Transcript Functional Linguistics: what to include, what to exclude

FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS:
WHAT TO INCLUDE, WHAT TO
EXCLUDE
J. LACHLAN MACKENZIE©
Forman: … the huge number of structural properties of language that seem to be not only
useless, but downright dysfunctional! Are you going to tell me that effective communication
‘needs’ gender marking, agreement rules, irregular verbs, co-indexing mechanisms that
only Rube Goldberg could have dreamed up, and things like that? Yet they’re all an
integral part of the formal structural system in the particular language.
Funk: A lot of what might seem dysfunctional at first glance is probably anything but.
I don’t doubt for a minute that gender and agreement, for example, play an important
role in tracking referents in discourse.
Forman: But you’ve got to agree that most of the profound generalizations about language
structure that we’ve arrived at in decades of research in generative grammar have little, if
anything, to do with the functions of language. What’s communicatively necessary, or even
useful, about rules being structure-dependent? About their applying cyclically? About
abstract principles like the ECP or Spec-Head Agreement?
Funk: A lot of your ‘profound generalizations’ are no more than artifacts of the narrow
scope of the formalist enterprise. If all you’re interested in doing is pushing symbols around,
then you’ll get generalizations about symbol pushing. Don’t tell me, though, that they have
anything to do with the way language works.
Forman: That strikes me as a totally head-in-the-sand attitude, not to mention an unscientific
one. Generalizations are generalizations. We wouldn’t expect to find deep formal patterns in
language if language weren’t ‘designed’ that way. What you’re saying is that you won’t accept
any generalization that doesn’t fit in with your preconceived ideas about how language is
supposed to work.
Funk: I could say the same to you! Your head-in-the sand attitude has prevented you from
even asking how much iconicity there is to syntax, much less discovering there there’s an
enormous amount. And that’s only one example I could cite. …
Newmeyer, Frederick (1998), Language form and language function. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
MY BACKGROUND
• PhD (Edinburgh) in generative semantics
• Career in Amsterdam in Functional Grammar
(Dik)
• Co-development of Functional Discourse
Grammar
• with Kees Hengeveld
• Since 2003 co-editor of Functions of Language
• Since 2007 Professor of Functional Linguistics at
VU University Amsterdam
• Now asked to write on ‘Functional linguistics’ for
Routledge Handbook of Linguistics. What to
include and what to exclude?
CONTINUUM RATHER THAN
DICHOTOMY
Radical
Pragmatics
FUNCTION
Systemic Functional Linguistics
Functional Discourse Grammar
Role and Reference Grammar
FORM
Generative grammar
MORE PLAYERS?
Butler, Christopher S. & Francisco Gonzálvez García. Fc. Exploring
Functional-Cognitive Space. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John
Benjamins.
FG, EG, Givón, RCG, SS, FDG, SFL, RRG, CG, GCxG, FCxG + 5
MULTIDIMENSIONAL SPACE?
Butler, Christopher S. MS. Systemic Functional Linguistics, cognitive
science and Cognitive Linguistics.
FUNCTIONALISM MEETS FORMALISM
Kuno, Susumu, and Ken-ichi Takami (1993). Grammar and Discourse Principles: Functional Syntax and GB
Theory.
Most functionalists are critical of formal linguistics and do not much concern themselves with it. Some
are even antagonistic to formal analysis and disregard it entirely. Kuno, however, has always kept up
with the development of formal linguistics, in particular, formal syntax within generative grammar.
While it is true that his work involving formal syntax is largely critical of current research in generative
grammar, his criticism is based on a deep understanding of it. His position has therefore produced
rare and invaluable contributions to the development of linguistic theory. On the one hand, he has
repeatedly pointed out the inadequacy of research based on the narrowly formalist view of many
formal syntacticians, while, on the other he has urged these syntacticians to take into consideration
the communicative functions of natural language. (Kamio & Takami 1999: ix)
Bresnan, Joan (2001). Lexical-Functional Syntax. Oxford: Blackwell.
In LFG, there are two fundamental levels of syntactic representation: constituent structure (cstructure) and functional structure (f-structure).
• C-structures have the form of context-free phrase structure trees.
• F-structures are sets of pairs of attributes and values; attributes may be features, such as tense
and gender, or functions, such as subject and object.
The name of the theory emphasizes an important difference between LFG and the Chomskyan
tradition from which it developed: many phenomena are thought to be more naturally analysed in
terms of grammatical functions as represented in the lexicon or in f-structure, rather than on the level
of phrase structure. An example is the alternation between active and passive, which rather than
being treated as a transformation, is handled in the lexicon. Grammatical functions are not derived
from phrase structure configurations, but are represented at the parallel level of functional structure.
(From LFG site, FAQ)
FUNCTIONALISM MEETS FORMALISM
AGAIN
Langacker, Ronald W. (1974), Movement rules in functional perspective.
Language 50, 630–664.
When we examine the specific effects of individual rules rather than the abstract
characterization of classes of rules, we find that raising, lowering, and fronting rules all have a
property in common: THEY ALL SERVE TO MAKE THE OBJECTIVE CONTENT OF SENTENCES MORE PROMINENT.
(p. 650)
Heath, Jeffrey (1978), Functional universals. Proceedings of the 4th Annual
Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 86–95.
...our framework takes it as a major goal of grammatical theory to describe a set of functions
which, by means of different combinations of formal units ..., play fundamental roles in
shaping the formal grammars of individual languages (p. 89)
Hengeveld, Kees (1999), Formalizing functionally. In Michael Darnell, Edith
Moravcsik, Michael Noonan, Frederick Newmeyer & Kathleen Wheatly
(eds), Functionalism and Formalism in Linguistics, Vol. 2 , 93–105. Amsterdam:
Benjamins.
Formalizing theories have the ability to generate explicit testable hypotheses about
grammatical structure. Functional theories have the advantage of using languageindependent basic semantic notions that allow for cross-linguistic generalizations. A formalfunctional theory thus combines the strongest points of functional and formal approaches.
FUNCTIONALISM
Based on the conviction that language phenomena,
especially in syntax and morphology, but possibly also
in discourse and/or phonology, must be studied with
explicit regard to their instrumentality in interpersonal
communication.
Language users, with their cognitive capacities and
limitations and their sociocultural embedding, are
axiomatic to functional linguistics.
BATES, THAL & MACWHINNEY (1991)
Six straw men:
• Grammar is a direct reflection of meaning.
• opportunities and limitations imposed by memory, perception, planning
and articulation of speech movements, and the learning process
• Grammar is iconic.
• indexical relations of contiguity, e.g. relative clauses best interpreted if next
to head; pronoun as interruption marker
• Mappings from meaning to grammar are one to one.
• rather, they are many-to-many
• Mappings from meaning to grammar are deterministic.
• “when we learn a language, we learn not only that a given form and
meaning go together, we also learn how strongly they go together in our
native language.”
• Functionalism is anti-nativist.
• “the human capacity for language could be both innate and speciesspecific, and yet involve no mechanisms that evolved specifically and
uniquely for language itself.”
• Functionalism is anti-linguistic.
• “Different kinds of functionalist claims require different kinds of evidence.”
• Four levels
BATES, THAL & MACWHINNEY’S 4
LEVELS
Level 1 functionalism (‘Linguistic Darwinism’)
• the role of cognitive and communicative functions in the
evolution of language proper, and the history of individual
languages
Level 2 functionalism
• the causal relationship between form and function in real-time
language use by adult speakers of the language
Level 3 functionalism
• the causal role of cognitive and communicative functions in
language acquisition by children
Level 4 functionalism
• facts from Levels 1 through 3 play a direct role in the
characterization of adult linguistic competence
OVERLAPS
Descriptive-typological linguistics
Dryer, Matthew S. (2006), Descriptive theories, explanatory theories, and basic linguistic theory.
In Felix Ameka, Alan Dench & Nicholas Evans (eds), Catching language: Issues in grammar writing,
207–234. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Historical linguistics
especially grammaticalization and lexicalization studies
Text grammar and discourse analysis
Corpus linguistics
Conversation analysis
Optimality Theory (Bresnan, Aissen)
Cognitive and constructionist linguistics
Some strands of psycholinguistics
...
SMIRNOVA & MORTELMANS
Smirnova, Elena & Tanja Mortelmans (2010). Funktionale
Grammatik: Konzepte und Theorien. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
(Reviewed by J.L. Mackenzie, Functions of Language 19.1
(2012): 119-125.)
Chapters on FG, SFG, CG, GCxG, GT
• Negative definition – all not generative grammar (p. 13), esp. not autonomous
syntax
• Positive definition – language researched wrt role in interaction
•
•
•
Structures derive from language’s cognitive and communicative functions
Language change attributable to adult creativity
First language acquisition based in child’s ability to categorize and abstract
DIVISION OF LABOUR?
Haspelmath, Martin (2000). Why can’t we talk to each
other? Lingua 110, 235–255. ... review of:
Newmeyer, Frederick (1998). Language form and
language function. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
Haspelmath argues that formalists and functionalists differ in their goals; if this
were accepted they could come to a division of labour.
Newmeyer: “Formal analysis precedes functional explanation” (p. 341)
Haspelmath: “This is naive ... It is not possible to arrive at the correct formal
description without a prior cross-linguistic and functional analysis.” (p. 251)
Interesting observation that “the gulf between functionally and formally oriented
approaches in phonology seems to be not nearly as wide as in syntax.” (p.253)
OR HAS FUNCTIONALISM WON? ;-)
Golumbia, David (2010), Minimalism is functionalism.
Language Sciences 32, 28–42.
“MP represents a dramatic break with earlier generative theories. MP adopts
many of the assumptions and goals of the linguistic research projects that
emerged before, alongside, and contrary to Chomsky’s own, the ones which
have come in the linguistic literature to be called functionalism.” (Abstract)
“… while Chomsky has been profoundly interested in just those parts of language
that do not yoke into service existing or otherwise-purposeful cognitive structures
and capacities, functionalists like Givón are interested in looking at the parts of
language that do interact with the rest of cognition. Framed this way, formalism
and functionalism suddenly appear to be halves of the same project rather than
projects competing for the same territory, …” (p. 34)
“Chomskyan theory, in its conceptual foundations, has become hard to
distinguish from functionalist theories. It remains to be seen if this shift will have the
same influence outside of linguistics enjoyed by Chomsky’s earlier research.” (p.
40)
REFERENCES
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Bates, Elizabeth, Donna Thal & Brian MacWhinney (1991), The functionalist approach to language and
its implications for assessment and intervention. Pragmatics of Language, 1–6.
Bresnan, Joan (2001), Lexical-Functional Syntax. Oxford: Blackwell.
Butler, Christopher S. MS, Systemic Functional Linguistics, cognitive science and Cognitive Linguistics.
Butler, Christopher S. & Francisco Gonzálvez García. Fc., Exploring Functional-Cognitive Space.
Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Dryer, Matthew S. (2006), Descriptive theories, explanatory theories, and basic linguistic theory. In Felix
Ameka, Alan Dench & Nicholas Evans (eds), Catching language: Issues in grammar writing, 207–234.
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Golumbia, David (2010), Minimalism is functionalism. Language Sciences 32, 28–42.
Gonzálvez-García, Francisco & Christopher S. Butler (2006), Mapping functional-cognitive space. Annual
Review of Cognitive Linguistics 4, 39–96.
Haspelmath, Martin (2000), Why can’t we talk to each other? Lingua 110, 235–255.
Heath, Jeffrey (1978), Functional universals. Proceedings of the 4th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley
Linguistics Society, 86–95.
Hengeveld, Kees (1999), Formalizing functionally. In Michael Darnell, Edith Moravcsik, Michael Noonan,
Frederick Newmeyer & Kathleen Wheatly (eds), Functionalism and Formalism in Linguistics, Vol. 2 , 93–
105. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Kuno, Susumu, and Ken-ichi Takami (1993)., Grammar and Discourse Principles: Functional Syntax and
GB Theory.
Langacker, Ronald W. (1974), Movement rules in functional perspective. Language 50, 630–664.
Newmeyer, Frederick (1998), Language form and language function. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
Smirnova, Elena & Tanja Mortelmans (2010), Funktionale Grammatik: Konzepte und Theorien. Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter.
Takami, Akio and Ken-ichi Kamio (1999), Function and Structure: In honor of Susumu Kuno. Amsterdam:
Benjamins.