The Literary Mind.pdf

156 THE LITERARY MIND
The view of language as arising through parable would allow for diversity of
languages and grammars. Details of narrative structure vary from culture to culture
and even person to person: what is universal is not all the specific narrative
structures but rather stability of basic abstract stories. All cultures have stable
repertoires of basic abstract stories. Some of them vary culture to culture. An
accusative language (which gives Subject and Agent one grammatical coding and
Patient a distinguished grammatical coding) and an ergative language (which
gives intransitive Subject and Patient one grammatical coding and transitive
Subject and Agent a distinguished grammatical coding) may seem to be informed
by different kinds of stories, but each will seem to have a stable repertoire of basic
abstract stories.
Projection is widely variable in the actual structures it projects and the ways
in which it projects them. Even when two different languages project the same
basic abstract story, and thereby give rise to similar grammatical constructions,
the details will often be strikingly different. In English, "John loves Mary" and
"Mary loves John" have different meanings, but in Latin "Johannes amat Mariam"
and "Mariam amat lohannes" mean the same thing. In both languages, narrative
relations project to create grammatical structure, but in English the result is
a grammatical structure of linear word order, while in Latin it is a grammatical
structure of case endings on nouns. Similarly, English has one set of constructions
for representing causal narrative chains ("I make Paul eat") but French has
a different and highly intricate set of double-verb causative constructions ("Je
fait manger Paul") that English lacks.
Grammar arises as a dynamic system of projections of story structures to
create a dynamic system of grammatical constructions that then can be adapted
dynamically in many ways. It is likely not only that different speakers in the same
linguistic community will have somewhat different grammars but even that the
same person will have somewhat different grammars at different times. What
matters for language as a communicative device is not that the members of a linguistic
community all have the identical dynamic system of grammar but rather
that the external products of grammar are perceived as fulfilling the relevant
communicative needs in local situations. When they are not so perceived, then
objections, corrections, and negotiations can take place to tune the systems of
the conversants. On the parabolic view, grammar is a kind of dynamic repertoire,
in much the same way that perceptual and conceptual categories are repertoires.
The repertoires need not be identical universally or even in a community,
but they do need to be stable and effective.
The level at which the projection takes place is the level of constructions
above individual lexical items. A particular word like "dog" is not the projection
of the concept dog. Rather, grammatical constructions and systems of construe-