Croft: Radical Construction Grammar (2001), ch. 1

I read the first chapter's of William Croft's textbook on "radical" construction grammar with a vague sense that he was repeating himself a lot. Then I came across the two quotes below, and the penny finally dropped.

First, pages 32–33:

Dryer suggests that the following four things might be proposed to exist in the domain of grammar (adapted from Dryer 1997b: 116–17):

(23)	categories and relations in particular languages similarities among these language-particular categories and relations functional, cognitive and semantic explanations for these similarities categories and relations in a cross-linguistic sense

Syntactic theorists, including many functionalist theorists, assume the existence of (23d), that is universal categories and relations. These universal categories and relations are then instantiated in the grammars of particular languages. In other words, (23a) is just an instantiation of (23d). In this view, (23b)—the fact that categories across languages are similar, not identical—is due to language-particular peculiarities that do not affect the overall architecture of Universal Grammar.

But in fact there is a wide range of cross-linguistic variation in syntactic categories and roles and other basic syntactic phenomena, as we have already seen, and will see in later chapters.

Then, page 45:

In this section, I argue that the same solution offered by Dryer for cross-linguistic categories should be applied to categories within a language. The following four things might be proposed to exist in a particular language grammar:

(55)	categories and relations defined by particular constructions similarities among these construction-particular categories and relations functional, cognitive and semantic explanations for these similarities categories and relations in a cross-constructional sense

All of the syntactic theories referred to in §1.1 assume the existence of (55d), which I will call global categories and relations. These global categories and relations are then instantiated in particular constructions in a particular language. In other words, (55a) is just an instantiation of (55d). In this view, the fact that categories across constructions are similar, not identical, is due to construction-specific peculiarities that do not affect the overall architecture of the language's grammar.

But in fact distributional criteria in general do not match, within or across languages.

So, it's the book as performance art: He forces us to notice an analogy between two things by pasting the same text into the chapter twice.

That's an efficient rhetorical strategy (and good zen-buddhist practice). It's a pity that it's so boring to read.

Steen: Finding Metaphor in Grammar and Usage (2007)

Gerard Steen's 2007 book on metaphor is very long, and it contains both chapters that are interesting for me and chapter that aren't. Steen has chosen to read the chapters so as to cover all the possible combinations of the following pairs of dichotomies (cf. ch. 1.4):

• grammar — usage
• language — thought
• symbols — behavior

So that's eight topics. Not surprisingly, this structuring a book this way produces a fair bit of repetition, but it also makes it easy to skip things that are less important to you.

From my perspective, the two important chapters the ones that touch on psycholinguistic aspects of the theory. That's chapters 9 and 12.

Curriculum

There's a list of books and papers that seem to have been more informative of Steen's position than others. I would say his core reading list consists of the following:

• Rachel Giora: On Our Mind (2003)
• Ray Gibbs: Embodiment and Cognitive Science (2005)
• Ellen Winner: The Point of Words (1988)
• Charles A. Perfetti: "Comprehending Written Language," in The Neurocognition of Language (1999)

He also refers a number of times to Lynne Cameron's Metaphor in Educational Discourse (2003), although that seems to be less central to his argument.

With respect to the debates about the psychological reality of conceptual mappings, he cites the following works in particular a lot:

• Lera Borodistsky: "Metaphoric Structuring" (2000)
• The debate in Cognition between Gregory L. Murphy (1996, 1997), and Ray Gibbs (1996)
• The debate in Cognitive Linguistics between William Croft (1998), Dominiek Sandra (1998), David Tuggy (1999)

There are other references as well, but these are the ones that receive the most attention.

Conclusions

Much of the point of Steen extensive methodological discussion is to weed out some of the more crazy claims made by cognitive metaphor theorists. In the process of doing so, he occasionally his own opinions on these matters.

Somewhat surprisingly, he is quite pessimistic about the cognitive validity of cognitive metaphor theory. In his discussion of Perfetti and Giora, he poses the following three questions (pp. 351–52):

1. Does the activation of polysemous words with metaphorical senses, in comprehension contexts requiring the metaphorical sense, always involve the activation of both the basic nonmetaphorical sense as well as the indirect metaphorical sense (processing of linguistic form)?
2. Does the activation of polysemous words with metaphorical senses, in comprehension contexts requiring the metaphorical sense, always involve such a degree of activation of the basic nonmetaphorical sense that it is sufficiently rich to function as a conceptual source domain for mapping the indirect metaphorical sense (processing of conceptual structure domains)?
3. Does the activation of polysemous words with metaphorical senses, in comprehension contexts requiring the metaphorical sense, always display some manifestation of an obligatory mapping from the basic nonmetaphorical sense to the indirect metaphorical sense (processing of conceptual structure of mapping)?

(Incidentally, this quote also illustrates Steen's almost meditatively repetitive style.) Anyway, his own answer to these questions is negative:

Salient word meanings [in the sense of Giora] are word meaning that are frequent, familiar, conventional, and prototypical, and it is these senses which are quickest to retrieve. Since metaphorical word senses may also be highly frequent, familiar, conventional, and prototypical, they may also be activated faster than their nonmetaphorical counterparts. It follows that questions 3, 2 and even 1 have to receive negative answers, as may be inferred from Giora's detailed review of her own and other researcher's work. (p. 352)

It follows that the symbolic analyses we know from cognitive metaphor theory don't really have much cognitive validity:

The fact that symbolic synchronic or historical analysis may helpfully privilege a particular class of senses as direct or nonmetaphorical does not directly map onto individuals' cognitive representation of such senses as prior or even necessary in the online comprehension of linguistic forms when these are to be processed in the metaphorical ways. (p. 352)

That's pretty radical, but it's perhaps less surprising if we see Steen as the strict methodology policeman of cognitive metaphor theory — in that case, we would expect him to have the most cautious conclusions in the field.

Peter Harder: "Meaning as input" (2009)

This paper by Peter Harder argues---building on William Croft and D. Alan Cruse's Cognitive Linguistics (2004)---that sentences should be thought of as little programs that are run in the head of a hearer.

The main example supporting this view of semantics is the case of the definite article. In sentences like

• The UN condemned the test,

the noun phrase the test can be read as an instruction to find a suitable referent (p. 18).

This invites a view of grammar in which the syntactical structure of a sentence is seen as a chronological structure of a program. The sentence The test happened thus receives the following interpretation (p. 23):

• declarative (past tense (HAPPEN (definite (TEST))))

This should be read as a LISP-style program. Harder illustrates the syntax of this instructional language with the following "recipe" (p. 24):

• serve (sprinkle with lemon (grill (add salt (slice (salmon)))))

It should be quite obvious how this is intended to work. Note the parallel to Montague grammar.

The consequence of adopting such a view seems to be that language becomes a narrow communication channel that only allows for the transmission of code, not of meaning. If this is correct, understanding can be compared to a client-side execution of a server-provided script.

Meaning is thus constrained by the resources of the hearer, but the instruction is designed by the speaker. This may be what Harder means by the following quote, although I'm not entirely sure:

Knowing a language, I suggest, essentially consists of knowing the input properties of the forms you choose [the meaning of the keywords in the scripting language?] -- whereas actual outputs [interpretations, meanings?] can never be known for certain in advance [because you cannot control the settings and properties of the client-side computer?]. (p. 16)

The paper was published in New Directions in Cognitive Linguistics (2009), edited by Vyvyan Evans and Stéphanie Pourcel.