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Comments Welcome
George W. Grace
University of Hawaii
22 February 1990
"The distinctive traits of standard languages reflect a cultural intervention against the normal development of language. They are learned behavior of precisely the sort Chomsky has insisted normal language acquisition is not; and the principles of generative analysis are inapplicable to them. If a standard language is to be subjected to generative analysis, the conscious human cultural artifacts which it contains must be eliminated from consideration. Otherwise the analysis will be as misleading as a geologist's attempt to deal with Mount Rushmore, Stonehenge, or St. Paul's Cathedral as if they were natural rock formations." (John Earl Joseph 1987: 19)
Joseph, in the above quotation, speaks of standard languages as containing "conscious human cultural artifacts", and it is clear that he is speaking of the linguistic competence of speakers. And one of the main points that I want to make here is that cultural artifacts,some conscious and some unconscious, are inextricably boundup in people's knowledge of their languages.
But contemporary linguistic theory assumes otherwise.One of the cornerstones of contemporary theory is the assumption that to learn a language is to construct a grammar (here understood as including a lexicon--i.e., to construct a linguistic description) of the language. It is assumed that a child is able to accomplish this grammar-construction from a relatively limited sample of expressions of the language in question. The reason why it is possible for the child to accomplish this is (according to the assumption) that s/he is born knowing a general theory of language structure. S/he (it is assumed) has only to determine, from the analysis of this linguistic sample in the light of the general theory, which of the set of possible grammars this particular language represents. The process of constructing a linguistic description by means of the innate linguistic theory (i.e., by means of what is sometimes known as the "language aquisition device" [LAD]) and a sample of speech is known as "language acquisition".
The process of language acquisition provides the child (and later, the adult) with knowledge of the language. This knowledge-of-the-language, which is known technically as "linguistic competence", therefore consists of a grammar ( cum lexicon--or a linguistic description, as I prefer to call it).
However, I believe that it is apparent, as I have been arguing in recent Ethnolinguistic Notes, that what a person knows about his/her language is not simply the resultant of the application of the LAD to the available sample of speech: that it will (probably inevitably) have been significantly affected by other factors in the enculturation process.
What I refer to in the title when I speak of the part of linguistic competence which is "natural" is that part which is due just to the operation of the LAD on raw linguistic data. Thus, natural linguistic competence is the knowledge-of-the-language which would remain to a person if whatever knowledge was due to enculturative factors could be removed.
It seems clear (doesn't it?) that if we are ever to understand whatever language has to tell us about the human brain, it will first be necessary to attempt to separate natural linguistic competence from competence due to enculturative influences. (1)
I believe that we have, in fact, been mistaken about the extent to which an individual's linguistic competence resembles our traditional linguistic descriptions. We have assumed that what a speaker must know is approximately the same sort of thing as is reported in linguistic description (on the question of what linguistic descriptions describe, see below). But even if that assumption should turn out to be right--if it should (to my very great surprise) eventually turn out to be the case that all speakers of all languages had a knowledge of their languages which included a complete grammar, the question would still remain how much of this grammar was produced by the simple action of the relevant portions of the brain on raw linguistic data and how much might be due to other enculturative influences.
Under "enculturative influences" I do not mean to include only what is deliberately taught, I mean also such things as attitudes toward the language shown by adults and older children--e.g., expectation that the child will learn it, conceptions of what kind of thing, in detail, must be learned (e.g., that there is pronunciation [even spelling, perhaps], words, grammatical rules, situations of appropriate use, etc., if that is the community's conception of what a language consists of), conceptions of the stages in the learning process, and no doubt much else besides.
This could be put in another way: it is impossible or nearly so to separate the prescriptive from the descriptive in the language learning process. It is next to impossible to find children brought up in surroundings where the adults' ideology with regard to language is entirely irrelevant in the learning process.
In Grace 1989b I talked about this problem as it related to the languages of one particular culture--what I call the "monoculture" of the modern world. I tried to show there that the linguistic competence of speakers of monoculture languages cannot be understood without recognizing the very large influence of monoculture linguistic ideology. The highly elaborated prescriptive traditions associated with monoculture languages--especially those languages with longer histories of monoculture association--and the elaborate language curricula in the (largely compulsory) educational systems provide an enormous scope for the operation of ideological factors. The educational systems have as prominent goals to shape the students' "knowledge of" (i.e., their assumptions about) their languages and their linguistic skills (as well as teaching them "how to reason" and generally shaping up their cognitive processes).
Let me say a bit more about the monoculture ideology with respect to language, since that ideology is the only one which is at all accessible to me. I think it has been the search for a language for science that has been the most important factor in the monoculture's idealized view of language. A sort of ideal language has been imagined, especially by philosophers, which would be designed almost exclusively for a single function: that of reporting facts (essentially states of affairs) accurately. This ideal language would be capable of an approximately precise matching (tailoring) of the linguistic expression to the reality (the objective situation--the state of affairs) to be signalled. We have come to imagine that this ideal represents what languages are capable of being (and, of course, that that is what they should aspire to be). But part of the problem in achieving this ideal has been that the speakers themselves don't measure up--don't learn and use the languages properly; which is why monoculture students study their native languages in the schools.
I believe, in short, that the monoculture ideology does not distinguish accurately between its prescriptive assumptions--assumptions about how language should ideally work, and especially about the linguistic competence which the educational system seeks to impart--and descriptive assumptions--assumptions about what human language actually is and about the inborn language faculty and what acquired (learned) language skills are universally required (i.e., required for one to qualify as a normal speaker of any language). (2)
In saying this, I don't mean to imply that there are (or have been in the history of the world) societies in whose members the language faculty is naturally expressed-- whose linguistic competence is in no way shaped by ideology. What I can say is that we do know how much effort monoculture societies make to re-shape linguistic competence--we have some basis for appreciating how far the linguistic competence of a well-educated monoculture adult is from being just a spontaneous response to linguistic data.
However, there is some difficulty in getting monoculture people to recognize how unnatural their linguistic competence is. This difficulty is due in large part to the monoculture's view of itself as being an inevitable, rather than a contingent, development. It is probably useful at this point to consider, briefly, the problem of monoculture ethnocentrism.
I probably need to explain what I mean by "monoculture ethnocentrism" since the suitability of the label "ethnocentrism" for the attitude of the monoculture toward other cultures may not be self-evident. However, "ethnocentrism" is the generally accepted term for looking at everything (including things that belong to other cultures or which are inherently culture-neutral) through the prism of one's own culture--in terms of the values and assumptions of one's own culture. (3)
I mentioned the monoculture's view of itself as inevitable rather than contingent. According to its ideology, it's perhaps less a cultural phenomenon than a natural one (see the discussion of "natural" phenomena in Grace 1989a: 572ff.). What I mean is that according to its own ideology, its features are mainly the inevitable result of free inquiry into nature and exploitation of the understanding acquired thereby. Although it may have arbitrary features, these are relatively insignificant. In all important details its features are represented as being the direct consequences of the character of external reality.
But the monoculture is in fact a culture, and it is this very evaluation of itself and of other cultures which constitutes the ethnocentrism of which I am speaking. The monoculture sees itself as unique among cultures in its conformity to reality--to the conditions of the external world. Other cultures, insofar as their beliefs and practices are contrary to monoculture beliefs and practices, are not just different, they're impractical if not wrong. Almost to the exact extent that features of a culture stand in contrast to comparable features of the monoculture, that culture represents evolutionary retardedness. The culture in question will be characterized as "primitive", or at least, "backward".
The monoculture is a proselytizing culture--a culture that aspires either to displace all other cultures or to superimpose itself on them in such a way as strictly to circumscribe the domain of their effectiveness. It is really pan-ethnic, in a sense. It is quite hospitable to vernacular cultures--the more and the more diverse, the better, as long as they fully accept the dominant role of the monoculture and do not in any way interfere with the efficient functioning of its institutions. The ethnocentrism of which I speak is directed at cultures which have not been accommodated to this monoculture dominance.
There is another point to be made here, however: the monoculture is not anywhere completely without challenge-- that is, there is something of an ongoing struggle everywhere between the monoculture and one or more traditional vernacular cultures. One side-effect of this is that different individuals, even within monoculture countries, participate in the monoculture in differing degrees.
What is of particular interest to linguistics is that an important characteristic of full monoculture enculturation is mastery of monoculture language skills. But even in those societies where the monoculture triumph has been most complete, there remain individuals whose enculturation remains far from the monoculture ideal.
It seems to me that the big distortion in our picture of the world which is brought about by this monoculture ethnocentrism might be described as a reversal of our understanding of what is marked and what unmarked. Thus the monoculture is inclined to treat failure to measure up to monoculture standards of competence as something which requires explanation. I think, on the other hand, that it is the competence of us--the more nearly ideal monoculture adults--which is what requires explanation. It is we who are the marked, it those stigmatized as "backward"--or even more, those stignatized as "primitive"--who are the relatively unmarked. If there are characteristics which turn out to be common to all of them, it is these characteristics which are normal. Monoculture man does not occur naturally. Rather s/he takes years of schooling and other discipline to produce, and even then-- with all of the institutional means which are brought to bear--the success rate so far has been conspicuously limited.
The point of all of this is that, if we are to understand what the LAD actually does, we must consider the nature of linguistic competence as it would be without the effects of the enculturative process, and that this may require a particular effort for monoculture people because of the monoculture's particular view of itself as not being a culture at all.
There seems to be no possibility of finding naturally occurring cases of natural linguistic competence so as to be able to observe it directly. For the present, at least, I can think of nothing to do beyond proposing essentially speculative hypotheses. One available consideration is parsimony.
"Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem." (William of Ockham ["Ockham's razor"])
Some time ago I wrote a paper in this series entitled "Why I do not believe in phonemes" (Grace 1983 ). I argued there that there is one thing which a speaker must know in order to be able to produce and/or to recognize the linguistic expressions of a language. That one thing is how they are pronounced. That is, to assume for a moment that linguistic expressions are composed of units called "words", the speaker must know the signans of each word--i.e., how the word is pronounced. The claim which I was arguing against was that in addition to knowing the pronunciation of the words of the language, the speaker must also know a set of phonological units (phonemes). The claim is, in fact, he/she knows the pronunciation in terms of the phonemes-- as a sequence of phonemes. (4)(5)
I would like now to re-submit the same argument, but this time identifying the hypothesis as specifically concerned with natural linguistic competence. We must assume that speakers have holistic knowledge of the pronunciation of the words in their repertoire. But I don't see why we must assume that the LAD compels them also to analyze these pronunciations into, or in any way work with, any kind of smaller unit--with any unit of the size of those used in alphabetic or any other kind of writing. In fact, the assumption that speakers have to learn and use these added entities seems to be exactly what Ockham warned should not be permitted to occur: the multiplication of entities beyond necessity. (6)
[Maybe I should point out again that I am not claiming either (1) that no individuals ever invent entities such as phonemes on their own--I think that some probably do, or (2) that there are no languages whose speakers regularly acquire such entities in the enculturation process--there must be some languages where this comes fairly close to being the case.]
[I]n knowing how to use their language, speakers know how to create and recognize associations between semantically interpreted sentences and particular types of situations." [Fillmore et al 1988: 502].
"Words contribute less meaning to sentences than usually assumed. The meaning of a sentence is always more than the structured semantics of its parts." (Charles Ruhl 1989: 235)
Charles Ruhl (1989: 6) defines the notion of compositionality as the notion "that the meaning of a sentence is the sum of its lexical parts, as constructed by the syntax." The monoculture ideology represents languages as compositional. So, traditionally has linguistics.
However, the recognition has been growing that language is not completely compositional; cf. the quotations at the head of this section. Linguistics has thus been confronted with the question of how that can possibly be--what language can be like if it is not compositional. Various responses are beginning to emerge, but none seem to recognize the problem as a fundamental one.
Now consider the implications of the discovery that language is not compositional for the language learner. If (as Ruhl clearly implies) specific holistic knowledge is necessary for each linguistic expression in the learner's repertoire, is there any point in acquiring analytic knowledge as well? (7) No doubt, for monoculture speakers, the answer is that there is. Imparting such analytic knowledge is possibly the very most important undertaking of monoculture schools as far as language is concerned.
But I believe the case with natural linguistic competence is quite different. We know that the monoculture emphasizes analytic knowledge, but we do not know that all human cultures do or did. And even if all cultures did, that would still not be evidence that such knowledge is automatically imparted through the application of the LAD to the available sample of speech.
Once again, then, doesn't Ockham's razor enjoin us not to posit syntactic and semantic systems as part of the speaker's naturally(LAD)-acquired knowledge of his/her language if they are not necessary? With respect to the phoneme hypothesis I asked why, once we acknowledge that speakers must know the pronunciation of the words in their repertoire holistically , we must burden them (and our set of assumptions) with acquiring analytic knowledge of the same pronuncations as well. Now, with respect to the syntax- semantics-pragmatics level of language, I want to ask the parallel question: why, once we acknowledge that speakers must know the meaning (or "use", if one prefers) of the linguistic expressions in their repertoire holistically, we must burden them (and our set of assumptions) with acquiring analytic knowledge of the same linguistic expressions as well.
"... the concept of closed and finite rule-systems belongs to a world of stereotypes about language which are usually politically or ideologically motivated, and ... these stereotypes must be carefully distinguished from the concept of la langue as Saussure defined it." (Robert B. Le Page 1989: 11)
What, in fact, do linguistic descriptions describe? Linguistic description employing the grammar-lexicon model has a long history, and it has played a prominent role in scientific linguistics. I have already discussed this central role played in linguistics by linguistic description in Grace 1985. Linguistic description is the primary concern of linguistic theory, where the central problem might be described as that of determining the characteristics of the ideal linguistic description--its formal and substantive properties.
But what does such a linguistic description describe? What is the descriptum ? What is there in the real world that a linguistic description having the general characteristics of those being developed in linguistics today can reasonably be said to fit?
Some more cautious linguists have answered this question by asserting that all it can honestly be claimed to describe is a particular corpus of linguistic expressions. However, other linguists--surely the majority today--would assert that the regularities found in such a corpus are to be explained as resulting from the application of a more general set of principles or rules which belong to an entity called a "language". The corpus in question is seen as representing only a sample of the linguistic expressions which are made permissable by the rules of the language.
But what is this language? Where is it physically located? The nearest thing that we have to a clear answer to that question is that it is located in the central nervous systems--the brains--of its speakers. The language as it appears in the brain of a speaker is referred to as his/her "knowledge of the language" or his/her "linguistic competence". And therefore, so the reasoning goes, it follows that it is this "knowledge-of-the-language" (or "linguistic competence") which is being described by the linguistic description. It is consequently assumed that the grammars that linguists write are designed to be accurate representations of the knowledge which a normal native speaker has. (8) (It has further been proposed, and this by linguists of both the American structuralist and generativist schools, that the process by which a child learns its language closely parallels the process by which a linguist analyzes linguistic data to arrive at a description of the language.)
But there are difficulties with this view. First, although this proposal provides a physical locus--the brain- -to the language, there is nothing that is known about the brain as such that tells us what form this "knowledge" takes. That is, if someone proposes that a particular language has a particular rule (which means, of course, that its speakers should have that rule as part of their knowledge of the language), we have no way of looking for the rule in the brain itself.
So, why do we imagine that the knowledge takes the form of a linguistic description--that what we know about the language consists of (approximately) just those things that would be reported in a linguistic description? Not from anything we know about the brain. The only rationale for this assumption seems to be that (1) since there is a long established tradition in Western culture that "languages" are properly described by linguistic descriptions having a particular form ( viz ., following the grammar-lexicon model), and (2) since we have decided that what a language is, is knowledge in the brains of speakers, then it follows that such a linguistic description is a description of that knowledge. But if that is indeed the only reason for such an assumption, it does not seem to be a sufficient one.
However, if the languages that linguistic descriptions describe are not located in the brain, where are they located? Some have proposed that they are "superorganic" phenomena--located somehow in society--and regard this as a sufficient answer. But how does this answer the question? How does one observe a superorganic entity? How do we determine whether a claim about it is true or false?
What actually happens, of course, is that a group of people agree upon rules of evidence for such a description, and description thenceforth proceeds according to those rules. But the ultimate justification for the particular rules rests on nothing more objective than the authority of those who formulated them. What seems clear is that languages, what linguists describe, are not naturally occurring objects, they are cultural constructs. A standard language is first of all a construct of the culture which designed and established it. Many non-standard languages are constructs of institutions of the monoculture. All others (and all of these as well) are constructs of linguistics. The realities corresponding to these constructs may be more or less focussed (in Le Page's sense); standard languages are highly focussed of course.
The notion of individual languages, as it functions within linguistics, is simply a part of our way of talking (cf. Grace 1987: 92ff.) about language--about things linguistic that need to be talked about, such as linguistic likenesses and differences and the patterning found in corpora of texts. It has proved very useful (as have many other notions, such as the phoneme, or grammar).
Such things as languages, phonemes, or grammars do not exist in the sense of being physically real. However, it is convenient to talk as if they did exist. They have a kind of quasi-existence in that it's possible to make empirical statements about them-i.e., statements about them that are capable of being true or false according to some kind of rules of evidence. And we can actually learn things about reality by using such linguistically-created objects. It's not so much that we gain factual knowledge, it's that we gain or improve understanding. Or, to put it another way, one might say that we learn facts about a make-believe world which has been tailored so as to be similar to the real world-specifically, tailored to serve as a model of the real world. But a model for certain purposes only. Such models make it easier for us to come to understand certain things and harder to understand others, because there are potentially interesting questions out there which can't come up, can't be formulated within a particular way of talking about a subject. And when particular ways of talking have become established, they tend to exclude all alternatives.
1. A child's learning of his/her first language inevitably takes place within a cultural context. Furthermore, the process of language learning cannot be clearly separated from the general process of culture learning that goes on around it. Consequently, it is not clear how the part of one's knowledge of one's language which is acquired through operation of the "language acquisition device" can be distinguished from the part which is due to other factors in the enculturation situation. That is, it is not clear what part of the adult's linguistic competence is "natural" and what part is cultural.
2. The kinds of knowledge of which adult linguistic competence is assumed to be constituted are just the kinds of facts about languages that have traditionally been reported in linguistic descriptions.
3. These kinds of knowledge are also very reminiscent of the analytical approach to language emphasized in the monoculture ideology and in monoculture education. In other words, these are kinds of knowledge which, a priori, would seem likely to be cultural.
4. Furthermore, there is a kind of ethnocentrism associated with the monoculture which makes it difficult for monoculture people to recognize values and assumptions belonging to the monoculture as cultural, rather than natural (inevitable). This makes it seem still more likely that some kinds of knowledge that are regularly attributed to the operation of the LAD are in fact of cultural, rather than natural, provenience.
5. But given the suspicion that much of what has been assumed to be part of linguistic competence is really cultural knowledge (and mostly knowledge belonging specifically to the monoculture), it is not clear how we can isolate the natural knowledge-natural linguistic competence. As a first step I proposed an approach based on parsimony-not assuming at the outset any kind of knowledge until it is shown to be necessary. On this basis I proposed the hypotheses that phonemes and the kind of knowledge represented by the grammar-lexicon model do not belong to natural linguistic competence.
6. But if traditional linguistic descriptions do not fit natural linguistic competence, neither can they be said to fit the sum of natural plus cultural linguistic competence, because there is no reason to imagine that the contribution to linguistic competence made by other cultures is necessarily at all similar to that made by the monoculture. The conclusion is that the "languages" that linguistic descriptions describe are cultural constructs-constructs intended to model a bit of reality.
Is there anyone else out there who worries that some of the claims being made--in the name of linguistics--about what language--in the guise of linguistic competence--says about cognition are going to come back to haunt us?
1. I should probably explain here that natural linguistic competence is not exactly the same thing as the "minimal native-speaker competence" that I discussed in Grace 1989b. Minimal competence was defined (1989b: 585) as "the minimal amount of knowledge ("knowledge" being understood as including linguistic skills and capabilities of all kinds) which we can assume all normal speakers of human languages to possess--the minimal knowledge required to qualify as a native speaker of any language." The two could be identical only if it were possible for a language to be learned in an entirely culture-free environment (or, counting the language itself as part of a culture, an environment in which the learner is exposed to no cultural influences except for the language). However--and this point should be emphasized--it seems highly unlikely that language learning would be possible in any circumstances in which no more general enculturative process was going on. Back up
2. I am assuming here that certain capacities are inborn-- the "language faculty" (although not necessarily that any of these capacities are specific to language)--and that certain things must necessarily be learned in the developmental (ontogenetic) process. I don't think there should be any objection to that. Back up
3. An etymological objection to the term might be raised. On strictly etymological grounds the term "ethnocentrism" is not exactly appropriate where the cultural differences are not ethnically based--as is the case with those between monoculture and vernacular cultures. We are accustomed to thinking of cultures as being associated with ethnicity--the assumption of such an association being reflected in the design of the term. Nevertheless, on balance I think it is best to stick with this established term despite its etymological deficiencies. In fact, I believe that it is worthwhile precisely to emphasize the close parallels between this kind of ethnocentrism and the ethnically-based kind. . Back up
[My experience in past discussions of this matter make me believe that I should probably point out that I am not saying that the phoneme is not a useful analytic unit for linguists who need to talk about phonology. What I am saying is that we should not claim that phonemes are more real psychologically or in any other way than the kinds of units other writing systems have developed. We should also not claim that any kind of writing is natural--that languages are designed in such a way as to permit them to be written easily.] Back up
I should also probably emphasize that people who have been taught writing, particularly alphabetic writing, and possibly even people who are simply aware of writing and have some idea of how it works, are likely to have been affected by that--some, no doubt, to an extremely great degree. But, of course, theirs is not "natural" linguistic competence. Back up
6. Although I argued against the existence of a phonemic level in the speakers' linguistic competence, there was one additional element which I did attribute to phonological competence. Since there are in any language numerous coordinated sequences of movements of speech organs which recur in many linguistic expressions, and since skillful (especially native) speakers execute these sequences with much more skill than novices, I proposed that fluent pronunciation is achieved by treating sequences of this sort as "chunks": that is, by learning to execute them as units--as "subroutines". However, I imagine that such chunks are not of any standard length. That is, I do not suppose that different speakers chunk sequences in the same way, and I do not suppose that one individual sets up chunks of consistently the same length. Therefore, I do not suppose that most people's chunks can be organized into paradigmatic (contrast) sets. (I don't know of any factors that would have caused lengths to be standardized in the way that would be required for paradigmatic systems). Back up
7. For the notions of the analytic and holistic modes of knowing, cf. Grace 1981: 19. Back up
8. Or at least, since there are still many questions of detail to be resolved, while such grammars may not accurately represent that knowledge in all details, they do accurately represent the general principles on which it is organized. Back up
Fillmore, Charles J., Paul Kay, and Mary Catherine O'Connor. 1988. Regularity and idiomaticity in grammatical constructions: The case of let alone. Lg. 64: 501-38. Back up
Grace, George W. 1981. An essay on language. Columbia SC: Hornbeam Press. Back up
Grace, George W. 1983. Why I do not believe in phonemes: On the cognitive validity of linguistic theories of phonology. Ethnolinguistic Notes, Series 3, Number 17. Printout. 28 pp. Back up. Also internet World Wide Web page (Click Here).
Grace, George W. 1985. On the notion "linguistic description". Ethnolinguistic Notes, Series 3, Number 24. Printout. 13 pp. Back up
Grace, George W. 1987. The linguistic construction of reality. London: Croom Helm. Back up
Grace, George W. 1989a. The notion of "natural language". Ethnolinguistic Notes, Series 3, Number 38. Printout. 15 pp. Back up. Also internet World Wide Web page (Click Here).
Grace, George W. 1989b. On minimal native-speaker competence. Ethnolinguistic Notes, Series 3, Number 39. Printout. 9 pp. Back up. Also internet World Wide Web page (Click Here).
Joseph, John Earl. 1987. Eloquence and power: The rise of language standards and standard languages. London: Frances Pinter. Back up
Le Page, R. B. 1989. What is a language? York Papers in Linguistics 13: 9-24. Back up
Ruhl, Charles. 1989. On monosemy: A study in linguistic semantics. Albany NY: State University of New York Press. Back up
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