Language, self and mental health, I: What is un-Cartesian Linguistics?
Wolfram Hinzen ICREA/Universitat de Barcelona/Durham University www.grammar.cat
1 2 • Language is subject to diseases or malfunction, like all other cognitive or bodily function.
• These could concern the structure of semantics (not merely ‘pragmatics’).
• They could fundamentally correlate with - and perhaps be identical to - diseases of mind.
3 4 5 • Patients with schizophrenia can present with:
• Mutism.
• Alogia.
• Thought block.
• Disordered, incoherent, or unintelligible speech.
• Heard speech where there is none.
• Problems with pronouns.
• Bizarre predications.
6 A conclusion was a French professor.
The pond fell in the front doorway.
There is a wine glass in my stomach.
I wear my father’s hair.
I am Jesus.
7 • In Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD):
• Up to 50% of infants remain non-verbal, with no non- verbal forms of communication replacing verbal ones.
8 • Verbal children with ASD can present with:
• Echolalia.
• Deviant use of language (e.g. for behaviour regulation more than for assertion).
• Concretism/presentism.
• Problems with pronouns.
• Under-generalisation in description (e.g. overly precise words, neologisms).
• Disorders of verbal and non-verbal reference (both self and non-self).
• Anomalous non-verbal forms of communication replacing verbal ones.
9 • Affinities:
• Autism [=‘detachment from outside reality’] was one of Bleuler’s (1911) four ‘A’s to capture the clinical essence of ‘schizo-phrenia’.
10 Typology of linguistic diversity
A tree of languages, but not minds
Universal Grammar (=the human capacity for language) 11 A different kind of linguistic diversity
mania Huntington’s schizophrenia
autism
UG* ** ***
12 • This would be support for the ‘Un-Cartesian Hypothesis’.
Wolfram Hinzen is a Research Professor and Sheehan Hinzen Wolfram Hinzen and Michelle Sheehan at the Catalan Institute for Advanced Studies RELATED TITLES PUBLISHED BY and Research (ICREA) and affliated with OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS The Philosophy of the Linguistics Department of the University Universal Grammar of Barcelona and the Philosophy Department Mind Design and Minimal Syntax of the University of Durham (2006–2014). Wolfram Hinzen What is grammar? Why does it exist?
He writes on issues in the interface of language and mind. He is the author of Mind Design and An Essay on Names and Truth What difference, if any, does it make to the Minimal Syntax (OUP, 2006) and An Essay on Wolfram Hinzen organization of meaning? This book seeks to Names and Truth (OUP, 2007) and co-editor give principled answers to these questions. Its of the Oxford Handbook of Compositionality Theoretical Approaches to Disharmonic Word Order topic is ‘universal’ grammar, in the sense that (OUP, 2012). edited by Theresa Biberauer and Michelle Sheehan grammar is universal to human populations. But while modern generative grammar stands Michelle Sheehan is a Research Associate Spell-Out and the Minimalist Program in the tradition of ‘Cartesian linguistics’ as at the University of Cambridge specializing in Juan Uriagereka Wolfram Hinzen emerging in the seventeenth century, this comparative syntax with a particular interest book re-addresses the question of the gram- in the Romance languages. She has worked on The Oxford Handbook of Compositionality Universal Grammar The Philosophy of and Michelle Sheehan matical in a broader historical frame, taking null arguments, Control, word order variation, edited by Markus Werning, Wolfram Hinzen, inspiration from Modistic and Ancient Indian extraposition, clausal-nominal parallels and and Edouard Machery philosopher-linguists to formulate a different case/alignment. She is co-author of Parametric and ‘Un-Cartesian’ programme in linguistic Variation: Null Subjects in Minimalist Theory theory. Its core claim is that the organization (CUP, 2009) and the forthcoming volumes The Philosophy of of the grammar is not distinct from the organ- The Final over Final Constraint (MIT Press) ization of human thought. This sapiens-specifc and Theoretical Approaches to Disharmonic mode of thought is uniquely propositional: Word Orders (OUP). grammar, therefore, organizes propositional Universal Grammar forms of reference and makes knowledge possible. Such a claim has explanatory power as well: the grammaticalization of the hominin brain is critical to the emergence of our mind and our speciation.
A thoroughly interdisciplinary endeavour, the book seeks to systematically integrate the philosophy of language and linguistic theory.
It casts a fresh look at core issues that any phi- losophy of (universal) grammar will need to address, such as the distinction between lexical and grammatical meaning, the signifcance of part of speech distinctions, the grammar of reference and deixis, the relation between language and reality, and the dimensions of cross-linguistic and biolinguistic variation.