The Literary Mind.pdf

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LANGUAGE 161 In its most simplistic version, the view that grammar arises by projection from story can be paraphrased colloquially by saying that sentences are small stories. The form of a sentence "is" the form of a story. Sentences are small stories that come from big stories. A noun is a person, place, or thing; a verb is an event; an adverb modifies an event; tense indicates temporal viewpoint and focus on a story; and so on. Such an ideational view of language is intuitive to anyone who has ever spoken, even though it cannot account for all of language. At sophisticated levels, the theory that the origin of language is the projection of story is compatible with some other work in cognitive linguistics, in the minimal sense that it shares some basic assumptions with other work in the field. One of the most basic assumptions in cognitive linguistics is that linguistic structures can have conceptual bases. Perhaps the most immediately accessible analysis based on this view is Leonard Talmy's analysis of ways in which force-dynamic conceptual structure is grammaticalized in English. A view of grammar as a dynamic system of interrelated grammatical constructions appears to be broadly compatible with the theory of grammar offered by Charles Fillmore and Paul Kay. The view that some basic grammatical constructions represent some basic human stories is compatible with work done by Adele Goldberg. Although Gilles Fauconnier and Ron Langacker do not speak exactly of the projection of story, they have in different ways analyzed with great insight and in great detail the ways in which projection from conceptual structure systematically underlies various aspects of grammar. Indeed, although Langacker and Fauconnier, like nearly everyone who works on tense, offer explanations of basic tenses that start from the temporal relation between the event reported and the moment of speaking, they nevertheless explicitly make the case for tense as the grammaticalization of viewpoint and focus. Various of Fauconnier and Langacker's graduate students and colleagues have also done work on tense as arising essentially from focus and viewpoint. It is often easy to assimilate the detailed work of a linguist who studies specific structures of language to the view that rudimentary grammar arose by parable. What is distinctive about my proposal is not the data or the analyses but rather the beginning frame. Thus, for example, although Comrie begins with a view of basic tenses as defined relative to the moment of speaking, a very little jiggle of his beginning assumptions can reposition his detailed analyses systematically to make his study compatible, I think, with the view that language arose through parable. This impulse behind my proposal—make no unnecessary hypotheses—puts it at odds with the Chomskyan view that grammar arose because there evolved, with no help from natural selection and no help from preexisting human capacities, a species-specific, modular "organ" that is as specialized for grammar as the
162 THE LITERARY MIND lungs, heart, and liver are for their particular tasks, expressed at the neurobiological level exclusively according to genetic instruction, and sharing nothing with other human capacities. There are alternative current varieties of this view, including Derek Bickerton's "language bioprogram hypothesis" "that suggests that the infrastructure of language is specified at least as narrowly as Chomsky has claimed." Bickerton draws his evidence for the "language bioprogram" from Creole languages. Any hypothesis that grammar is historically and individually the exclusive product of a special-purpose genetically provided mental organ for grammar rests upon a negative argument: We have not managed to explain how grammar arises through general processes; therefore we must posit the existence of a special genetic code that is entirely responsible for building in the brain a universal grammar organ, which will someday be located and understood in the way the retina and the lateral geniculate nucleus and primary visual cortex have been located and (partially) understood. The hypothesis of genetic instruction is not in principle impossible, but it is methodologically the hypothesis of last resort. It trades Occam's razor for God's magic hat: Against all odds, make the most cosmic and all-embracing extra hypothesis imaginable so as to solve everything at once— Let there be language. Perhaps the main argument that grammar must arise in the individual human being exclusively from some special-purpose device, genetically coded and neurobiologically expressed, is that grammar is too arbitrary, subtle, and quirky to arise otherwise. But if the influence on language acquisition is not only the language an infant hears but also all of narrative imagining, including all of the systems from which narrative imagining recruits, there is plausibly an overabundance of sources for subtleties and quirks without conjecturing a special device to introduce them. It is also argued that children obey subtleties of grammatical structure they have not heard, so that these subtleties must come from a special device. But if the influence on language acquisition is not only experience of language but: also all of narrative imagining, including all of the systems from which narrative imagining recruits, then there is no poverty of relevant stimulus but rather a great wealth of relevant stimulus. It is also argued that the subtleties and quirks of grammar are too universal to have arisen except through a universal mental organ for language acquisition. But story, projection, and parable are universal, and if grammar arises through parable, which recruits from universal systems such as vision, then there is no need to resort to a special conjectural mental organ to provide universality of structure. Chomsky has been consistently unreceptive to the proposal that the hypothetical mental organ for grammar arose by natural selection. Stephen Pinker
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THE LITERARY MIND
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THE LITERARY MIND MARK TURNER NEW Y
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PREFACE I F YOU ARE BROWSING this p
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS T HE JOHN SIMON GUG
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CONTENTS 1 Bedtime with Shahrazad 3
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THE LITERARY MIND
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1 BEDTIME WITH SHAHRAZAD T HERE WAS
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BEDTIME WITH SHAHRAZAD 5 future, of
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BEDTIME WITH SHAHRAZAD and projecti
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BEDTIME WITH SHAHRAZAD other fictio
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BEDTIME WITH SHAHRAZAD 11 daughter
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HUMAN MEANING 13 products of vision
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HUMAN MEANING 15 to the category pe
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HUMAN MEANING 17 out and picking so
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HUMAN MEANING 19 moves the object t
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HUMAN MEANING 21 movement when we r
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HUMAN MEANING 23 ries of connection
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HUMAN MEANING 25 ceptual primitives
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BODY ACTION 27 EVENTS ARE ACTIONS g
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BODY ACTION 29 In addition to "even
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BODY ACTION 31 so as to find such a
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BODY ACTION 33 different action-sto
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BODY ACTION 35 that change. We can
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BODY ACTION 37 cal. Usually, we con
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FIGURED TALES 39 projected onto the
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FIGURED TALES 41 ACTORS ARE MANIPUL
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FIGURED TALES 43 person, the hearer
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FIGURED TALES 45 that the eight sta
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FIGURED TALES 47 Stories of our int
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FIGURED TALES 49 hear / Time's wing
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FIGURED TALES 51 the nonspatial sto
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FIGURED TALES 53 led to another," "
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FIGURED TALES 55 literary thought b
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W E 5 CREATIVE BLENDS ... nor did A
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CREATIVE BLENDS 59 reinforced by th
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CREATIVE BLENDS 61 BLENDED SPACES I
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CREATIVE BLENDS 63 kind of badness.
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CREATIVE BLENDS 65 John is becoming
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CREATIVE BLENDS 67 from the target;
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CREATIVE BLENDS 69 inference of iro
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CREATIVE BLENDS 71 "barely maintain
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CREATIVE BLENDS 73 tral respect. Th
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CREATIVE BLENDS 75 their towns, and
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CREATIVE BLENDS 77 harvest. We can
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CREATIVE BLENDS 79 ing and harvest,
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CREATIVE BLENDS 81 the actor who ca
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CREATIVE BLENDS 83 and go, or shift
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6 MANY SPACES Nirad Das (an Indian
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MANY SPACES 87 manipulating the inp
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MANY SPACES 89 applied to many spec
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MANY SPACES 91 apply to any target
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MANY SPACES 93 of President Bill Cl
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MANY SPACES 95 However, a second po
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MANY SPACES 97 a tent to be staked
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MANY SPACES 99 jection of stories o
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MANY SPACES 101 die; and he shall r
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MANY SPACES 103 The two Kings marve
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MANY SPACES 105 result that x in a
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MANY SPACES 107 Let us look at a ca
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MANY SPACES 109 Invariance is a glo
Page 122 and 123: MANY SPACES 111 example, given that
Page 124 and 125: MANY SPACES 113 When we recognize w
Page 126 and 127: MANY SPACES 115 cists interested in
Page 128 and 129: SINGLE LIVES 117 Our sensory appara
Page 130 and 131: SINGLE LIVES 119 We saw above that
Page 132 and 133: SINGLE LIVES 121 dreamer experienci
Page 134 and 135: SINGLE LIVES 123 as something extra
Page 136 and 137: SINGLE LIVES 125 from a belief, "gr
Page 138 and 139: SINGLE LIVES 127 beg you to cease h
Page 140 and 141: SINGLE LIVES 129 without saying a w
Page 142 and 143: SINGLE LIVES 131 to much anyway, bu
Page 144 and 145: SINGLE LIVES 133 psychological view
Page 146 and 147: SINGLE LIVES 135 "Which story was i
Page 148 and 149: SINGLE LIVES 137 it to project that
Page 150 and 151: SINGLE LIVES 139 character. In the
Page 152 and 153: LANGUAGE 141 Pinker, and Paul Bloom
Page 154 and 155: LANGUAGE 143 "John pushes the ball
Page 156 and 157: LANGUAGE 145 The abstract story, in
Page 158 and 159: LANGUAGE 147 structural property of
Page 160 and 161: LANGUAGE 149 nia, and although the
Page 162 and 163: LANGUAGE 151 Which of these things
Page 164 and 165: LANGUAGE 153 explanations. For exam
Page 166 and 167: LANGUAGE 155 The projection of narr
Page 168 and 169: LANGUAGE 157 tions like Noun Phrase
Page 170 and 171: LANGUAGE 159 The cast of "character
Page 174 and 175: LANGUAGE 163 and Paul Bloom have ar
Page 176 and 177: LANGUAGE 165 Chomsky's argument is
Page 178 and 179: LANGUAGE 167 to members of that com
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Page 182 and 183: NOTES 171 page 33, "I feel a hand":
Page 184 and 185: NOTES 173 page 67, "As we went to p
Page 186 and 187: NOTES 175 page 120, focus and viewp
Page 188 and 189: NOTES 177 page 161, "Indeed, althou
Page 190 and 191: INTRODUCTION TO IMAGE SCHEMAS FURTH
Page 192 and 193: FURTHER READING ON THE IMAGE SCHEMA
Page 194 and 195: A la recherche du temps perdu, 45,
Page 196 and 197: Gradient of spaces and projections,
Page 198: Talmy, Leonard, 29, 47-48, 161, 179
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