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3. Cognition and Pragmatics 2009. xvii, 399 pp.
Edited by Dominiek Sandra, Jan-Ola 謘tman and Jef Verschueren
University of Antwerp / University of Helsinki / University of Antwerp
This book represents a broad array of approaches to language from a cognitive perspective.
In the majority of these approaches, language and cognition are considered to be interacting
capacities of the human mind, such that cognitive abilities do not play a peripheral
but rather a crucial role in various forms of language use. The contributions have been
ordered alphabetically, but in the following paragaphs I briefly review them thematically.
First of all, there is a chapter on Cognitive grammar, written by Ronald Langacker, the
founding father of this discipline. Cognitive grammar is the antipode of the Chomskyan
approach to language, stressing the central role of general cognitive principles in language
and the language user’s sensori-motor interactions with his surroundings.
Secondly, there are chapters that offer a general introduction to the broad field of language
and cognition. The most general one is a chapter with a title that is the umbrella term
for many separate lines of research in the field: Cognitive science. In this paper, Seana Coulson
and Teenie Matlock describe the separate angles from which language is studied within a
cognitive framework and review the major research techniques. Another chapter is a methodological
one, in which a frequently used method in research on language and cognition
is discussed: the experimental method. This chapter, Experimentation, written by the present
author, describes a number of essential notions for setting up a sound experimental design
and describes the rationale behind statistical testing in general and the most frequently used
statistical tests in particular.
Further, there are chapters with a focus on developmental issues. In the chapter Developmental
psychology, written by Susan Ervin-Tripp, the major research topics, theories on
cognitive development and research methods are discussed. Additionally, the author relates
questions in developmental research to issues in pragmatics. Another chapter zooms in on
one particular aspect of development: the acquisition of language. In their chapter on Language
acquisition, Steven Gillis and Dorit Ravid give an overview of the different theoretical
perspectives on language acquisition, ranging from the nativist to the empiricist perspective.
They describe a variety of possible bootstrapping mechanisms that an infant can use for
getting started in the process of language acquisition, without having to fall back on innate
structural constraints. They also discuss different research methods and emphasize variation
between and within children. Finally, they point out that language acquisition does not
stop at the age of four and that there is a need for studies on older age groups.
Another set of chapters addresses different linguistic levels that can be addressed in
studies involving language and cognition. These levels range from the recognition and production of language forms, to issues of semantic categorization and metalinguistic
awareness. In the chapter on Psycholinguistics, the present author describes how this discipline
was founded and how it can be defined in terms of its major goals, theoretical
models, research methodologies, and techniques. He then covers the literature on psycholinguistic
research that has been performed with respect to the four language modalities:
visual word recognition (reading) and production (spelling), speech perception
and speech production. As a review of each of these four research domains could form a
chapter of its own, the chapter on psycholinguistics is longer than other chapters in the
volume. There are two more chapters dealing with psycholinguistic topics. In the chapter
on The multilingual lexicon, Ton Dijkstra addresses the question whether speakers of multiple
languages have separate mental lexicons for each language, inhibiting the irrelevant
one(s), or whether words from all languages are stored together in a single mental lexicon
and activated language-independently. He discusses studies that support the single lexicon
idea, citing evidence obtained with different experimental techniques. In the chapter on
Comprehension vs. production, J. Cooper Cutting raises a question that has concerned
many psycholinguists: is comprehension the sequence of production processes in reverse,
and vice versa? He tackles this question with respect to research on the mental lexicon and
on syntactic processing. A chapter by Roger Lindsay, Perception and language, moves to a
higher level of language. The question is raised to what extent the knowledge of a language
affects our perception of the world and the operation of higher-order cognitive
processes,
which leads to the Sapir-Whorf debate. However, the larger part of the paper addresses
a set of possible interactions between language, perception, action, and consciousness.
The contribution by Eleanor Rosch, Categorization, describes the classical view, which
defined categories (concepts) as sets of individually necessary and collectively sufficient
conditions and how this view had to make place for a theory in which graded structure
and the notion of prototypes became the central notions (her own theory). She describes
how this new view was mathematically modeled and how some researchers attempted
to salvage the classical view by construing hybrid theories. Still one level higher up the
ladder of linguistic abstraction we find humans’ ability to reflect on their own language
use. This reflexive capacity, one of the defining features of language use, is addressed by
Elizabeth Mertz and Jonathan Yovel in their chapter Metalinguistic awareness. A chapter
by Wallace Chafe on Consciousness and language also addresses our capacity to be aware
of our own speech production. Chafe argues that there are foci in language that attract
our attention, like prosodic units, and discusses the different types of activation costs that
are involved when our consciousness is directed on some topic. He argues that intonation
units absorb limited capacity, unlike higher-level units, such as discourse topics, which
must also attract our attention, even though these take up too much capacity to be active
in consciousness all at once.
Finally, the book addresses a number of modern techniques that have turned out to be
quite successful for modeling human cognition, particularly language processing. In the chapter on Connectionism, Ton Weijters and Antal van den Bosch explain what connectionist
modeling actually is. They describe the operation of a perceptron, which is an artificial
device that carries out some form of neuron-like computing and can thus be considered the
forerunner of connectionist models. They then go on to discuss the algorithm of backpropagation
in connectionist models, which are based on the principle of supervised learning.
Finally, they discuss the concept of unsupervised learning on the basis of self-organizing
feature maps. They also mention ways in which connectionist modeling might be useful
for pragmatics. In their chapter on Artificial Intelligence, Steven Gillis, Walter
Daelemans
and Koenraad De Smedt define the symbol system hypothesis, which states that knowledge
should be physically represented and that programmes should manipulate these physical
symbols. They discuss the various available paradigms for representing knowledge and
how linguistic symbols can be manipulated in semantic and pragmatic contexts. In his
chapter on the Cerebral representation of language Michel Paradis puts the concept of dyshyponoia
central, i.e., the language problems that many brain-injured people experience
after damage to the right hemisphere: while being able to use and understand the literal
meaning of language, they have lost its pragmatic function and have, for instance, trouble
with metaphor, metonymy, humor, and other kinds of non-literal language use. The author
also addresses these patients’ problems with pragmatic inferences, which are not logically
required but make the communication work. Throughout the paper Paradis relates different
functions to the left and right hemispheres. |
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