[Sociology] Noam Chomsky - The Psychology Of Language And Thought,
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The Psychology of Language and Thought
Source:
Dialogues on the Psychology of Language and Thought
(Plenum, 1983)
Noam Chomsky interviewed by Robert W. Rieber
QUESTION: What role does cognition play in the acquisition and development of
language? Do linguistic factors influence general cognitive development?
CHOMSKY: I would like to re-phrase the first question and ask what role other aspects of
cognition play in the acquisition of language since, as put, it is not a question I can answer.
I would want to regard language as one aspect of cognition and its development as one
aspect of the development of cognition. It seems to me that what we can say in general is
this:
There are a number of cognitive systems which seem to have quite distinct and specific
properties. These systems provide the basis for certain cognitive capacities -- for simplicity
of exposition, I will ignore the distinction and speak a bit misleadingly about cognitive
capacities. The language faculty is one of these cognitive systems. There are others. For
example, our capacity to organize visual space, or to deal with abstract properties of the
number system, or to comprehend and appreciate certain kinds of musical creation, or our
ability to make sense of the social structures in which we play a role, which undoubtedly
reflects conceptual structures that have developed in the mind, and any number of other
mental capacities. As far as I can see, to the extent that we understand anything about
these capacities, they appear to have quite specific and unique properties. That is, I don ’t
see any obvious relationship between, for example, the basic properties of the structure of
language as represented in the mind on the one hand and the properties of our capacity,
say, to recognize faces or understand some situation in which we play a role, or appreciate
music and so on. These seem to be quite different and unique in their characteristics.
Furthermore, every one of these mental capacities appears to be highly articulated as well
as specifically structured. Now it’s perfectly reasonable to ask how the development of one
of these various systems relates to the development of others. Similarly, in the study of,
say, the physical growth of the body, it makes perfect sense to ask how the development
of one system relates to the development of others. Let ’s say, how the development of the
circulatory system relates to the development of the visual system.
But in the study of the physical body, nobody would raise a question analogous to the one
you posed in quite this form. That is, we we would not ask what role physical organs and
their function play in the development of the visual system. Undoubtedly, there are
relations between, say, the visual and circulatory systems, but the way we approach the
problem of growth and development in the physical body is rather different. That is, one
asks -- quite properly -- what are the specific properties and characteristics of the various
systems that emerge -- how do these various organs or systems interact with one another,
what is the biological basis -- the genetic coding, ultimately -- that determines the specific
pattern of growth, function and interaction of these highly articulated systems: for instance,
the circulatory system, the visual system, the liver, and so on. And that seems to provide a
reasonable analogy, as a point of departure at least, for the study of cognitive development
and cognitive structure, including the growth of the language faculty as a special case.
QUESTION: It might help if you could define how you use the term "cognition" as opposed
to the term "language."
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CHOMSKY: Well, I wouldn't use the term "cognition" as opposed to the term "language."
Rather, cognition is an overall term that includes every system of belief, knowledge,
understanding, interpretation, perception, and so on. Language is just one of many
systems that interact to form our whole complex of cognitive structures. So it's not a matter
of language as compared with cognition any more than one could study, say, our
knowledge of the structure of visual space as compared with cognition. Furthermore, I
don't believe that one can think of "cognition" as a unitary phenomenon.
QUESTION: Cognition is a way of knowing and language is a medium whereby we know?
CHOMSKY: Not as I am using the terms, the term "cognition" as far as I understand it
simply refers to any aspect of our belief, knowledge, or understanding. Now among the
various cognitive systems and cognitive structures, one of them happens to be the system
of language. We know language more or less as we have a system of beliefs and
understanding about, say, the nature of the visual world.
QUESTION: So it's a separate system, is it not?
CHOMSKY: It's one of the many systems entering into an array of interconnected cognitive
structures. Perhaps the analogy to physical organs is the best way to explain the way I see
it. Let's just ask, how do we study the structure of the body? We begin by a process of
idealization, in effect. We say there are -- we assume there are -- various systems that
interact to constitute our physical body. For example, the visual system and the circulatory
system and so on. Now this is, of course, an idealization; the systems are not physically
separable. The circulatory system interacts with the visual system physically.
QUESTION: But the CNS and the ANS are separable....
CHOMSKY: Only under a certain idealization, which is assumed to be an appropriate one.
Well, you can study the structure of each of these systems and the mode of their
interaction. Everyone assumes that this is a proper way to study anything as complicated
as the human body: by isolating for investigation particular systems that have their own
specific structure and a specific mode of development, recognizing of course that they are
not isolated from one another -- that the mode of their interaction is just as much
genetically determined as are their specific characteristics. So, using the term organ, in a
slightly extended sense, to include something like, say, the circulatory system -- not the
usual sense -- we might regard the body as a system of physical organs, each with its
specific properties and peculiarities and with a mode of interaction, all genetically
determined in basic outline, but modified in various ways in the course of growth.
Now, I think that there is every reason to suppose that the same kind of "modular"
approach is appropriate for the study of the mind -- which I understand to be the study, at
an appropriate level of abstraction, of properties of the brain -- and in particular for the
general system of cognitive structures, which does not exhaust the mind, but is the part
we're talking about. That is to say, I'd like to think of the system of cognitive structures as,
in effect, a system of "mental organs," each of which is quite specific, highly articulated,
developing in a particular manner that is intrinsically determined -- if the biologists are right,
genetically coded -- with, of course, complex interactions that are also very largely
predetermined. It seems to me that, insofar as we understand anything about cognition --
about some aspects of cognition -- we discover very specific mental structures developing
in the course of growth and maturation in quite their own way. And language is simply one
of these structures.
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I'm sure if we were to study, to take another distinctly human characteristic, our capacity to
deal with properties of the number system -- it's unique to humans, as far as we know, a
specific capacity of the human mind -- one might, for example, try to explore the properties
of that system in the mature person. We might then ask how that system develops through
childhood, what kind of stimulation from the environment is necessary for it to develop to
its mature state, and so on. In doing so we would have studied the growth of a particular
mental organ to its mature state, and if we could pursue this enterprise successfully, we
could, at least on an abstract level, characterize the principles that determine the structure
of this mental organ, principles that must be themselves genetically coded in some fashion.
(The language system can be and, in fact, is being studied in essentially this way.
Similarly, we could study the other mental organs that I mentioned before or others.) In this
way we could develop what seems to me a reasonable version of a "faculty psychology."
QUESTION: When you talk about this language structure system, are you referring to all
language, nonverbal language, and language as a developmental process?
CHOMSKY: Here we have to be a little careful. The term "language" is used in quite
different ways, and only confusion can arise from failure to distinguish them. In the first
place, the term is used to refer to human languages, that is, a specific biological
characteristic of humans. There is a human language faculty which allows us to develop
the kind of knowledge that you and I share that makes it possible for us to conduct this
conversation. And that capacity is simply part of the species-specific biological
endowment. Putting aside possible individual variation, we may think of this faculty as a
common and as far as we know uniquely human possession. In terminology that is now
fairly standard, we may refer to a characterization of central properties of this faculty as
"universal grammar," a system that we may regard as analogous to basic properties of the
human visual system. That is one use of the term "language." Each human language is
one of the various specific systems that can emerge within that set of initial constraints.
The term "language" is often used in quite a different way, referring not to some specific
biologically determined system, but rather to any mode of communication or mode of
expression, in some very general sense. So, for example, when one talks about the
language of gesture or the language of the bees, or the language of ape calls, or when one
asks whether music is a language or mathematics is a language and so on, in any of those
questions and discussions, some notion of "language" is presupposed which is very
different from the former sense.
QUESTION: I was really thinking of something else. I was thinking of the notion that some
people believe, namely that oral language, verbal language in the child is a development of
something that happens prior to the emergence of spoken language -- nonverbal activities
such as pointing, etc., cognitive activity -- pre-language rites as it were.
How is the acquisition and development of language influenced by interpersonal and
intrapersonal verbal and nonverbal behavior?
CHOMSKY: It depends on what aspect of language one is talking about.
QUESTION: Say, the first word, for instance.
CHOMSKY: Let's take the first word and assume that it's a name. Suppose the child's first
word is some name for its mother, or something like that. In the act of reference, obviously
other cognitive capacities come into play. That is, before a child can refer to some object in
its external environment, it has to have isolated and identified objects in its environment. It
has to have recognized that there are people, that there are things, and that they have
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certain properties -- constancies and persistence and so on. Unless all of this organization
has already taken place, there is nothing to refer to. Therefore, the act of reference can't
take place. I don't think there is any special reason to believe that any of those
competences are learned. I assume that the capacities that enable us to isolate and
identify physical objects in the outside world and understand their properties -- capacities
which we might also think of as forming some mental organ -- are just as much genetically
determined in their specific characteristics as is the language faculty. But there is no doubt
that in, for example, using a word to refer to an object, that kind of organization is
presupposed, however it is developed. That's almost tautological. So in that respect, of
course, other cognitive capacities enter crucially into any use of language, including the
earliest use. However, that doesn't tell us very much. To take a physical analogy, we might
also say that unless the circulatory system is functioning, the visual system is inoperative.
It's perfectly correct, but it doesn't tell us anything about the structure of the visual system.
The kind of question that ought to be raised in connection with the growth of language is
just the kind of question that we raise in connection with the growth of some other system,
say, the visual system. What are the structural and functional properties that emerge as
this system grows and matures? What are the principles that govern this growth and that
are realized in the systems that develop? To what extent are these principles invariant and
biologically determined? To what extent do the properties of the system that develops
simply mirror accidental contingencies of experience? To what extent do they reflect other
independently developing capacities, and so on. I think that as far as we know the growth
and emergence of the language faculty is highly specific. By the time the child has the
most rudimentary knowledge of language, say at three years old, a normal child -- and in
fact any child, apart from really serious pathology -- is using principles that as far as we
know have no close analogue in other mental faculties. After all, what are the basic
properties of language, the most rudimentary and elementary properties of language,
which emerge quite early -- certainly a four-year-old has already developed them very
extensively.
The most elementary property of language that one can think of, I guess, is that it involves
a discrete infinity; that is, there is an infinite range of possible constructions -- there is no
longest sentence. This is not a continuous system, that is, it does not involve variation
along some continuous dimension, as say the bee language does in principle; but rather
there is a discrete infinity of possible expressions, each with its form and its meaning. That
property of language manifests itself at an extremely early point. Prior to this point one
might want to say that there is no language in the sense of "human language." Prior to that
point, it would make sense to say that we have something analogous to the incipient
motions of fluttering of wings of a bird before its capacity to fly has matured, perhaps. But
at the point at which the system of a discrete infinity of utterances manifests itself, and
that's very early, we can say that we have at least the rudiments of human language
emerging. As for the principles that organize and characterize that discrete infinity of
utterances with their forms and meaning, obviously this system must be represented in a
finite mind -- ultimately, neurally represented in a finite brain -- which means that there
must be some finite system of rules which operate in some fashion to characterize the
unbounded range of possible expressions, each with its fixed form and meaning. And
knowledge of language means nothing more than internal representation, ultimately neural
representation of that system.
Perhaps the next most elementary property of language is that these rules basically
operate on phrases; that is, they don't operate on a string of words, a sequence of words,
but on words organized into larger units. Then, as we go on to further properties of
language, we discover ways in which the rules operate on phrases and on hierarchic
structures of phrases in order to form more complex expressions by recursive embedding
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and other principles. As far as I can see, these are the most elementary properties of
human language. But even these elementary properties, so far as we know, have no
significant analogues in other systems.
There are, of course, quite different views of the matter. Piaget and his colleagues, if I
understand them, take the position that the emerging structures of language necessarily
reflect sensorimotor constructions. I have never understood exactly what they mean by this
claim. If they are saying, for example, that a child cannot use words to refer without having
something to refer to, that is, without a prior organization of the world into objects of
possible reference, then one cannot object, obviously. But they seem to be claiming
something more, perhaps that the principles that govern the structure and functioning of
the language faculty are in fact principles that arise in the course of the development of the
child's sensorimotor constructions. If that is the claim, then it seems to me a very curious
one, which cannot be maintained on the basis of any current knowledge of the nature of
these systems. Perhaps some sense can be made of this claim, but I'm not aware of any
formulation of it that has any credibility at all, and I constantly wonder why it is put forth
with such dogmatic certainty. It seems to have little prior plausibility, and to my knowledge
lacks any empirical support.
QUESTION: Your metaphor of birds just reminded me that Leonardo da Vinci wanted to
study the structure of the bird in order to discover the functional dynamics of flying. In the
study of the structure of the bird was the key to what flight was, and it seems that this
approach is pretty much; the same in general principle as Leonardo's approach, i.e. from
the study of structure comes the knowledge of function.
CHOMSKY: That's extremely natural. I can't imagine any other approach. How else could
one proceed?
QUESTION: Well, some people feel that to study the other way around perhaps is better.
To study function in order to find out what structure is. And, of course, that's what you were
attacking when you set out to destroy the house that Skinner built.
CHOMSKY: Well, not really. My criticism of Skinner was not that he was trying to study
structure on the basis of function, but rather that, in the Skinnerian system, there are
simply no principles. His "theory of language" was almost vacuous. I don't mean to say that
his principles of partial reinforcement, for example, are vacuous; they are not. How
interesting they are, one might argue, but at least they have content. However, in the work
that he's done on so-called higher mental processes -- for example, language -- there are
simply no discernible principles at all. When you explore the proposals that he puts forth,
they dissolve into metaphor and vacuity. One can see very easily why this should be the
case: it's because Skinner departs radically from the framework of the natural sciences in
several important ways; specifically, by taking it as as
a priori
principle that you're not
allowed to develop abstract a theories. As he puts it, you're not allowed to develop theories
of internal representation or mental structure, to postulate mental structures, which in this
domain simply means you're not allowed to have theories of a non-trivial character.
Naturally, anyone who insists on this doctrine -- merely a form of mysticism -- is never
going to get anywhere. And, investigating the system as it develops, you find, not
unexpectedly, that it simply has no principles that one can put to the test. My criticism has
nothing to do with the relationship of structure and function. Skinner put forth no account of
either, as far as I can see, but merely developed a terminology which he prefers to
traditional "mentalistic" terminology, apparently because of highly misleading connotations
that vaguely suggest experimental procedures.
QUESTION: What we've been talking about so far has been the verbal signal system. Lets
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