Agentive Cognitive Construction Grammar A Theory of Mind to Understand Language: Agentive Cognitive Construction Grammar, #2

By Sergio Torres-Martínez

What is language without a body? A software in a box. The idea, as unappealing as it is, has been dominant in mainstream linguistics and, regrettably, has also been essential for the characterization of language as a learnable symbolic system in many usage-based approaches (see also Torres-Martínez, 2021, for a discussion). In contrast to the idea that humans are a symbolic species (Deacon, 1997), my point is that we are a semiotic species and that language is an extension of our bodily grasp of the world. The thesis can be framed thus: We got language because we needed it to increase our survival skills by connecting with our peers. This is not merely communication. The definition of language as an embodied tool is phenomenological. It seeks to connect body and brain to the environment in an unending flux of energy exchange.  Therefore, not only is the body embedded (Haugeland, 1995) in an environment, but also defined by the equilibrium between the forces that shape it from the outside and keep its equilibrium from within. In this sense, there can be no meaningful action upon the world without a sense of bodily ownership and distinctness. In normal conditions we are aware of the state of the world through an awareness of the state of our inner body (interoception). 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sergio Torres-Martínez
• Release date: Jan 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393278832

Sergio Torres-Martínez

Sergio Torres–Martínez is professor of cognitive linguistics, semiotics and translation semiotics. Among his main interests are Agentive Cognitive Construction Grammar, Cognitive Semantics, embodiment theory, phenomenology, Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language, Peircean semiotics and the cognitive applications of construction grammar (Applied Cognitive Construction Grammar). Current research projects include the conceptualization of construction grammar as an interdisciplinary field of endeavor connecting embodiment theory, neuroscience semiotics and philosophy for the construction of a comprehensive and systematic description of constructional attachment patterns across languages. Central to this research is the need to provide linguistics with a model of the mind that complements linguistic description. 

Book preview

Agentive Cognitive Construction Grammar

A Theory of Mind to Understand Language

Sergio Torres-Martínez

2021

Copyright © 2021

by Sergio Torres-Martínez

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8823-1676

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted, translated or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior permission in writing of the author.

EPUB formatting and artwork by Sergio Torres-Martínez

Cover Illustration: Triadic Construction by and © Sergio Torres-Martínez

Medellín, Colombia

Dedication

For my mother Nelly, my sister Jeannette and my father Cástor

Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Contents

Preface: A theory of mind to understand language

i. More things that fMRI studies cannot show: Consciousness

References

Chapter 1

1.1. On doing without concepts

1.2. A modally immodest proposal

1.3. An embodied predictive model of concepts

1.4. Concept formation in the predictive mind

1.5. Conclusion

References

Chapter 2

2.1. Introduction

2.2. Defining concepts

2.3. Constructional attachment patterns and constructions

2.4. The triadicity of constructions

2.5. Hedged modal constructions

2.6. Conclusion

References

Chapter 3

3.1. Introduction

3.2. The body-brain interface

3.3. The embodied nature of language

3.4. Unbounded-dependency disambiguation through CAP mappings

3.4.1. Testing the syntax-semantics interface

3.4.1.1. Island effects

3.4.1.2. Gapping

3.4.1.3. Pseudogapping

3.5. Conclusion

References

Chapter 4

4.1. The audience of the book

4.2.The unsupported claims of the book

4.3. Is knowledge of English enough for postulating useful generalizations regarding human language usage?

4.4. A reductionist characterization of concepts

4.5. Why was this book published in the first place?

4.6. Goldberg’s psychological essentialism prevents her from devising new directions in construction grammar

References

Conclusion

Index

About the author

Preface: A theory of mind to understand language

What would be language without a body? A software in a box. The idea, as unappealing as it is, has been dominant in mainstream linguistics and, regrettably, has also been essential for the characterization of language as a learnable symbolic system in many usage-based approaches (see also Torres-Martínez, 2021, for a discussion). In contrast to the idea that humans are a symbolic species (Deacon, 1997), my point is that we are a semiotic species and that language is an extension of our bodily grasp of the world. The thesis can be framed thus: We got language because we needed it to increase our survival skills by connecting with our peers.¹ This is not merely communication. The definition of language as an embodied tool is phenomenological. It seeks to connect body and brain to the environment in an unending flux of energy exchange. Therefore, not only is the body embedded (Haugeland, 1995) in an environment, but also defined by the equilibrium between the forces that shape it from the outside and keep its equilibrium from within. In this sense, there can be no meaningful action upon the world without a sense of bodily ownership and distinctness. In normal conditions we are aware of the state of the world through an awareness of the state of our inner body (interoception). Moreover, the need to minimize entropy marks bodily states which are constantly supervised and corrected in our brains. The communication between body and brain is thus a requirement for the construction of reality. This has led to the development of inferential processes for the prediction of states and events, the lack of which would keep us in an endless loop of sensory overstimulation. Thanks to the signal squashing capability of our brains, we can actually predict the outcome of a perceptual event. However, we do much more with our bodies than perceiving and sensing. We create concepts that bring order to the world by shaping it and modifying it to create realities that suit our needs. It is in inhabiting the world of concepts that we model consciousness and use this knowledge to act. Action, of course, necessitates a fuel, something that tells us we are moving in a specific direction to attain a goal: intention. Intention is the result of our attitudes and beliefs. Intentionality, on the other hand, covers the vastness of the states of mind and events that individual intention can modify to create a new state of affairs. It is an asset of the living at many different levels of complexity and refinement. Any intent requires us to get out of our inner self in order to predict others’ intentions. In this context the role of language is crucial to connect experience (individual and collective) and specific models of the world. Models of the world include simulations, reenactments, profiling, categorization, conventionalization, variation and reformulation of events and states. This is not a linear process, but a complex mapping of variables. Seen through this lens, language represents a semiotic reconstruction of both the process of reality reconstruction (including perception and sensation), and the actual conceptualization of reality. Language universals can be found at the level of perception and somatosensory reconstruction and also at the highest levels of conceptualization. In other words, there seems to be a link between the objects and entities in the world, sensory systems, and the models we make of those referents in the mind. Crucially, concepts are not entities in the brain separated from their referents in the world. A continuity exists that make our responses to stimuli reenact the sequence of perceptual and sensory states involved in the event reconstruction of an event. Take, for example, argument structure. Intransitive motion encodes the conceptualizer’s experience with the physical world by making a meaningful reconstruction of an event of motion that takes the agent from a source to a goal through, along, or on a path in order to arrive at a target (sometimes undefined). The transition from stasis to movement involves, among other things, the multimodal reenactment of an action involving proprioception (musculo-skeletal states), interoception (inner-body states including visceroception) and exteroception (feed-forward mappings of the world, including verticality, direction, etc.). This creates a map of events that can be used for the further conceptualization thereof. These maps are iconic in the sense that they capture the sequential properties of embodied events, as well as many emotional shades.² Argument structure constructions are also indexical, since the specific position of arguments point to relations of contiguity and reaction. It goes without saying that this characterization of language challenges the usage-based idea that all language is learned from the scratch and that the brain is a sort of blank slate. Indeed, though we learn to use language, the mechanisms of semiotic reenactment encoded in it, are part of our genetic repertoire. Now, what is actually learned, the patterns of reenactment, or the symbolic renderings of those patterns? One major claim of this book is that linguistic generalization profits from a combination of witnessed usage and innate, species-specific experience with the physical world. This experience is, in turn, defined by our sense of bodily ownership and boundary allowing us to shape various forms of intentionality. In this sense, the productivity of linguistic constructions is increased both by the evidence that their use will accrue some benefit for the utterer, and the need of the conceptualizer to expand this productivity on the grounds of their own experiences. Therefore, creativity and competition are not defined by statistical relevance, but by suitability, relevance and intention. The use of specific constructions is thus determined by the speaker’s acquaintance with patterns of constructional usage, rather than actual form-function relations. This makes sense when we realize that patterns are dynamic semiotic potentialities for the expression of ideas, while constructions are simply symbolic units of sense whose meaning can be modified by convention.

A theory of mind is needed to explain this. If we depart from the assumption that the mind is a combination of perception, memory and consciousness, we are in a good position to define the place of language in this continuity. I intend to provide the main strokes of this theory in the rest of this book. Importantly, however, the model of mind and language presented herein is not intended to offer an absolute representation of the phenomena involved in the process of reality reconstruction. In other words, I do not intend to postulate a model of mind that views the body-brain interface as a device capable of self-representation in the way just described in this book, since every model of the mind is a representation external to it and may deviate from it to some extent. That said, the idea of an extended mind seeks to integrate body, brain and environment as instances in the construction of conscious states for the individuation of a conceptualizer, defined as an agent possessing intentionality. Being part of the world also entails being capable of predicting how its functioning may affect our action upon it. It also presupposes a continuous correction of the-body-as-system states in order to prevent entropy. Notwithstanding, prediction is not enough to account for human behavior, including language. Indeed, it is a fact that humans are not rational in the ways predicted by computer science or psycholinguistics. People make decisions that are guided by emotion or economy, rather than common sense or mathematical elegance. This heuristic is reflected in language usage. Inevitably, a theory that integrates both Bayesian and heuristic models of the mind must acknowledge that the brain is not the organ of higher thinking, but an instance in a complex system of relations that is not confined to the head.

It has been argued in this regard that a cortical dorsal-ventral stream architecture underlies sentence processing (Bornkessel-Schlesewsky & Schlesewsky, 2013; Friederici, 2011; Hagoort, 2005; Hickok & Poeppel, 2004; Rauschecker & Scott, 2009; Rauschecker & Tian, 2000; Saur