Historical Linguistics and Cognitive Science
Keywords:
historical linguistics, cognitive science, code-switching, semantic change, grammaticalization
Abstract
In this paper we investigate possible links between historical linguistics and cognitive science, or theory of the mind. Our primary goal is to demonstrate that historically documented processes of a certain type, i.e. those relating to semantic change and grammaticalization, form a unified theoretical bundle which gives insight into the cognitive processes at work in language organization and evolution. We reject the notion that historical phenomena are excluded from cognitive speculation on the grounds that they are untestable. Rather, we argue for an extension of Labov’s uniformitarian doctrine, which states “that the same mechanisms which operated to produce the large-scale changes of the past may be observed operating in the current changes taking place around us.” (Labov, 1972:161). This principle is transferable to the current context in the following way: first, language as a system is no different today than it was millennia ago, easily as far back as diachronic speculation is likely to take us; and second, the human brain is structurally no different today from the brain of humans of up to ten thousand years ago. The cognitivelinguistic parallelism between the past and the present makes speculation possible, in this case about codeswitching, even if it is not testable in the laboratory. It further allows us to make forward and backward inferences about both language change and its cognitive underpinnings.
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References
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MYERS-SCOTTON, Carol M. 1993. Duelling Languages: Grammatical Structure in Codeswitching. Oxford: Claredon Press.
MUYSKEN, Peter. 1997. Media Lengua. In Sarah G. Thomason (ed.), Contact Languages, a Wider Perspective (pp. 365-426). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins.
PFAFF, Carol W. 1979. Constraints on language mixing: Intrasentential code-switching and borrowing in Spanish/English. Language, 55, 291-318.
POPLACK, Shana 1980. Sometimes I’ll start a sentence in Spanish y termino en español: Toward a typology of code-switching. Linguistics, 18, 581-618.
SANKOFF, David, & POPLACK, Shana. 1981. A formal grammar for code-switching. Papers in Linguistics: International Journal of Human Communication, 14, 3-45.
TORRES CACOULLOS, Rena. 1999. Variation and grammaticalization in progressives Spanish -ndo constructions. Studies in Language, 23, 25-59.
TREIMAN, Rebecca, CLIFTON, Charles, Jr., MEYER, Antje S., & WURM, Lee H. (2003). Language comprehension and production. In Alice F. Healy & Robert W. Proctor (Eds.), Experimental psychology. Vol. 4, in Irving B. Weiner (Editor-in-Chief), Handbook of Psychology. New York: Wiley. 527-547.
TRUBETZKOY, Nikolai S. (1939). Gedanken über das Indogermanenproblem. Acta Linguistica I, 81-89.
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Author Note
The writing of this chapter was supported in part by National Science Foundation grant
BCS-0821924 to Paola E. Dussias and Chip Gerfen, and NSF Grants BCS-0955090
and OISE-0968369 to Judith F. Kroll and Paola E. Dussias.
ALARCOS LLORACH, E. 1995. Gramática de la lengua española. Madrid: Espasa Calpe.
ANTTILA, Raimo. 1972. An Introduction to Historical and Comparative Linguistic. New York: Macmillan.
BAKKER, Peter and PAPEN, Robert A. 1997. “Michif: a mixed language based on Cree and French”. In Sarah G. THOMASON (ed.), Contact Languages, a Wider Perspective. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins. 295-364.
BALDI, Philip. 2002. The Foundations of Latin (2nd ed.). Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
BALDI, Philip, & CUZZOLIN, Pierluigi. 2005. “Considerazioni etimologiche, areali e tipologiche dei verbi di «avere» nelle lingue indeuropee”. In Sandor KISS, Luca
MONDIN, & Giampolo SALVI (Eds.), Latin et langues romanes: études de linguistique offertes à József Herman à l'occasion de son 80ème anniversaire. Tübingen: Niemeyer. 27-36
BLASCO FERRER, Eduardo. 2011. “A new approach to the Mediterranean substratum, with an appendix of Paleo-Sardinian microtoponyms”. Romance Philology, 65,43-85.
BRÉAL, Michel. 1897. Essai de Sémantique: Science des significations. Paris: Hachette.
CAMPBELL, Lyle. 2004. Historical Linguistics: An Introduction (2nd edition). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, and Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
CAVALLI-SFORZA, Luigi Luca. 1995. The Great Human Diasporas: the History of Diversity and Evolution. Boston: Addison Wesley.
GARACHANA CAMARERO, Mar. 1997. “Acerca de los condicionamientos cognitivos y lingüísticos de la sustitución de aver por tener”. Verba, 24, 203-235.
GARCÍA GALLARÍN, Consuelo. (2002). Usos de haber y tener en textos medievales y clásicos. Iberoromania, 55, 1-28.
GARNSEY, Susan M., PEARLMUTTER, Neal J., MYERS, Elizabeth, & LOTOCKY, Melanie A. 1997. “The contributions of verb bias and plausibility to the comprehension of temporarily ambiguous sentences”. Journal of Memory and Language, 37, 58-93.
GENNARI, Silvia P., & MACDONALD, Mary Ellen. 2009. “Linking production and comprehension processes: The case of relative clauses”. Cognition, 111, 1-23.
GREENBERG, Joseph H. 1987. Language in the Americas. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
GUZZARDO TAMARGO, Rosa E. 2012. “Linking comprehension costs to production patterns during the processing of mixed language”. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Penn State University.
HALE, Mark. 2007. Historical Linguistics: Theory and Method. Malden, Oxford, Victoria: Blackwell.
KING, Robert. 1969. Historical Linguistics and Generative Grammar. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
KIPARSKY, Paul. 1965. Phonological Change. Doctoral dissertation. MIT.
KIPARSKY, Paul. 2012. “Grammaticalization as optimization”. In Dianne JONAS, John WHITMAN & Andrew GARRETT (Eds.), Grammatical Change: Origins, Nature, Outcomes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 15-51.
KOOTSTRA, Gerrit J., VAN HELL, Janet G., & DIJKSTRA, Ton. 2012. “Priming of codeswitching in sentences: The role of lexical repetition, cognates, and proficiency”. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, pp. 1-23.
KROLL, Judith. F., DUSSIAS, Paola E., BOGULSKI, Cary A., VALDÉS KROFF, Jorge R. 2012. “Juggling two languages in one mind: What bilinguals tell us about language processing and its consequences for cognition”. In Brian Ross (Ed.), The Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Volume 56 (pp. 229-262). San Diego: Academic Press.
KUTAS, Marta, MORENO, Eva, WICHA, Nicole. 2009. Code-switching and the brain. In Barbara BULLOCK & Almeida TORIBIO (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Code-switching (pp. 289-306). NY: Cambridge University Press.
LABOV, W. 1972. Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
LABOV, William. 1975. On the use of the present to explain the past. In Luigi HEILMANN (Ed.), Proceedings of the 11th International Congress of Linguists. Bologna: Il Mulino. 825-851
LABOV, William. 1994. Principles of Linguistic Change. Volume 1: Internal Factors. London, New York: Basil.
LAKOFF, George, & JOHNSON, Mark. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
LAKOFF, George. 1987. Women, Fire and Dangerous Things. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
LANCE, Donald M. 1969. A brief study of Spanish-English bilingualism: Final report, Research project ORR-Liberal Arts-15504. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University.
LANGACKER, Ronald. 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Volume I, Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
LIGHTFOOT, David. 1991. How to Set Parameters. Arguments from Language Change. Cambridge: MIT Press.
LIPSKI, John M. 1985. Linguistic Aspects of Spanish-English Language Switching. Tempe, AZ: Center for Latin American Studies, Arizona State University.
LURAGHI, Silvia. 2006. Introduzione Alla Linguistica Storica. Roma: Carocci.
MACDONALD, Maryellen C., & THORNTON, Robert. 2009. When language comprehension reflects production constraints: Resolving ambiguities with the help of past experience. Memory & Cognition, 37, 1177-1186.
MYERS-SCOTTON, Carol M. 1993. Duelling Languages: Grammatical Structure in Codeswitching. Oxford: Claredon Press.
MUYSKEN, Peter. 1997. Media Lengua. In Sarah G. Thomason (ed.), Contact Languages, a Wider Perspective (pp. 365-426). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins.
PFAFF, Carol W. 1979. Constraints on language mixing: Intrasentential code-switching and borrowing in Spanish/English. Language, 55, 291-318.
POPLACK, Shana 1980. Sometimes I’ll start a sentence in Spanish y termino en español: Toward a typology of code-switching. Linguistics, 18, 581-618.
SANKOFF, David, & POPLACK, Shana. 1981. A formal grammar for code-switching. Papers in Linguistics: International Journal of Human Communication, 14, 3-45.
TORRES CACOULLOS, Rena. 1999. Variation and grammaticalization in progressives Spanish -ndo constructions. Studies in Language, 23, 25-59.
TREIMAN, Rebecca, CLIFTON, Charles, Jr., MEYER, Antje S., & WURM, Lee H. (2003). Language comprehension and production. In Alice F. Healy & Robert W. Proctor (Eds.), Experimental psychology. Vol. 4, in Irving B. Weiner (Editor-in-Chief), Handbook of Psychology. New York: Wiley. 527-547.
TRUBETZKOY, Nikolai S. (1939). Gedanken über das Indogermanenproblem. Acta Linguistica I, 81-89.
ULLMANN, Stephen. (1964). Semantics. An Introduction to the Science of Meaning. Oxford:, Blackwell.
Author Note
The writing of this chapter was supported in part by National Science Foundation grant
BCS-0821924 to Paola E. Dussias and Chip Gerfen, and NSF Grants BCS-0955090
and OISE-0968369 to Judith F. Kroll and Paola E. Dussias.
Published
2012-12-31
How to Cite
Baldi, P., & Dussias, P. (2012). Historical Linguistics and Cognitive Science. Rhesis. International Journal of Linguistics, Philology and Literature, 3(1), 5-27. https://doi.org/10.13125/rhesis/5528
Section
Articoli
