The Literary Mind.pdf

LANGUAGE 141
Pinker, and Paul Bloom—disagree only about which evolutionary mechanisms
were responsible for the genetic specialization for grammar.
Naturally, it is a corollary of this theory that the development of language in
any modern human child comes entirely from the autonomous grammar module
in the child's brain, which is built entirely from the special instructions in its
genes. The language the child hears prompts it to shut down the parts of the
language module it does not need.
I think this theory of the historical origin of language is wrong. A carefully
adjusted version of it might not in principle be absolutely impossible, but at best
it offers a hypothesis of desperate last resort: Since we cannot discover a straightforward
way in which language might have arisen, let us postulate the mysterious
origin of a special, autonomous black box that mysteriously does everything
we need to explain language, including everything we don't yet know we need.
If we reject the hypothesis that genetic specialization for grammar was the
origin of language, what can we propose instead? Let us consider the possibility
that parable was the origin of language, that parable preceded grammar.
Occam's razor is a basic principle of theory building, named after the man
who expressed it: Make no unnecessary hypotheses. We have seen that, independently
of questions of grammar, we must concede that human beings have
the mental capacities I call parable. Is it necessary to add to parable something
new? Is it necessary to make the additional hypothesis that special autonomous
instructions arose in human genetic material for building an autonomous black
box in the brain that does the entire job? Not if we consider that parable already
gives us what we need. Cognitive mechanisms whose existence we must grant
independently of any analysis of grammar can account for the origin of grammar.
The linguistic mind is a consequence and subcategory of the literary mind.
Stories have structure that human vocal sound—as sound, not language—
does not have. Stories have objects and events, actors and movements, viewpoint
and focus, image schemas and force dynamics, and so on. Roughly, parable takes
structure from story and gives it to voice (or bodily signs in the case of sign language).
Parable creates structure for voice by projecting structure from story. The
structure it creates is grammar. Grammar results from the projection of story
structure. Sentences come from stories byway of parable.
Parable draws on the full range of cognitive processes involved in story. Story
involves spatiality, motor capacities, the sensory modalities (sight, hearing, touch,
smell, taste) and submodalities, patterns that run across sensory modalities and
submodalities, perceptual and conceptual categorization, image schemas, and our
other basic cognitive instruments. Parable draws on all of this structure to create
grammatical structure for vocal sound. Grammar, built from such structure,
coheres with it.