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    Agentive Cognitive Construction Grammar A Theory of Mind to Understand Language: Agentive Cognitive Construction Grammar, #2
    Agentive Cognitive Construction Grammar: Exploring the Continuity between Body, Mind, and Language: Agentive Cognitive Construction Grammar, #1
    Ebook series2 titles

    Agentive Cognitive Construction Grammar Series

    By Sergio Torres-Martínez

    ()

    About this series

    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). 

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSergio Torres-Martínez
    Release dateJan 8, 2021
    Agentive Cognitive Construction Grammar A Theory of Mind to Understand Language: Agentive Cognitive Construction Grammar, #2
    Agentive Cognitive Construction Grammar: Exploring the Continuity between Body, Mind, and Language: Agentive Cognitive Construction Grammar, #1

    Titles in the series (2)

    • 1

      Agentive Cognitive Construction Grammar: Exploring the Continuity between Body, Mind, and Language: Agentive Cognitive Construction Grammar, #1
      Agentive Cognitive Construction Grammar: Exploring the Continuity between Body, Mind, and Language: Agentive Cognitive Construction Grammar, #1

      Agentive Cognitive Construction Grammar: Exploring the Continuity between Body, Mind, and Language: Agentive Cognitive Construction Grammar, #1

      Sergio Torres-Martínez
      0 ratings
      0 ratings

      Speaker-meaning (parole) has been given scant attention in the context of both Cognitive Linguistics and Construction Grammar in the belief that it offers no systematic means to understand the linguistic system (langue). The overall goal of my endeavor here is to punctuate and perturb this disconnect by claiming that it is actually speaker-meaning what provides the most promising avenues of inquiry as regards the connection between mind and language. Regrettably, the picture of the human mind created by neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science thus far is that "[we] are machine[s], that [b]iology and other people have programmed [and that] are in constant need of enhancement." (Di Paolo et al., 2017: 1). On this view, humans are defined as "quasi-automaton[s], driven by biological impulses and the external environment" (Di Paolo et al., 2017: 1). In contrast, the present account defends an idea of mind whereby representation is not "an irreducible psychological kind" (Hanna, 2015: 3), which presupposes an active role of perception as a means to explain intentionality. The main consequence of this proposal is that the content of language does not necessarily reflect a pre-existing intentional content of thought. This is why intentional content is considered in this book as an expression of the extended mind (comprising environmental and bodily processes), and not a brain-only phenomenon. As a result, language is used as a tool to reconstruct both perceptual and representational categories during specific events. Since language is an object that "comes about as the result of shared norms, values, and conventions in a socially definable community" (Seuren, 2009:  66), its purpose is to enable agents to either attune or disattune in a social reality. As we shall see in the rest of this book, representation is not privately "structured and 'stored' in individuals' bodies" (Enfield, 2015: 103; Kockelman, 2017), but a collective phenomenon for the shared construction of the meaningful, that is, "something that is significant beyond itself, and subject to normative evaluation according to that significance" (Haugeland, 1995: 232).   

      Speaker-meaning (parole) has been given scant attention in the context of both Cognitive Linguistics and Construction Grammar in the belief that it offers no systematic means to understand the linguistic system (langue). The overall goal of my endeavor here is to punctuate and perturb this disconnect by claiming that it is actually speaker-meaning what provides the most promising avenues of inquiry as regards the connection between mind and language. Regrettably, the picture of the human mind created by neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science thus far is that "[we] are machine[s], that [b]iology and other people have programmed [and that] are in constant need of enhancement." (Di Paolo et al., 2017: 1). On this view, humans are defined as "quasi-automaton[s], driven by biological impulses and the external environment" (Di Paolo et al., 2017: 1). In contrast, the present account defends an idea of mind whereby representation is not "an irreducible psychological kind" (Hanna, 2015: 3), which presupposes an active role of perception as a means to explain intentionality. The main consequence of this proposal is that the content of language does not necessarily reflect a pre-existing intentional content of thought. This is why intentional content is considered in this book as an expression of the extended mind (comprising environmental and bodily processes), and not a brain-only phenomenon. As a result, language is used as a tool to reconstruct both perceptual and representational categories during specific events. Since language is an object that "comes about as the result of shared norms, values, and conventions in a socially definable community" (Seuren, 2009:  66), its purpose is to enable agents to either attune or disattune in a social reality. As we shall see in the rest of this book, representation is not privately "structured and 'stored' in individuals' bodies" (Enfield, 2015: 103; Kockelman, 2017), but a collective phenomenon for the shared construction of the meaningful, that is, "something that is significant beyond itself, and subject to normative evaluation according to that significance" (Haugeland, 1995: 232).   

    • 2

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

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

      Sergio Torres-Martínez
      0 ratings
      0 ratings

      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). 

      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). 

    Author

    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. 

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