Some Reflections on the Origins of Cognitive Linguistics

JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES, I (1999), 9-27 SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE ORIGINS OF COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS ENRIQUE BERNÁRDEZ Complutense University of Madrid ABSTRACT. The purpose of these notes is to contribute to the understanding of the intellectual and scientific origins of Cognitive Linguistics (CL); it is not, therefore, a history, even partial and incomplete, of CL; neither does it offer any exhaustive consideration of all the factors, influences, linguistic and psychological models, or of all the linguists that have contributed to the birth and development of the discipiline, an enterprise that is probably premature. 1. INTRODUCTION Cognitive Linguistics is something fundamentally different from any of those “one thousand and one theories of grammar” which seem to exist in the field. HDPSG, RG, WD, LFG, even MG (Chomsky’s Minimalist Program) exist as basically separated approaches to grammar and language which share just a few common ideas of a very general nature at the most: maybe that language is considered as a ‘somewhat’ autonomous mental component or module and that only that part of grammar which can be independently studied and described merits serious attention as the nuclear part of language. But the methods, including the different approaches to formalisation, are quite different, some restrictions operating in some models but being flatly rejected in others; for instance, the possibiliy of assuming the existence of categories like PRO or pro which per definitionem lack any phonetic realisation, is nowadays only accepted within 9 ENRIQUE BERNÁRDEZ MG. It is even doubtful whether it would be right to use the term formal grammars as referring to these divergent models in any but the most trivial sense. In contrast, CL seems to allow for the existence of a number of different approaches, always considered as partial, which are seen as integrating a more general framework; this framework exhibits some characteristics which are adhered quite consistently to by the proponents of the different schools or models and it extends to the formal thinking underlying them. This diversity is moreover naturally accepted: the different models devote themselves to particular aspects, or subfields, of what is accepted as the common framewok of CL (which is moreover part of a yet wider field, Cognitive Science). There exists a significant number of principles that seem to be shared by the individual models and even, I dare say, by some of the more ‘formal’ approaches. This enables the existence of ‘textbooks on CL’ in a sense quite different from the usual one in ‘introductions to linguistics’, something that is in fact quite new in the recent history of our discipline.The existing self-called ‘textbooks’ have been restricted to the presentation of one single model or theoretical approach, more frequently than not that of Generative Grammar (GG), and if someone wanted to acquire a wider knowledge of what was being done in linguistics, she had to use a number of different, partial books. Even within GG the usual case was to restrict oneself to the model then considered as orthodox, perhaps with some scattered references to other generative approches, as is the case in Peter Culicover’s (1997) Principles and Parameters who readily uses the results achieved by LFG and RL; it has to be said, however, that such results are sometimes taken advantage of by the proponents of the standard GG model but without quoting them (see Pullum 1991). A recent textbook as Friedrich Ungerer’s and Hans-Jörg Schmid’s (1996) An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics is a clear case in point. This book is organised around a number of what can be called ‘basic issues’ of CG and not on the differences among the approaches or on the presentation of alternative explanations of the same facts: Prototypes and categories, Levels of categorization, Conceptual metaphors and metonymies, Figure and ground, The Frame and attention approach, and Other issues including Iconicity, Grammaticalization, etc. What is new is not this subject-centered approach, which is also visible e.g. in Culicover’s introduction to GG: Arguments, government, and case; Binding theory; A-Movement; X’-Theory, etcetera. What I think is really new is first that the chapters in Culicover’s book or in any other introduction to GG, are devoted to issues concerning one single model, so that if we should take a different one, say HDPSG or LFG, some of them would necessarily have to disappear: there is no place for chapters on X’-Bar Theory or A-Movement in a textbook in HDPSG, for instance. The basic issue is not whether X’-Bar Theory may play a less relevant role 10 SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE ORIGINS OF COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS in HDPSG, and that such an important place in a textbook is deemed as unnecessary, but that it plays no role at all: it simply does not exist. The chapters in Ungerer and Schmid’s book (U&S), on the other hand, would be acceptable to anyone inside CL, even if some of them would not play such an important role in some models as in others. But the difference Figure-Ground is universally accepted, as is the importance of Prototypical Categorization, and so on. Let us recall the main chapters in any general introduction to any other scientific field, e.g. biology. It would make no sense to be obliged to write a different introduction to Biology for every possible approach, or that some chapters should only make sense in the framework of a given approach. The same chapters would have to be found in any general introduction, say Molecular biology, Cellular biology, Organismic biology, etcetera, and even books devoted to any one of these subdisciplines would share a basically similar structure. Now, not everyone in molecular biology works on the same issues or is even interested in all the aspects of the discipline, much less in biology as a whole, but they agree on some fundamental findings and frequently work on the results and achievements of other biologists. As I see it, this is what is happening in the reorganisation of linguistic studies that is known as CL. CL, in fact, has not grown out of the work of an individual, as has been the case in practically all the other modern linguistic models and especially GG, which has a clear point of departure with the publication of Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures in 1957, which was itself a development of another individual linguist’s ideas: those of Zellig Harris. Systemic Grammar is clearly associated with Michael Halliday, Functional Grammar with Simon Dik, etcetera. For these schools precise dates of birth can be given but, on the other hand, who, if anyone, was the initial creator, instigator or whatever of Cognitive Linguistics? Several people working in different towns, at different Universities of different countries coincided at some point in a number of basic ideas of language which, moreover, were also independently shared by a number of psychologists, biologists... even mathematicians with an interest in both biology and language (as is the case of the French René Thom). This makes CL, as has already been pointed out, quite different from the countless models, submodels, theories or sub- theories of language and grammar that have appeared in the last fifty years or so. The only similar case, to my knowledge, is that of Textlinguistics –as opposed to Discourse or Conversation Analysis, Ethnomethodology, etcetera–. Textlinguistics (TL) also emerged as the result of the efforts of a number of unrelated linguists working independently in different parts of the world; we could say that they “did not know they were doing textlinguistics” until they began reading each other and discovered that their interests and even sometimes their methods were closely related. TL, however, is only a partial study of language, as it has traditionally focused on only a few aspects of it, and 11 ENRIQUE BERNÁRDEZ not on language as a whole. However, if the recent history of TL is considered (see e.g. Heinemann & Viehweger 1991), the interests of this discipline have frequently coincided with those of a general theory of language in a cognitive framework; again, with no direct relation with what was being done at the same time by linguists that called themselves ‘cognitive’. I shall come back to the relations of TL and CL. Of course, there exists a number a people who played a fundamental part in the creation of CL as we know it today and, especially, of the partial theories within CL that enjoy the greatest popularity. In fact, within CL several, sometimes rather divergent approaches can be distinguished. What follows is a non-exhaustive list and sometimes, for the lack of a good denomination, a linguist’s name will have to be used alone: Cognitive Grammar as represented by Ronald Langacker. Construction Grammar (Fillmore, Kay, etc.). Lakoff’s (and many others’) work on metaphorical categorisation. Prototype theory. Mental Spaces Theory (Gilles Fauconnier). Leonard Talmy’s work (which could be termed Framing-Theory, following U&S). Jean Petitot’s recent work within the framework of dynamic theory and mereology. Wolfgang Wildgen’s imagistic grammar. Jean-Pierre Desclès’ cognitive approach to language and grammar. Although not immediately included in CL, also Culioli’s approach shares many features with these models, as do most recent developments of Simon Dik’s Functional Grammar. Even HDPSG, traditionally considered as a branch of GG, has been getting closer and closer to CL. 2. COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS HAS A VARIETY OF SOURCES But a linguistic theory or a linguistic model does not grow out of nothing, it is the result of both internal developments within the discipline and of the general scientific ambience or in more general terms: of the ways of thinking at a given time.

Load more