its potential referents.
The relationship between a word, its meaning and its denotation is often depicted in the semiotic triangle.
The arrow that connects the word with its denotation is drawn with a broken line. This is to indicate that a word is not directly linked to its denotation, but only directly via its descriptive meaning.
When a word is actually used in a concrete CoU, we deal with a token of the word, i.e. a particular spoken or written realization. The semiotic triangle then yields a relationship between the word token, its meaning and its referent: the meaning describes the referent to which the word, in the given COU, refers.
2.2.2.2 Truth conditions
There is no established term for what would be the denotation of a sentence. In analogy to the denotation of a content word it would be the set, or category, of all situations to which the sentence can potentially refer. There is another notion that is quite common and directly related to the would-be denotation of a sentence: its so-called truth condition.
The truth condition of a sentence are the conditions under which it is true.
A proper definition of the truth condition of a sentence S always takes this form:
"S is true in a given CoU if and only if..."
The connection between a sentence, its proposition and its truth conditions can be put as follows: the descriptive meaning of the sentence is its proposition, and the proposition determines the truth conditions of the sentence.
2.2.3 Proposition and sentence type
The grammatical type of the sentence contributes to its meaning, and this contribution is non-descriptive.
The meaning contribution of grammatical sentence type is a first example of non-descriptive meaning. Two more types: social meaning and expressive meaning.
2.3 Meaning and social interaction: social meaning
Any verbal utterance will receive an interpretation as a communicative act in the current social network, and in this sense it always has a social function.
2.3.1 Expression with social meaning
Social meaning is on a par with descriptive meaning: it is part of the lexical meaning of certain words, phrases or grammatical forms. If an expression has social meaning, it has so independently of the particular CoU. Like descriptive meaning, social meaning is an invariable part of the expression meaning.
2.4 Meaning and subjectivity: expressive meaning
Anything we say will also be taken as the expression of a personal emotion, opinion or attitude.
2.4.1 Expressive meaning
On a par with descriptive and social meaning, expressive meaning is part of the lexical meaning of certain expressions,a semantic quality of words and phrases independent of the CoU and of the way they are being spoken.
Exclusively expressive meaning: words and phrases used for directly expressing an emotion, feeling or sensation.(ouch, wow, oh)
2.4.2 Social versus expressive meaning
The use of terms and forms with social meaning is governed by rules of social conduct. They define what kind of social circumstances make suitable occasions for using the expression and they define what its use is taken for: a greeting, an apology, a polite or intimate way of referring to other person...
The use of terms with expressive meaning is governed by different criteria which concern only the subjective adequacy of expressing one's personal feelings, attitudes...
2.5 Connotations
If an expression has descriptive meaning, any mention of it will activate not only the concept for its potential referents but together with it a host of further associations. Among the associations, some are conventional. They are called connotations and often considered to be something like a secondary meaning in addition to the primary lexical meaning.
It is more appropriate to consider connotations to be connected not to the word itself(like meaning) but rather to the actual denotation.
(to be continued after reading again...)
2016年9月23日星期五
My Notes for Semantics a Coursebook Second Edition Hurford, Heasley & Smith
Unit 1 Basic ideas in Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning in language.
Speaker meaning is what a speaker means (intends to convey) when he uses a piece of language.
Sentence meaning (or word meaning) is what a sentence (or word) means, i.e. what is counts as the equivalent of in the language concerned.
A theory is a precisely specified, coherent, and economical frame-work of interdependent statements and definitions, constructed so that as large a number as possible of particular basic facts can either be seen to follow from it or be describable in terms of it.
Unit 2 Sentence, Utterance and Proposition
An utterance is any stretch of talks, by one person, before and after which there is silence on the part of that person.
An utterance is the use by a particular speaker, on a particular occasion, of a piece of language, such as a sequence of sentences, or a single phrase, or even a single word.
Utterances are physical events. Events are ephemeral. Utterances die on the wind.
A sentence is neither a physical event nor a physical object. It is, conceived abstractly, a string of words put together by the grammatical rules of a language. A sentence can be thought of as the ideal string of words behind various realizations in utterances and inscriptions.
In semantics we need to make a careful distinction between utterances and sentences. In particular we need some way of making it clear when we are discussing sentences and when utterances. We adopt the convention that anything written between single quotation marks represents an utterance, and anything italicized represents a sentence or (similarly abstract) part of a sentence, such as a phrase or a word.
We have defined a sentence as a string of words. A given sentence always consists of the same words, and in the same order. Any change in the words, or in their order, makes a different sentence, for our purposes.
It would make sense to say that an utterance was in a particular accent. However, it would not make strict sense to say that a sentence was in a particular accent. Accent and voice quality belong strictly to the utterance, not to the sentence uttered.
Not all utterances are actually tokens of sentences, but sometimes only of parts of sentences, e.g. phrases or single words.
Utterance of non-sentences, e.g. short phrases, or single words, are used by people in communication all the time. Semantics is concerned with the meanings of non-sentences, such as phrases and incomplete sentences, just as much as with whole sentences. But it is more convenient to begin our analysis with the case of the whole sentences. The meaning of whole sentences involve propositions; the notion of a proposition is central to semantics.
A proposition is that part of the meaning of the utterance of a declarative sentence which describes some state of affairs.
The state of affairs typically involves persons or things referred to by expression in the sentence and the situation or action they are involved in. In uttering a declarative sentence a speaker typically asserts a proposition.
The notion of truth can be used to decide whether two sentences express different propositions. Thus if there is any conceivable set of circumstances in which one sentence is true, while the other is false, we can be sure that they express different propositions.
True propositions correspond to facts, in the ordinary sense of the word fact. False propositions do not correspond to facts.
Proposition, unlike sentences, cannot be said to belong to any particular language. Sentences in different languages can correspond to the same proposition, if the two sentences are perfect translations of each other.
A single proposition could be expressed by using several different sentences and each of these sentences could be uttered an infinite number of times.
Unit 3 Reference and sense
In talking of sense, we deal with relationship inside the language; in talking of reference we deal with the relationships between language and the world.
By means of reference, a speaker indicates which things in the world(including persons) are being talked about. Reference is a relationship between parts of a language and things outside the language(in the word). Some expressions in a language can have variable reference. The reference of an expression vary according to the circumstances(time, place, etc.) in which the expression is used, or the topic of the conversation in which the expression is used.
On the relationship between sense and reference: the referent of an expression is often a thing or a person in the world; whereas the sense of an expression is not a thing at all. In fact, it is difficult to say what sort of entity the sense of an expression is. It is sometimes useful to think of sense as that part of the meaning of an expression that is left over when reference is factored out. The sense of an expression is an abstraction, but it is helpful to note that it is an abstraction that can be entertained in the mind of a language user. When a person understands fully what is said to him, it is reasonable to say that he grasps the sense of the expressions he hears.
Every expression that has meaning has sense, but not every expression has reference.
The relationship between reference and utterance is not so direct as that between sense and proposition, but there is a similarity --- both referring and uttering are acts performed by particular speakers on particular occasions.
Semantics is the study of meaning in language.
Speaker meaning is what a speaker means (intends to convey) when he uses a piece of language.
Sentence meaning (or word meaning) is what a sentence (or word) means, i.e. what is counts as the equivalent of in the language concerned.
A theory is a precisely specified, coherent, and economical frame-work of interdependent statements and definitions, constructed so that as large a number as possible of particular basic facts can either be seen to follow from it or be describable in terms of it.
Unit 2 Sentence, Utterance and Proposition
An utterance is any stretch of talks, by one person, before and after which there is silence on the part of that person.
An utterance is the use by a particular speaker, on a particular occasion, of a piece of language, such as a sequence of sentences, or a single phrase, or even a single word.
Utterances are physical events. Events are ephemeral. Utterances die on the wind.
A sentence is neither a physical event nor a physical object. It is, conceived abstractly, a string of words put together by the grammatical rules of a language. A sentence can be thought of as the ideal string of words behind various realizations in utterances and inscriptions.
In semantics we need to make a careful distinction between utterances and sentences. In particular we need some way of making it clear when we are discussing sentences and when utterances. We adopt the convention that anything written between single quotation marks represents an utterance, and anything italicized represents a sentence or (similarly abstract) part of a sentence, such as a phrase or a word.
We have defined a sentence as a string of words. A given sentence always consists of the same words, and in the same order. Any change in the words, or in their order, makes a different sentence, for our purposes.
It would make sense to say that an utterance was in a particular accent. However, it would not make strict sense to say that a sentence was in a particular accent. Accent and voice quality belong strictly to the utterance, not to the sentence uttered.
Not all utterances are actually tokens of sentences, but sometimes only of parts of sentences, e.g. phrases or single words.
Utterance of non-sentences, e.g. short phrases, or single words, are used by people in communication all the time. Semantics is concerned with the meanings of non-sentences, such as phrases and incomplete sentences, just as much as with whole sentences. But it is more convenient to begin our analysis with the case of the whole sentences. The meaning of whole sentences involve propositions; the notion of a proposition is central to semantics.
A proposition is that part of the meaning of the utterance of a declarative sentence which describes some state of affairs.
The state of affairs typically involves persons or things referred to by expression in the sentence and the situation or action they are involved in. In uttering a declarative sentence a speaker typically asserts a proposition.
The notion of truth can be used to decide whether two sentences express different propositions. Thus if there is any conceivable set of circumstances in which one sentence is true, while the other is false, we can be sure that they express different propositions.
True propositions correspond to facts, in the ordinary sense of the word fact. False propositions do not correspond to facts.
Proposition, unlike sentences, cannot be said to belong to any particular language. Sentences in different languages can correspond to the same proposition, if the two sentences are perfect translations of each other.
A single proposition could be expressed by using several different sentences and each of these sentences could be uttered an infinite number of times.
Unit 3 Reference and sense
In talking of sense, we deal with relationship inside the language; in talking of reference we deal with the relationships between language and the world.
By means of reference, a speaker indicates which things in the world(including persons) are being talked about. Reference is a relationship between parts of a language and things outside the language(in the word). Some expressions in a language can have variable reference. The reference of an expression vary according to the circumstances(time, place, etc.) in which the expression is used, or the topic of the conversation in which the expression is used.
On the relationship between sense and reference: the referent of an expression is often a thing or a person in the world; whereas the sense of an expression is not a thing at all. In fact, it is difficult to say what sort of entity the sense of an expression is. It is sometimes useful to think of sense as that part of the meaning of an expression that is left over when reference is factored out. The sense of an expression is an abstraction, but it is helpful to note that it is an abstraction that can be entertained in the mind of a language user. When a person understands fully what is said to him, it is reasonable to say that he grasps the sense of the expressions he hears.
Every expression that has meaning has sense, but not every expression has reference.
The relationship between reference and utterance is not so direct as that between sense and proposition, but there is a similarity --- both referring and uttering are acts performed by particular speakers on particular occasions.
2016年9月18日星期日
My Notes for Pragmatics Huang Y. 2007 Ch. 3
Ch. 3 Presupposition
Presupposition is another pragmatic topic that originates within the tradition of the philosophy of language.
Gottlob Frege: the first scholar in modern times who (re)introduced the philosophical study of presupposition(the notion of presupposition-- the medieval philosopher Pertus Hispanus)
In the philosophy of language, the study of presupposition has largely been confined to debates about the nature of reference a d referring expressions.
In linguistics, on the other hand, the investigation of presupposition is concerned with a much wider range of phenomena, centering around the general debates about the interaction and division of labour between semantics and pragmatics.
In linguistics, on the other hand, the investigation of presupposition is concerned with a much wider range of phenomena, centering around the general debates about the interaction and division of labour between semantics and pragmatics.
3.1 What is presupposition?
- Presupposition can be informally defined as an inference or proposition whose truth is taken for granted in the utterance of a sentence. Its main function is to act as a precondition of some sort of the appropriate use of that sentence.
- Presupposition is usually generated by the use of particular lexical items and/or linguistic constructions. Lexical items and linguistic constructions that engender presuppositions are called presupposition triggers.
3.2 Properties of presupposition
Presupposition exhibit a number of distinctive properties, notably: constancy under negation and defeasibility/cancellability.
- Constancy under negation
By constancy under negation is meant that a presupposition generated by the use of a lexical item or a syntactic structure remains the same when the sentence containing that lexical item or syntactic structure is negated.
An utterance of a sentence S presupposes a proposition p if and only if:
a. if S is true, then p is true
b. if S is false, then p is still true
Problems:
Constancy under negation may not necessary.(e.g. there is a class of sentences which are hard if not impossible to negate, yet they bear presuppositions)
Constancy under negation may not be sufficient. - Defeasibility
Like conversational implicatures, but unlike semantic entailments, presuppositions are cancellable. They are nullified if they are inconsistent with background assumptions, conversational implicatures, and certain discourse contexts. - The projection problem
The projection problem manifest itself in two opposite directions. On the one side of the projection coin, the presuppositions of a component sentence may fail to be projected on to, and hence inherited by, the whole complex sentence. On the other side, the presuppositions of a component sentence may be preserved when that constituent sentence becomes part of a more complex sentence.
3.3 Analyses
- The filtering-satisfaction analysis
- The cancellation analysis
- The accommodation analysis
Summary
Presupposition may not be a single phenomenon with a unitary explanation, but rather a domain of related issues involving the interaction of several semantic and pragmatic principles.
Entailment: is a relationship that applies between two sentences, where the truth of one implies the truth of the other, because of the meaning of the words involved.(semantic field)
Presuppositions: are inferences about what is assumed to be true in the utterance rather than directly asserted to be true. They are closely linked to the words and grammatical structures in the utterance.(pragmatic field)
Entailment: is a relationship that applies between two sentences, where the truth of one implies the truth of the other, because of the meaning of the words involved.(semantic field)
Presuppositions: are inferences about what is assumed to be true in the utterance rather than directly asserted to be true. They are closely linked to the words and grammatical structures in the utterance.(pragmatic field)
2016年9月17日星期六
My Notes for Introduction to Neurolinguistics Elisabeth Ahlsén
Part 1 Introduction to neurolinguistics
Chapter 1 What is neurolinguistics?
Chapter 1 What is neurolinguistics?
- Neurolinguistics studies the relation of language and communication to different aspects of brain function, in other words it tries to explore how the brain understands and produces language and communication. Neurolinguistics has a very close relationship to psycholinguistics, but focuses more on studies of the brain. Studies of language and communication after brain damage are perhaps the most common type of neurolinguistic study. However, experiments, model construction, computer simulations, and neuroimaging studies are also very frequently used methods today.
- The main questions of interest for neurolinguistics were first addressed very far back in history. There was a period of intensified focus in the late 19th century; since then, they have become central to researches in many disciplines.
- "Neurolinguistics" became the established term for the field in the 1960s, under the influence of the Chomsky.
- Different views on the relation between brain and language:
Localism tries to find locations or centers in the brain for different language functions.
Associationism situates language functions in the connections between different areas of the brain, making it possible to associate, for example, perceptions of different senses with words and/ or "concepts".
Dynamic localization of function assumes that functional systems of localized subfunctions perform language functions.
Holistic theories consider many language functions to be handled by widespread areas of the brain working together.
Evolution-based theories stress the relationship between how the brain and language evolved over time in different species, how they develop in children, and how adults perform language functions. - The central questions of neurolinguistics:
What happens to language and communication after brain damage of different types?
How did the ability to communicate and the ability to use language develop as the species evolved? How can we relate this development to the evolution of the brain?
How do children learn to communicate and use language? How can we relate their acquisition of language to the development of their brains?
How can we measure and visualize processes in the brain that are involved in language and communication?
How can we make good models of language and communication processes that will help us to explain the linguistic phenomena that we study?
How can we make computer simulations of language processing, language development, and language loss?
How can we design experiments that will allow us to test our models and hypotheses about language processing?
Chapter 2 The development of theories about brain and language(P. 24 to be continued)
Different views of the language-brain relationship along the continuum from localism to holism:
Localism：different "higher functions" are localized in different centers of the brain, mainly the cortex. Either these centers can be seen as "sisters", being equally important, or one center, such as the prefrontal area( in front of the frontal lobes), may be seen as superordinate to the others. ( Aphasia is seen as the result of a lesion in a language center. Well-known localists included Gall and Broca.
Association( or connectionism): higher functions are dependent on the connections between different centers in the cortex. Linguistic ability is seen as the relationship between images and words.（Aphasia results from broken connections between the centers that are needed for linguistic function. Representatives of this view are Wernicke, Lichtheim, and Geschwind.
Dynamic localization of function: different subfunctions are seen as localized in different parts of the brain. These subfunctions must be combined in order to achieve more complex functions, which can be "put together" in a number of different ways.
Hierachical or evolution-based view: emphasize the layered structure of the brain from inner/lower and more primitive structures to the later developed and superimposed cortical layer and the role of all of these layers in language and communication.
Holism: the brain works as a whole, at least to accomplish higher functions. The cortex is said to handle "higher cognitive functions", "symbolic thinking", "intelligence", or "abstraction", and aphasia is a sign of a general cognitive loss, not a specific language loss.
Dynamic localization of function: different subfunctions are seen as localized in different parts of the brain. These subfunctions must be combined in order to achieve more complex functions, which can be "put together" in a number of different ways.
Hierachical or evolution-based view: emphasize the layered structure of the brain from inner/lower and more primitive structures to the later developed and superimposed cortical layer and the role of all of these layers in language and communication.
Holism: the brain works as a whole, at least to accomplish higher functions. The cortex is said to handle "higher cognitive functions", "symbolic thinking", "intelligence", or "abstraction", and aphasia is a sign of a general cognitive loss, not a specific language loss.
Unitarism: the soul is one and cannot be divided.
Equipotentiality: all parts of the cortex have the same functional potential and that the size of a brain lesion determines the extent of the aphasia( the mass effect).
Ideas about brain and language before the 19th century
Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome:
The first reference to the brain as the center of language is found in the Edwin Smith papyrus from about 3500 Bc.
In writings from Greek antiquity, language disorders are discussed by Hippocrates(400 BC). Around the same time, Democritus compared the brain to a guard or sentinel with two functions: the internal function of guarding the intelligence and the external function of guarding the senses. Herophilus localized intelligence in the ventricles of the brain at about 300 BC.
Plato(4th century BC) wanted to localize the different abilities of the soul in different parts of the brain, which he saw as the center of all senses. It was with Plato that the idea arose that a function could have a one-to-one relationship with an area in the brain.
Aristotle claimed that the brain was just a refrigerating system, while the heart was the center of all nerves; this opinion did not have much influence in the long run. His "flow charts" for psychological processes, from the sense organs to cognition and from cognition to motor functions(sense organ---sensation---perception---cognition---memory) influence later models of language functions.
Galen(3r century BC) further developed the view that different abilities were localized in different ventricles.
From the Middle Ages to 1800:
Theoretically, the discussion of the ventricles of the brain continued. Memory was assumed to be localized in the fourth ventricle and the Italian physician Antonio Guainerio suggested in the 15th century that word sparsity and naming errors were symptoms of a disturbance of memory, caused by too much phlegm in the fourth ventricle.
In the 16th century, the theories about the ventricles were criticized by Costanzo Varolius and Andreas Vesalius, both of whom wanted to localize psychological functions in the soft substance of the brain and to stress the importance of brain volume.
In the 17th century, the school of unitarism. Descartes held the view that the soul indivisible and had its center in the pineal gland, an organ that is located in the middle of the brain. Physician Thomas Willis(1664,1672) placed the imagination in the corpus callosum(a bundle of fibers connecting the two brain hemisphere). François de la Peyronie(1741), a French surgeon, also saw the corpus callosum as the center of the soul. Unitarian theories were criticized by the anatomist Albrecht von Haller as "theories without knowledge". But they were supported by the church and the monarchy at the time, since the idea of the soul as one unit, possibly located in one central brain structure, was consistent with religious dogma.
In 1770, the German physician Johann Gesner wrote a monograph called "Speech amnesia". He saw speech disorders as a type of memory disorder, caused by inertia in the connections between the different parts of the brain. These disorders were assumed to cause difficulties in associating images or abstract ideas with linguistic signs. (the first expression of an associationism which is clearly combined with neurophysiological speculation.
In 1770, the German physician Johann Gesner wrote a monograph called "Speech amnesia". He saw speech disorders as a type of memory disorder, caused by inertia in the connections between the different parts of the brain. These disorders were assumed to cause difficulties in associating images or abstract ideas with linguistic signs. (the first expression of an associationism which is clearly combined with neurophysiological speculation.
localist views were also being expressed at this time and descriptions of personal experiences of speech and language loss were published.
To sum up, at the turn of the 19th century, both theories and knowledge about aphasia existed.
The foundations of neurolinguistics theories in the late 19th century:
Gall: the first person to localize mental faculties in the brain cortex. (localist)
After Gall: (debate between unitarists and localist---partially political)
Bouillaud and Auburtin: Jean-Baptiste Bouillaud can be seen as a link between Gall and Broca. He was Gall's student and supported him. Bouillaud found two types of speech disorders connected to brain damage: disorders of "speech movements" and disorders of "word memory". Ernest Auburtin was Bouillaud's son-in-law and introduced his ideas to the anthropological society of Paris in 1861.
Broca: Traditionally, neurolinguistics is said to have been born in 1861, when Paul Broca presented his theory, based on a patient's symptoms and the dissection of his brain. Broca's theory led to new conflicts between unitarists and localists.
Meynert: claimed that consciousness, intelligence, and memory were cortical but not localized.
Wernicke: imagined that there was a specific "language gyrus" ranging from Wernicke's area(responsible for the receptive function) to Broca's area(responsible for the expressive function). Lesions in either of these areas or in the connection between them would cause aphasia.
Lichtheim
The period after Broca, Wernicke, and Lichtheim: after Broca, Wernicke, and Lichtheim, localism and associationism became the dominant views. Until the 1920s, the holistic began to dominate.
Jackson: not interested in anatomical localization, he studied how stimuli evoke responses and how complex these responses are. He distinguished two levels of language: automatic and propositional and three levels of function: elementary reflexes, automatic actions, and intentional actions.
Freud: His theory became popular in later years, since it contained thoughts about the pragmatic influence on linguistic symptoms.
Further developments in the 20th century
The strengthening of holism: Marie, von Monakow, Head, Goldstein, Lashley, bay, and Brown
Localism and associationism
Broca: Traditionally, neurolinguistics is said to have been born in 1861, when Paul Broca presented his theory, based on a patient's symptoms and the dissection of his brain. Broca's theory led to new conflicts between unitarists and localists.
Meynert: claimed that consciousness, intelligence, and memory were cortical but not localized.
Wernicke: imagined that there was a specific "language gyrus" ranging from Wernicke's area(responsible for the receptive function) to Broca's area(responsible for the expressive function). Lesions in either of these areas or in the connection between them would cause aphasia.
Lichtheim
The period after Broca, Wernicke, and Lichtheim: after Broca, Wernicke, and Lichtheim, localism and associationism became the dominant views. Until the 1920s, the holistic began to dominate.
Jackson: not interested in anatomical localization, he studied how stimuli evoke responses and how complex these responses are. He distinguished two levels of language: automatic and propositional and three levels of function: elementary reflexes, automatic actions, and intentional actions.
Freud: His theory became popular in later years, since it contained thoughts about the pragmatic influence on linguistic symptoms.
Further developments in the 20th century
The strengthening of holism: Marie, von Monakow, Head, Goldstein, Lashley, bay, and Brown
Localism and associationism
Association is rediscovered by Geschwind
Dynamic Iocalization of function: Pavlov, Vygotsky, and Luria
The test psychological tradition
Linguists and linguistic influence on aphasiology
Dynamic Iocalization of function: Pavlov, Vygotsky, and Luria
The test psychological tradition
Linguists and linguistic influence on aphasiology
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