DISCUSSION

REPLY

Geoffrey Sampson is so far from coming to grips with my actual argument

about 'Brain and Language' that it is hard to know how best to respond
to his criticisms. So let me just comment briefly on the f o r m of his
objections.
(1) My article did not (as he declares) advocate a 'functionalist' alter-
native to Chomsky's 'nativist' account of language. Far from it: my
purpose was both quite different and more specific. I argued that lin-
guistic nativism and linguistic functionalism are not so much alternatives
as complementary: they appear irreconcilable only to those who insist on
interpreting nativism in an extreme ('strong') sense, which also faces
grave biological objections. Clearly, the human capacity to learn and use
language demands certain neurological and/or psychological pre-
requisites, which are in some sense 'native'; but we are not yet justified
- despite Chomsky's arguments - in projecting back the whole formal
structure of generative grammar e i t h e r on to the psychology of neonates
o r on to the genetical basis of the central nervous system. Just which aspects
of the language capacity have a directly 'native' basis, in just what
respects, and in what precise senses of the ambiguous term 'native', w e
do n o t y e t k n o w . Meanwhile, to assume that nativism is a single luminously-
clear thesis, and is in direct contradiction to all other forms of linguistic
theory, only confuses the debate.
(2) Because I was not expounding any linguistic theory of my own,
Sampson's comments on the inadequacies of my supposed case - in
particular, on my alleged assumption that "language is self-evidently
functional" - fall to the ground. If I had been advocating a functionalist
theory of language, I would have written a very different and much
longer paper, and the theory would have been much more careful than
Sampson gives me credit for. In fact, the question "Can language be
explained functionally?" strikes me as a silly question. There is not any
s i n g l e - probably, even, no c e n t r a l - thing to be called 'explaining lan-
guage'. The phenomena and modes of human conduct to be taken into

Synthese 23 (1972) 487--490. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 1972 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland
488 DISCUSSION

account by students of theoretical linguistics, philosophy of language,

psycholinguistics, the neurology of aphasia and related fields, are complex
and of many kinds; so that we have a dozen different kinds of explaining
to do. We have to find a general mode of representation for grammar:
one which respects the differences between parsing with an eye to syn-
tactical distinctions (between nouns, verbs, adverbs etc.) and with an eye
to categorial distinctions (between different types of subjects - abstract or
concrete, animate or inanimate - and between different kinds of predi-
cates, e.g. between 'easiness' and 'eagerness'). Again, we have to give an
adequate account of the relations between the notion of 'meaning' and
the 'uses' to which the corresponding expressions, or systems of expres-
sions, are put in the actual lives of language-users. (Just because we can
find a grammatical representation for semantical distinctions, the study
of 'meanings' does not cease to be very largely a behavioural - indeed,
a social - study.) Again, we have to discover the actual neurological
systems and mechanisms that are called into play at each stage in the
learning and use of language; and the actual ways in which (e.g.) the
syndromes of aphasia and agraphia differ as between patients from alpha-
betic and ideographic cultures. Again, we have to study the manner in
which language-use becomes 'internalized', in the development of the
thought of the child... And so on, and so on. To view all these subjects
through the spectacles of generative grammar, as some of Chomsky's
more enthusiastic followers do, simply risks falling into the scholastic
fallacy that "Who drives fat oxen must himself be fat". (Grammarians
have developed tree-structures to represent the grammar of our language:
ergo, we must be born with a 'tree' already in our minds.)
(3) If I had taken on the task of expounding a functionalist account
of those specific aspects of language which lend themselves - indeed,
demand - that kind of treatment, I would have brought together elements
familiar from the work of such men as Ludwig Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin,
Kenneth Pike and Karl Buehler. The resulting account would not have
been concerned with anything so banal and jejune as Sampson's question,
"Why should the particular actions which we recognize as examples of
language have the effect of increasing co-operation between individual
humans?" (Is this all he can understand by the term 'functional'?) Rather,
it would have attempted to characterize the specific behavioural cues to
which we must pay attention in any fresh culture, if we are to recognize
 DISCUSSION 489

just which social situations, linguistic contexts etc. provide the matrix
within that culture for (say) the use of number-terms, and just which
locutions in the corresponding language accordingly have the same
'meanings' as our numerals.
Notice, incidentally, that this task is one that exponents of Chomsky's
grammatical representation of semantics commonly ignore. They take
it for granted that we have already identified locutions in different lan-
guages which mean the same as (say) the English phrases, 'easy to please'
and 'eager to please'; and they then go on to show triumphantly that, on
the level of deep structures, one can give the same grammatical represen-
tation of corresponding locutions in any language. Since the whole
apparatus of distinctions between 'surface' and 'deep' structures, and the
like, was designed in the first place to provide a method for giving gram-
matical representations of syntactical and semantical differences, it is
a little naive to acclaim its mere ability to do the job for which it was
devised as a great new empirical generalization!
(4) Sampson himself evidently adopts this naive empirical inter-
pretation of Chomsky's results: these shew (he says) that "an examination
of the syntax of natural languages reveals these to share a number of
highly specific structural features ..." etc. On the contrary: it is well-
known that Chomsky's 'linguistic universals' are neither arrived at on the
basis of an empirical enumeration of instances, nor defended as such. In
the discussions of his John Locke Lectures at Oxford, as Sampson will
recall, Chomsky in person repeatedly insisted that it is unnecessary to
rest his case on comparative studies of many languages. The existence
of his universals (he told us) can be inferred from the study of one single
language alone - and, strictly speaking, from the behaviour of one single
language-user alone.
The implications of this point must not be overlooked. For it follows
that the true status of Chomsky's universals is (to use Kant's words) that
of 'transcendental' rather than 'empirical' features of language. They are
features to be demanded of any human language as such, rather than
features to be discovered in every human language actually studied to
date. We may contrast the genuinely empirical linguistic universals dis-
covered by linguistic anthropologists from a study of many languages:
e.g. the discovery that every language having a gender-distinction in its
first-person possessives (i.e. distinct words for 'my' and 'mine', according
490 DISCUSSION

as the speaker is male or female) also has such distinctions in the second
and third persons (e.g. 'his' and 'hers') as well, but not vice versa; while
every language having such distinctions in the second person has them in
the third, but not vice versa. These empirical universals are quite different
from Chomsky's transcendental universals, and will presumably never
qualify for incorporation into 'deep structure'. They are not features of
any human language as such, but of every human language studied to
date; and it would come as no very profound shock or surprise if anthro-
pologists came across some rare group of languages which proved to be
exceptions to the general rule: in which (e.g.) possessives shewed gender-
distinctions in the first person only.
(5) The straightforwardly empirical status of Chomsky's universals is
not be demonstrated, either, by comparing Man with "another species of
organisms (sic!) which uses languages with complex structures: the
digital computer." Quite the reverse: since computers do not live their own
lives, there is no question of investigating the forms of life and/or
language-games within which their utterances are put to specific uses,
acquire specific meanings, and so qualify for correspondingly specific
and determinate representations on the grammatical level of 'deep
structure'. Appealing to so-called 'computer languages' - which acquire
a genuinely linguistic use only at a remove (parasitically, so to say) from
the human life and language whose purposes they are designed to serve -
merely has the effect of distracting our attention from the crucial problem
of semantics: viz. that of giving a coherent account of the relations
between semantics and grammar, i.e. between the behavioural cues by
which differences of meaning are established and recognized in the actual
use and interpretation of natural languages, and the formal schemata by
which grammarians subsequently have occasion to represent those
differences.

Michigan State University STEPHENTOULMIN