Emergent functional grammar

The emergent grammar, suggested by Paul Hopper, postulates that grammar laws come in as
language is used and spoken. This is counter to the a priori postulate of grammar, the notion that
grammar rules reside in the mind before utterances are made.
Contrary to the concepts of generative grammar and the idea of Universal Grammar,
interactional linguistics states that grammar arises from social experience.
Whereas Universal Grammar claims that grammar features are innate, emerging grammar and
other interactional theories claim that the faculty of human language does not have inborn
grammar and that grammar features are learned through experience and social interaction.
Paul Hopper, in his paper ' Emergent Grammar' presented the theoretical claims intended to show
that the Emergent Grammar Hypothesis offers not only one, but the most suitable, of many
potential accounts of the results (Hopper, 1987).

Figure 1: Emergent grammar comparison

In his effort to show the inadequacy of the idea of grammatical integrity, which has long been
central to linguistic philosophy, Hopper will re-examine the discipline's roots.
Paul Hopper not only discusses these big concerns but also provides the solutions, responses that
most contemporary language scholars may sound challenging. A disagreement with the
Emergent Grammar Hypothesis is inspired sufficiently by the fact that it draws on basic
linguistic principles. In linguistics such meditation is necessary from time to time as it is for any
other discipline of self-consciousness. Besides that, the ideas from Hopper are often of
interdisciplinary interest.
While they might appear relatively isolated within linguistics, they find parallels in related
disciplines as in Hayden White's research in historiography (White, 1987), James Clifford's
anthropological investigations (Clifford & Marcus, 1986), and Jonathan Culler's studies in
literary criticism (Culler, 1982). All of these scholars in some form share Hopper's argument
against the traditional notions of mental structure, competence and intersubjectivity.
For Hopper, linguistic investigation cannot ignore or remove all of the aspects described by
abstraction, without automatically making the focus of syntactic analysis, namely grammatical
structure, unavailable. Take a closer look at three statements here:
Argument 1: Grammar is' private and therefore contextual.' Grammar, as the grammar of a
language, cannot be an abstract and coherent system of rules and values that is or even could
potentially be accepted by all' competent' speakers of that language. The ties between linguistic
components are' often rooted in the basic concrete nature of an utterance' and shaped in discourse
by' the individual speakers ' past knowledge with [linguistic] forms, and their assessment of the
present context, particularly particular their interlocutors, whose experiences and assessments
can be very different.
Experience and assessment are variables not attributed to a linguistic group as a whole but which
differ from member to member. Insofar as grammatical form is defined by these variables, it
cannot be an impartial feature of linguistic words or utterances but must be the product of human
speaker / recipient constructions / interpretations.
Hopper denounces the doctrine that grammar is merely a prerequisite for discourse, where
grammar knowledge is understood as a language competence' simultaneously present to all
speakers and listeners.
Argument 2: Grammar is' always delayed, always in a process but never arriving, and thus
emerging.' This claim is closely related to the first while underlining another aspect. Hopper
borrows the Jacques Derrida’s concept of deferral (Derrida, 1979). Its aim is to capture the
syntactic structure's preliminary character. Certainly, the syntactic structure of an utterance can
always be described at a certain stage of a given discourse.
Argument 3: ‘Because I can only pick a small fraction of the data to be represented, any attempt
that I make to narrow my area of investigation is quite likely to be a tactical decision, to be
against the wishes of someone else, and thus to be contested.'(Hopper, 1988).
This last work appears as Hopper's most provocative (or absurd) one to some 'Cartesian' linguists
such as Chomsky who tend to emulate the natural sciences in the strictness and objectivity of
their methodological criteria. Hopper's evaluation of the potential role of grammatical
observations is a clear result of his interpretation of grammar.
References
Cbomsky, N. (1962) Explanatory models in linguistics. In Nagel E., Suppes P. and Tarski A.
(Eds), Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science. Stanford University Press, Stanford.
Clifford, J. and Marcus, G. E. (1986) Writing Culture. The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography.
University of California Press, Berkeley.
Culler, J. (1982) On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism afier Structuralism. Cornell
University Press, Ithaca, NY.
Derrida, J. (1977a) Signature, event, context. Glyph. Johns Hopkins Textual Studies 1, 172-197.
Derrida, J. (1977b) Limited lnc abc... Glyph. Johns Hopkins Textual Studies
Hopper, P. J. (1987) Emergent Grammar. BLS 13, 139-157.
Hopper, P. J. (1988) Emergent grammar and the a priori grammar postulate. In Tannen D. (Ed.),
Linguistics in Context: Connecting Observation