Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T15:19:53.383Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Sign Theory of Language and the form-meaning interface / La Théorie du langage basée sur le signe et l’interface forme-sens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2019

Frederick J. Newmeyer
Frederick J. Newmeyer*
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, and University of Washington
*
fjn@uw.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines a key feature of Denis Bouchard's Sign Theory of Language, namely the Substantive Hypothesis (SH), the idea that “the most explanatory linguistic theory is one that minimizes the elements (ideally to zero) that do not have an external motivation in the prior properties of the perceptual and conceptual substances of language”. The article argues that the strongest form of the SH is challenged by two widespread classes of phenomena: morphosyntactic generalizations that are not sign-based, and non-sign-based external pressures on grammars. It concludes with some speculative remarks on why, to a significant degree, grammatical patterning is not sign-based.

Résumé

Cet article porte sur une composante clé de la Théorie du langage basée sur le signe de Denis Bouchard, à savoir l’Hypothèse substantive (HS), selon laquelle « the most explanatory linguistic theory is one that minimizes the elements (ideally to zero) that do not have an external motivation in the prior properties of the perceptual and conceptual substances of language ». [la théorie linguistique qui a le plus grand pouvoir explicatif est celle qui réduit (idéalement à zéro) les éléments qui ne sont pas motivés indépendamment des propriétés antérieures des substances perceptuelles et conceptuelles du langage.] L'article soutient que deux classes de phénomènes très répandus représentent un défi pour les tenants de la version la plus forte de l'HS : les généralisations morphosyntaxiques non basées sur le signe et les pressions externes et indépendantes du signe qui pèsent sur les grammaires. L'article se conclut avec quelques remarques spéculatives concernant ce qui pourrait expliquer pourquoi, dans une grande mesure, les schémas grammaticaux ne sont pas basés sur le signe.

Keywords

autonomy of syntaxiconicityparsing pressurede SaussureSign Theory of Languageautonomie de la syntaxeiconicitéexigences de parsagede SaussureThéorie du langage basée sur le signe
Type
Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 64 , Issue 2: Les signes, leur combinaison et les propriétés fondamentales du langage : un hommage à Denis Bouchard / Signs, their combination, and the fundamental properties of language: A tribute to Denis Bouchard , June 2019 , pp. 171 - 215
Copyright
© Canadian Linguistic Association/Association canadienne de linguistique 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I would like to thank three anonymous referees for their penetrating comments on an earlier version of this article.

References

References / Références

Akmajian, Adrian, and Heny, Frank. 1975. An introduction to the principles of transformational syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Allen, Cynthia L. 1980. Movement and deletion in Old English. Linguistic Inquiry 11(2): 261–323.Google Scholar
Arnold, Jennifer E., Wasow, Thomas, Losongco, Anthony, and Ginstrom, Ryan. 2000. Heaviness vs. newness: The effects of structural complexity and discourse status on constituent ordering. Language 76(1): 28–55.Google Scholar
Aronoff, Mark. 1976. Word formation in generative grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Baker, Charles. L. 1991. The syntax of English not: The limits of core grammar. Linguistic Inquiry 22(3): 387–429.Google Scholar
Baker, Mark C. 1988. Incorporation: A theory of grammatical function changing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Johansson, Stig, Leech, Geoffrey, Conrad, Susan, and Finegan, Edward. 1999. Longman grammar of spoken and written English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight. 1972. That's that. Mouton: The Hague.Google Scholar
Bouchard, Denis. 1983. On the content of empty categories. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Bouchard, Denis. 1995. The semantics of syntax: A minimalist approach to grammar. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bouchard, Denis. 2002. Adjectives, number, and interfaces: Why languages vary. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Bouchard, Denis. 2005. Exaption and linguistic explanation. Lingua 115(12): 1685–1696.Google Scholar
Bouchard, Denis. 2013. The nature and origin of language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bresnan, Joan W. 2001. Lexical-functional syntax. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Butler, Jonny. 2006. The structure of temporality and modality, or, towards deriving something like a Cinque hierarchy. Linguistic Variation Yearbook 6: 161–201.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan L. 1985. Morphology: A study of the relation between meaning and form. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Chafe, Wallace L. 1967. Language as symbolization. Language 43(1): 37–91.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1981. Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 2000. New horizons in the study of language and mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 2002. On nature and language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Churchward, C. Maxwell. 1953. Tongan grammar. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dehé, Nicole, and Wichmann, Anne. 2010. Sentence-initial I think (that) and I believe (that): Prosodic evidence for use as main clause, comment clause and discourse marker. Studies in Language 34(1): 36–74.Google Scholar
Dor, Daniel. 2005. Toward a semantic account of that-deletion in English. Linguistics 43(2): 345–382.Google Scholar
Dryer, Matthew S. 1988. Object-verb order and adjective-noun order: Dispelling a myth. Lingua 74(2–3): 185–217.Google Scholar
Dryer, Matthew S. 1992. The Greenbergian word order correlations. Language 68(1): 81–138.Google Scholar
Duanmu, San. 1997. Phonologically motivated word order movement: Evidence from Chinese compounds. Studies in the Linguistic Sciences 27(1): 49–73.Google Scholar
Ernst, Thomas. 1992. The phrase structure of English negation. Linguistic Review 9(2): 109–144.Google Scholar
Ferreira, Victor S., and Dell, Gary S.. 2000. Effect of ambiguity and lexical availability on syntactic and lexical production. Cognitive Psychology 40(4): 296–340.Google Scholar
Gazdar, Gerald, Klein, Ewan, Pullum, Geoffrey, and Sag, Ivan. 1985. Generalized phrase structure grammar. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Goldsmith, John. 1985. A principled exception to the coordinate structure constraint. Chicago Linguistic Society 21: 133–142.Google Scholar
Hargus, Sharon, and Tuttle, Siri G.. 1997. Augmentation as affixation in Athabaskan languages. Phonology 14(2): 177–220.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 2014. On system pressure competing with exonomic motivation. In Competing motivations in grammar and usage, ed. MacWhinney, Brian, Malchukov, Andrej, and Moravcsik, Edith A., 197–208. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hawkins, John A. 1994. A performance theory of order and constituency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hawkins, John A. 2001. Why are categories adjacent? Journal of Linguistics 37(1): 1–34.Google Scholar
Hawkins, John A. 2004. Efficiency and complexity in grammars. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hoffmann, Thomas, and Trousdale, Graeme. 2013. Construction grammar: An introduction. In The Oxford handbook of construction grammar, ed. Hoffmann, Thomas and Trousdale, Graeme, 1–12. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hyman, Larry M. 2002. Suffix ordering in Bantu: A morphocentric approach. In Yearbook of morphology 2002, ed. Booij, Geert and van Marle, Jaap, 245–281. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray. 1972. Semantic interpretation in generative grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Jaeger, T. Florian. 2010. Redundancy and reduction: Speakers manage syntactic information density. Cognitive Psychology 61(1): 23–62.Google Scholar
Joseph, John E. 2015. Iconicity in Saussure's linguistic work, and why it does not contradict the arbitrariness of the sign. Historiographia Linguistica 42(1): 85–105.Google Scholar
Kaisse, Ellen M. 1985. Connected speech: The interaction of syntax and phonology. Orlando: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Kaltenböck, Gunther. 2006. ‘…That is the question’: Complementizer omission in extraposed that-clauses. English Language and Linguistics 10(2): 371–396.Google Scholar
Kearns, Katherine S. 2007. Epistemic verbs and zero complementizer. English Language and Linguistics 11(3): 475–505.Google Scholar
van Kemenade, Ans. 1987. Syntactic case and morphological case in the history of English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Kim, Jong-Bok. 2000. The grammar of negation: A constraint-based approach. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Koshal, Sanyukta. 1979. Ladakhi grammar. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George. 1986. Frame semantic control of the coordinate structure constraint. In Papers from the parasession on pragmatics and grammatical theory, ed. Farley, Anne M., Farley, Peter T., and McCullough, Karl-Erik, 152–167. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
Martinet, André. 1962. A functional view of language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Miestamo, Matti. 2005. Standard negation: The negation of declarative verbal main clauses in a typological perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Miller, Philip H., Pullum, Geoffrey K., and Zwicky, Arnold M.. 1997. The Principle of Phonology-Free Syntax: Four apparent counterexamples in French. Journal of Linguistics 33(1): 67–90.Google Scholar
Mithun, Marianne. 1984. The evolution of noun incorporation. Language 60(4): 847–893.Google Scholar
Mithun, Marianne. 1986. On the nature of noun incorporation. Language 62(1): 32–38.Google Scholar
Newmeyer, Frederick J. 1998. Language form and language function. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Newmeyer, Frederick J. 2005. Possible and probable languages: A generative perspective on linguistic typology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Newmeyer, Frederick J. 2006. Negation and modularity. In Drawing the boundaries of meaning: Neo-Gricean studies in pragmatics and semantics in honor of Laurence R. Horn, ed. Birner, Betty and Ward, Gregory, 247–268. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Newmeyer, Frederick J. 2014. The Sign Theory of Language: Two extensions. Paper presented at Les signes, leur combinaison et les propriétés du langage, Université du Québec à Montréal.Google Scholar
Payne, John R. 1985. Negation. In Language typology and syntactic description. Volume I: Clause structure, ed. Shopen, Timothy, 197–242. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Goettrey, and Svartvik, Jan. 1985. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar
Reid, Wallis. 2006. Columbia School and Saussure's langue. In Advances in functional linguistics: Columbia School beyond its origins, ed. Davis, Joseph, Gorup, Radmila J., and Stern, Nancy, 17–40. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
van Riemsdijk, Henk, and Williams, Edwin. 1981. NP-structure. Linguistic Review 1(2): 171–218.Google Scholar
Ross, John R. 1967. Constraints on variables in syntax. Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Sag, Ivan A., and Wasow, Thomas. 1999. Syntactic theory: A formal introduction. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
de Saussure, Ferdinand. 2006. Cours de linguistique générale. Publié par Bally, Charles et Séchehaye, Albert avec la collaboration d'Albert Riedlinger. Édition critique préparée par Tullio de Mauro. Paris : Payot. [1916].Google Scholar
Selkirk, Elisabeth. 1972. The phrase phonology of English and French. Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Taylor, John R. 1999. Cognitive semantics and structural semantics. In Historical semantics and cognition, ed. Blank, Andreas and Peter, Koch, 17–49. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Tesnière, Lucien. 1939. Théorie structurale des temps composés. Dans Mélanges de linguistique offerts à Charles Bally, sous la direction d'Albert Sechehaye et Faculté des lettres de l'Université de Genève, 153–183. Genève : Georg.Google Scholar
Thompson, Sandra A., and Mulac, Anthony. 1991. The discourse conditions for the use of the complementizer that in conversational English. Journal of Pragmatics 15(2): 237–251.Google Scholar
Willems, Klaas. 2011. Meaning and interpretation: The semiotic similarities and differences between Cognitive Grammar and European structural linguistics. Semiotica 185: 1–50.Google Scholar
Williams, Edwin. 1997. Blocking and anaphora. Linguistic Inquiry 28(4): 577–628.Google Scholar
Yaguchi, Michiko. 2001. The function of the non-deictic that in English. Journal of Pragmatics 33(7): 1125–1155.Google Scholar
Zwicky, Arnold M., and Pullum, Geoffrey K.. 1983. Phonology in syntax: The Somali optional agreement rule. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 1(3): 385–402.Google Scholar
Zwicky, Arnold M., and Pullum, Geoffrey K.. 1986. The principle of phonology-free syntax: Introductory remarks. Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics 32: 63–91.Google Scholar