The Ontogenetic Emergence of Cooperative Communication. : Origins of Human Communication.

Corpus "Fonds audiovisuel Institut Jean Nicod - Programme ESCoM-AAR"Lecture 4. Language as Shared IntentionalityHuman linguistic communication has same social-cognitive, social-motivational infrastructure as pointing and gestural communication - but attention-directing done with conventions. NOT written, but spoken language. [Intuitions come from written.]NOT meaning as thing, but use of linguistic forms for communicative functionsDirect att. in shared conceptual space - like gestures (but w/conventions)NOT grammatical rules, but patterns of use => schemasConstructions themselves as complex symbols "She sneezed him the ball"NOT 'a grammar' but a structured inventory of constructions: continuum of regularity => idiomaticity è grammaticality = normativityMany complexities = "unification" of constructions w/ incompatibilities.NOT innate UG, but "teeming modularity" (1) symbols, pred-arg structure, social intentions/speech acts, speech/phonology, categorization, etc. (2) diff. functionsnot many language universals, but some due to universals of: human cognition, social cognition/attention, vocal-auditory processing. 4.1. Common Infrastructure of Pointing and LanguagePrimacy of the utterance: Holophrases - reference + expr. of motivereferents here & now = pointing => demonstratives (direct att. in space)referents not here & now = characterizing gestures => content wordsnoun = 'thing'; verb = 'event': categories ape att-getters ------co-operativepointing demonstratives& deictics ape int-movements ------ characterizinggestures content words[nouns, verbs] Others outside CG/JAF (children) imitatively learn: convention > usedrift, arbitrariness => generalization of conventionality (money)Grammar: Two aspects of a situation symbolized"Eat" ...... "Berries" => then mental combination under one contoure.g., after non-comprehension? breakdown and repairUtterance Semantics = Event (incl. state) + Participants (+ setting)role of imitation in construction of event categoriesalso: topic introduction (w/ demonstratives)Utterance Pragmatics = (i) speaker motives & attitudes(ii) structuring of info for A's perspective/knowledge/expectationsreferential choice for NPs and VPs (referential newness)topic-focus for information structure of utterance (relational newness)Grammaticalization of constructions = pre-fab. packages for recurrent comm. situations - constructions themselves as complex symbols "She sneezed him the ball"incl. both semantics & pragmaticsincl. both utt.-level and phrase-level: NPs & VPs & PPs as modularEmergence of second-order symbols (gramm. morphemes from Ns, Vs, demonstratives) via grammaticalization, as "relational glue" in constructions(1) relating referents to one another or designating role in whole utterancecase marker or word order for semantic roleexternal agreement (e.g., subj-verb) for semantic roleinternal agreement (e.g., determiner-adj-noun) for phrase grouping(2) grounding referents in ongoing JAF [N = 'space'; V = 'time']Nouns = determiners, possessives, relative clauses, etc.Verbs = tense-aspect-modalityIndefiniteness & Non-finitenessExample = car wreck: C motive = quest, inform; A perspct. = agent, patient- agent-focus inform: "Mary hit Jerry." [She hit Jerry] [Mary hit him]- patient-focus inform: "He got hit (by Mary)." [The guy in the hat got hit]- agent Q: "Who hit him?" "Whom did she hit?" [Whom was she hitting?]- patient Q: "Who got hit (by her)?" [Who ought to have gotten hit?]- agent cleft: "It was Mary that hit him" "It was Jerry whom she hit."- patient cleft: "It was Jerry who got hit (by her)"- agent cleft Q: "Was it Mary that hit him?" "Was it Jerry whom she hit?"- patient cleft Q: "Was it Jerry that got hit (by her)?"Example of process:- He pulled the door and it opened => He pulled the door open (resultative construction)- I am going to see my bride => I'm gonna see the next century (go-future)- I want it ... I buy it => I want to buy it (infinitival complement)- I believe that !... Mary will wed John => I believe that Mary will wed John (S-complement)- My boyfriend ... He rides horses ... He bets on them =>My boyfriend, who rides horses, bets on them (relative clause)"Yesterday's discourse is today's syntax"; "Yesterday's syntax is today's morphology" (T. Givón): processing, predictability, prag. inferencesMany problems created by "unification" of constructions w/ incompatibltiesEG: extraction constraints (Goldberg, 2006)Discoursenarratives as motivation for complex TAM markingnoun classes for reference tracking in narrativesUniversals = universals of human cognition, communication, v-a processingno Universal Grammar ( what is it, anyway?). 4.3. Ontogenetic OriginsPrimacy of utterance; initial holophrases [often final word of adult utt.]request or indicate objects (e.g., by naming them with a requestive or neutral intonation);request or indicate the recurrence of objects or events (e.g., More, Again, Another-One);request or indicate dynamic events involving objects (e.g., Up, Down, Open, Close);request or indicate the actions of people (e.g., Eat,Kick, Ride, Draw);indicate the location of objects and people (e.g., Here, Outside);ask questions (e.g., Whats-that? or Where-go?);indicate a property of an object (e.g., Pretty or Wet);mark specific social events and situations (e.g., Hi, Bye, Thank-You, No).Cultural (imitative) learning of holophrase: form => function (role reversal)Extracting WordsChild hears whole utterances; to extract word must:comprehend overall comm. actblame assignment of components: segment comm. actJAF + word learning studies (summarized in T 2001)way Mom uses words inside JAF matters; outside noexperiments in hiding/finding JAF: (e.g., T & Barton, '94)Known words in utterance (syntagmatics) => helps blame assignmentKnown alternatives (paradigmatics) => construal (dog vs pet vs pest)Referential choice exps: shared-new [C,B,T 2000; W&T, 2005Conventionality, imitation, normativityHistorically = conventions; developmentally = norms (laugh)Abstracting Constructional PatternsAfter holophrases => verb islands, item-based constructns (not a grammar)abstract slots based on functionfirst without and then with syntactic markingAbstract constructions => grammaticality as normativitysyntagmatic categories: analogy based on function: Subj-Objparadigmatic categories: distributional analysis: Ns & Vsconstraint based on entrenchment & pre-emption. Summary: Linguistic CommunicationSame social-cognitive, social-motivational infrastructure as pointing [Fig. 2]Symbols = gestures, drift to arbitrary => conventionsontogeny: observe use (function) in utterances & imitate: normativeGrammar = constructions and their creative combination [grammaticalization]ontogeny: find patterns (function) and generalize: normativePhylogeny + History in OntogenyOntogeny = dual inheritance: genes and utterances. Some ReferencesCampbell, A., Brooks, P., & Tomasello, M. (2000). Factors affecting young children's use of pronouns as referring expressions. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearning Research,43, 1337 - 1349.Lohmann, H., Tomasello, M., & Meyer, S. (2005). Linguistic communication and social understanding. In J. Astington & J. Baird (Eds.), Why Language Matters for Theory of Mind. Oxford University Press.Tomasello, M. (1992). First Verbs: A Case Study of Early Grammatical Development. Cambridge University Press.Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition. Harvard University Press.Tomasello, M. (1998). Cognitive linguistics. In W. Bechtel & G. Graham (Eds.), A Companion to Cognitive Science. Basil BlackwellTomasello, M. (2000). Do young children have adult syntactic competence? Cognition, 74, 209-253.Tomasello, M. (2000). First steps in a usage based theory of language acquisition. Cognitive Linguistics, 11, 61-82Tomasello, M. (2000). The item based nature of children's early syntactic development. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 156-163.Tomasello, M. (2001). Bruner on language acquisition. In D. Bakhurst & S. Shanker (Eds.), Jerome Bruner: Language, Culture, Self. Sage Press.Tomasello, M. (2001). Perceiving intentions and learning words in the second year of life. In M. Bowerman & S. Levinson (Eds.), Language Acquisition and Conceptual Development. Cambridge University Press.Tomasello, M. (2004). What kind of evidence could refute the UG hypothesis? Studies in Language, 28, 642-44.Tomasello, M. (2005). Beyond formalites: The case of language acquisition. The Linguistic Review, 22, 167-181Tomasello, M. (2006). Acquiring linguistic constructions. In D. Kuhn & R. Siegler (Eds.), Handbook of Child Psychology. New York: Wiley.Tomasello, M. (2006). The social-cognitive bases of language development. In K. Brown (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics (2nd ed.). Elsevier.Tomasello, M. (Ed.). (1998 = Volume 1; 2003 = Volume 2). The New Psychology of Language: Cognitive and Functional Approaches to Lanuage Structure. Lawrence Erlbaum.Wittek, A. & Tomasello, M. (2005). Young children's sensitivity to listener knowledge and perceptual context in choosing referring expressions. Applied Psycholinguistics, 26, 541-58