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Theory of languageis a topic inphilosophy of languageandtheoretical linguistics.[1]It has the goal of answering the questions "What is language?";[2][3]"Why do languages have the properties they do?";[4]or "What is theorigin of language?".In addition to these fundamental questions, the theory of language also seeks to understand how language is acquired and used by individuals and communities. This involves investigating thecognitive and neural processes involved in languageprocessing and production, as well as the social and cultural factors that shape linguistic behavior.[5]

Even though much of the research inlinguisticsisdescriptiveorprescriptive,there exists an underlying assumption that terminological and methodological choices reflect the researcher's opinion of language. These choices often stem from the theoretical framework a linguist subscribes to, shaping their interpretation of linguistic phenomena. For instance, within thegenerative grammarframework, linguists might focus on underlying syntactic structures, whilecognitive linguistsmight emphasize the role of conceptual metaphor.[6][7]Linguists are divided into different schools of thinking, with thenature–nurture debateas the main divide.[8]Some linguisticsconferencesandjournalsare focussed on a specific theory of language, while others disseminate a variety of views.[9]

Like in otherhumanandsocial sciences,theories in linguistics can be divided intohumanisticandsociobiologicalapproaches.[10]Same terms, for example 'rationalism', 'functionalism', 'formalism' and 'constructionism', are used with different meanings in different contexts.[11]

Humanistic theories[edit]

Humanistic theories consider people as having an agentive role in thesocial constructionof language. Language is primarily seen as a sociocultural phenomenon. This tradition emphasises culture, nurture, creativity and diversity.[8]A classicalrationalistapproach to language stems from the philosophyAge of Enlightenment.Rationalist philosophers argued that people had created language in a step-by-step process to serve their need to communicate with each other. Thus, language is thought of as a rational humaninvention.[12]

Logical grammar[edit]

Many philosophers of language, sincePlatoandAristotle,have considered language as a manmade tool for making statements orpropositionsabout the world on the basis of a predicate-argument structure. Especially in the classical tradition, the purpose of the sentence was considered to be topredicateabout thesubject.Aristotle's example is "Man is a rational animal", whereManis the subject andis a rational animalisthe predicate,whichattributesthe subject.[13][14]In the twentieth century, classicallogical grammarwas defended by Edmund Husserl's "pure logical grammar". Husserl argues, in the spirit of seventeenth-centuryrationalgrammar, that the structures ofconsciousnessarecompositionaland organized into subject-predicate structures. These give rise to the structures ofsemanticsandsyntaxcross-linguistically.[15]Categorial grammaris another example of logical grammar in the modern context.

More lately, inDonald Davidson's event semantics, for example, theverbserves as the predicate. Like in modernpredicate logic,subject and object areargumentsof thetransitivepredicate. A similar solution is found in formal semantics.[16]Many modern philosophers continue to consider language as a logically based tool for expressing the structures of reality by means of predicate-argument structure. Examples includeBertrand Russell,Ludwig Wittgenstein,Winfrid Sellars,Hilary Putnam,andJohn Searle.

Cultural–historical approaches[edit]

During the 19th century, when sociological questions remained underpsychology,[17]languages andlanguage changewere thought of as arising from human psychology and the collectiveunconscious mindof the community, shaped by its history, as argued byMoritz Lazarus,Heymann SteinthalandWilhelm Wundt.[18]Advocates ofVölkerpsychologie('folk psychology') regarded language asVolksgeist;a social phenomenon conceived as the 'spirit of the nation'.

Wundt claimed that the human mind becomes organised according to the principles ofsyllogisticreasoning with social progress and education. He argued for abinary-branchingmodel for the description of the mind, andsyntax.[19]Folk psychology was imported to North American linguistics byFranz Boas[20]andLeonard Bloomfieldwho were the founders of a school of thought which was later nicknamed 'American structuralism'.[21][22]

Folk psychology became associated with Germannationalism,[23]and afterWorld War IBloomfield apparently replaced Wundt'sstructural psychologywithAlbert Paul Weiss'sbehavioral psychology;[24]although Wundtian notions remained elementary for his linguistic analysis.[25]The Bloomfieldian school of linguistics was eventually reformed as a sociobiological approach byNoam Chomsky(see 'generative grammar' below).[21][26]

Since generative grammar's popularity began to wane towards the end of the 20th century, there has been a new wave of cultural anthropological approaches to the language question sparking a modern debate on the relationship of language and culture. Participants includeDaniel Everett,Jesse Prinz,Nicholas EvansandStephen Levinson.[27]

Structuralism: a sociological–semiotic theory[edit]

The study of culture and language developed in a different direction in Europe whereÉmile Durkheimsuccessfully separated sociology from psychology, thus establishing it as an autonomous science.[28]Ferdinand de Saussurelikewise argued for the autonomy of linguistics from psychology. He created asemiotictheory which would eventually give rise to the movement in human sciences known asstructuralism,followed byfunctionalismor functional structuralism,post-structuralismand other similar tendencies.[29]The names structuralism and functionalism are derived from Durkheim's modification ofHerbert Spencer'sorganicismwhich draws ananalogybetweensocial structuresand theorgansof anorganism,each necessitated by itsfunction.[30][28]

Saussure approaches the essence of language from two sides. For the one, he borrows ideas from Steinthal[31]and Durkheim, concluding that language is a 'social fact'. For the other, he creates a theory of language as a system in and for itself which arises from theassociationofconceptsand words or expressions. Thus, language is a dual system of interactive sub-systems: a conceptual system and a system of linguistic forms. Neither of these can exist without the other because, in Saussure's notion, there are no (proper) expressions without meaning, but also no (organised) meaning without words or expressions. Language as a system does not arise from the physical world, but from the contrast between the concepts, and the contrast between the linguistic forms.[32]

Functionalism: language as a tool for communication[edit]

There was a shift of focus in sociology in the 1920s, from structural to functional explanation, or the adaptation of the social 'organism' to its environment. Post-Saussurean linguists, led by thePrague linguistic circle,began to study the functional value of the linguistic structure, with communication taken as the primary function of language in the meaning 'task' or 'purpose'. These notions translated into an increase of interest in pragmatics, with a discourse perspective (the analysis of full texts) added to the multilayered interactive model of structural linguistics. This gave rise to functional linguistics.[33]Some of its main concepts includeinformation structureandeconomy.

Formalism: language as a mathematical–semiotic system[edit]

Structural andformal linguistLouis Hjelmslevconsidered the systemic organisation of the bilateral linguistic system fully mathematical, rejecting the psychological and sociological aspect of linguistics altogether. He considered linguistics as the comparison of the structures of all languages usingformal grammars– semantic anddiscoursestructures included.[34]Hjelmslev's idea is sometimes referred to as 'formalism'.[33]

Although generally considered as a structuralist,[35]Lucien Tesnièreregarded meaning as giving rise to expression, but not vice versa, at least as regards the relationship between semantics and syntax. He considered the semantic plane as psychological, but syntax as being based on the necessity to break thetwo-dimensionalsemantic representation intolinearform.[36]

Post-structuralism: language as a societal tool[edit]

The Saussurean idea of language as an interaction of the conceptual system and the expressive system was elaborated in philosophy,anthropologyand other fields of human sciences byClaude Lévi-Strauss,Roland Barthes,Michel Foucault,Jacques Derrida,Julia Kristevaand many others. This movement was interested in the Durkheimian concept of language as a social fact or a rule-based code of conduct; but eventually rejected the structuralist idea that the individual cannot change the norm. Post-structuralists study how language affects our understanding of reality thus serving as a tool of shaping society.[37][38]

Language as an artificial construct[edit]

While the humanistic tradition stemming from 19th century Völkerpsychologie emphasises the unconscious nature of the social construction of language, some perspectives of post-structuralism andsocial constructionismregard human languages as man-made rather than natural. At this end of the spectrum, structural linguistEugenio Coșeriulaid emphasis on the intentional construction of language.[18]Daniel Everett has likewise approached the question of language construction from the point of intentionality and free will.[27]

There were also some contacts between structural linguists and the creators ofconstructed languages.For example, Saussure's brotherRené de Saussurewas anEsperantoactivist, and the French functionalistAndré Martinetserved as director of theInternational Auxiliary Language Association.Otto Jespersencreated and proposed the international auxiliary languageNovial.

Sociobiological theories[edit]

In contrast to humanistic linguistics, sociobiological approaches consider language as abiological phenomena.Approaches to language as part ofcultural evolutioncan be roughly divided into two main groups:genetic determinismwhich argues that languages stem from the humangenome;andsocial Darwinism,as envisioned byAugust SchleicherandMax Müller,which applies principles and methods ofevolutionary biologyto linguistics. Because sociobiogical theories have been labelled aschauvinisticin the past, modern approaches, includingDual inheritance theoryandmemetics,aim to provide more sustainable solutions to the study of biology's role in language.[39]

Language as a genetically inherited phenomenon[edit]

Strong version ('rationalism')[edit]

The role of genes in language formation has been discussed and studied extensively. Proposinggenerative grammar,Noam Chomskyargues that language is fully caused by a randomgenetic mutation,and that linguistics is the study ofuniversal grammar,or the structure in question.[40]Others, includingRay Jackendoff,point out that theinnate language componentcould be the result of a series of evolutionaryadaptations;[41]Steven Pinkerargues that, because of these, people are born with alanguage instinct.

The random and the adaptational approach are sometimes referred to as formalism (or structuralism) and functionalism (or adaptationism), respectively, as a parallel to debates between advocates ofstructuralandfunctional explanationin biology.[42]Also known asbiolinguistics,the study of linguistic structures is parallelised with that of natural formations such asferromagnetic dropletsandbotanicforms.[43]This approach became highly controversial at the end of the 20th century due to a lack of empirical support for genetics as an explanation of linguistic structures.[44][45]

More recent anthropological research aims to avoid genetic determinism.Behavioural ecologyanddual inheritance theory,the study of gene–culture co-evolution, emphasise the role ofcultureas a human invention in shaping the genes, rather than vice versa.[39]It is known, for example, that since early humans started developing their language, the process paved way for genetic changes that would affect thevocal tract.[dubious–discuss][citation needed]

Weak version ('empiricism')[edit]

Some former generative grammarians argue that genes may nonetheless have an indirect effect on abstract features of language. This makes up yet another approach referred to as 'functionalism' which makes a weaker claim with respect to genetics. Instead of arguing for a specific innate structure, it is suggested that humanphysiologyandneurologicalorganisation may give rise to linguistic phenomena in a more abstract way.[42]

Based on a comparison of structures from multiple languages,John A. Hawkinssuggests that the brain, as a syntacticparser,may find it easier to process some word orders than others, thus explaining their prevalence. This theory remains to be confirmed bypsycholinguisticstudies.[46]

Conceptual metaphortheory fromGeorge Lakoff'scognitive linguisticshypothesises that people have inherited from lower animals the ability fordeductive reasoningbased onvisual thinking,which explains why languages make so much use of visual metaphors.[47][48]

Languages as species[edit]

It was thought in early evolutionary biology that languages andspeciescan be studied according to the same principles and methods. The idea of languages and cultures as fighting for living space became highly controversial as it was accused of being apseudosciencethat caused two world wars, and social Darwinism was banished from humanities by 1945. In the concepts of Schleicher and Müller, both endorsed byCharles Darwin,languages could be either organisms orpopulations.[49]

Aneo-Darwinianversion of this idea was introduced asmemeticsbyRichard Dawkinsin 1976. In this thinking, ideas and cultural units, including words, are compared tovirusesorreplicators.Although meant as a softer alternative to genetic determinism, memetics has been widely discredited as pseudoscience,[39]and it has failed to establish itself as a recognised field of scientific research.[50]The language–species analogy nonetheless continues to enjoy popularity in linguistics and other human sciences.[51]Since the 1990s there have been numerous attempts to revive it in various guises. As Jamin Pelkey explains,

Theorists who explore such analogies usually feel obliged to pin language to some specific sub-domain of biotic growth. William James selects "zoölogical evolution", William Croft prefers botanical evolution, but most theorists zoom in to more microbiotic levels – some claiming that linguistic phenomena are analogous to the cellular level and others arguing for the genetic level of biotic growth. For others, language is a parasite; for others still, language is a virus... The disagreements over grounding analogies do not stop here.[52]

Like many other approaches to linguistics, these, too, are collectively called 'functionalism'. They include various frameworks ofusage-based linguistics,[53]language as acomplex adaptive system,[54]construction grammar,[55][56]emergent linguistics,[57][58]and others.

See also[edit]

References[edit]

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