The Literary Mind

by Mark Turner

  A second way in which a grammatical construction is adapted is by pressur— ing it to accommodate other conceptual structures beyond those that gave it rise. For example, resembles is not a prototypical event and john resemblesjoe is not a prototypical story, but the preexisting grammatical structure can be adapted to serve the purpose of expressing this situation in a nonprototypical sentence. Snow is white is not a narrative but rather a subset of information that might be rel- evant in a narrative, yet the grammatical structure created by parable can be adapted to serve such a propositional expression.

  The view that language arises through parable in no way involves a claim that every construction or even most constructions in a speaker’s system of gram— matical constructions can be explained as arising through projection of narrative structure, nor does it imply that we will not find an amazing range of uses for language once language is set up and begins to evolve, nor does it imply that all grammatical constructions are isomorphs of small stories, nor does it by any means entail the claim that the only thing language can express is narrative structure. Rather, we are seeking to explain how language could arise without additional machinery, that is, without postulating hypothetical agencies and mechanisms that, conveniently, have all the properties needed to solve the problem but for whose existence we have no independent evidence. A special mechanism to do just what we need can always be conjectured in science, but such a conjecture is always suspect, a deus ex machina, and is to be introduced only as a last resort. We are not driven to that last resort. Rudimentary language arose through par— able; after arising through parable, it was extended.

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  The view of language as arising through parable would allow for diversity of languages and grammars. Details of narrative structure vary from culture to cul- ture and even person to person: what is universal is not all the specific narrative structures but rather stability of basic abstract stories. All cultures have stable repertoires of basic abstract stories. Some of them vary culture to culture. An accusative language (which gives Subject and Agent one grammatical coding and Patient a distinguished grammatical coding) and an ergative language (which gives intransitive Subject and Patient one grammatical coding and transitive Subject and Agent a distinguished grammatical coding) may seem to be informed by different kinds of stories, but each will seem to have a stable repertoire ofbasic abstract stories.

  Projection is widely variable in the actual structures it projects and the ways in which it projects them. Even when two different languages project the same basic abstract story, and thereby give rise to similar grammatical constructions, the details will often be strikingly different. In English, “John loves Mary” and “Mary loves John” have different meanings, but in Latin “Iohannes amat Mariam” and “Mariam amat Iohannes” mean the same thing. In both languages, narra— tive relations project to create grammatical structure, but in English the result is a grammatical structure of linear word order, while in Latin it is a grammatical structure of case endings on nouns. Similarly, English has one set of construc- tions for representing causal narrative chains (“I make Paul eat”) but French has a different and highly intricate set of double—verb causative constructions (“Je

  fait manger Paul”) that English lacks.

  Grammar arises as a dynamic system of projections of story structures to create a dynamic system of grammatical constructions that then can be adapted dynamically in many ways. It is likely not only that different speakers in the same linguistic community will have somewhat different grammars but even that the same person will have somewhat different grammars at different times. What matters for language as a communicative device is not that the members of a lin- guistic community all have the identical dynamic system of grammar but rather that the external products of grammar are perceived as fulfilling the relevant communicative needs in local situations. When they are not so perceived, then

  objections, corrections, and negotiations can take place to tune the systems of

  the conversants. On the parabolic view, grammar is a kind of dynamic reper- toire, in much the same way that perceptual and conceptual categories are reper- toires. The repertoires need not be identical universally or even in a community, but they do need to be stable and effective.

  The level at which the projection takes place is the level of constructions above individual lexical items. A particular word like “dog” is not the projection of the concept dog. Rather, grammatical constructions and systems of construc-

  LANGUAGE Q. 157

  tions like Noun Phrase, Verb Phrase, Subject, Object, Agent, Patient, Present Tense, Progressive Aspect, Caused—Motion, Ditransitive (for example, “He baked me a cake”), Resultative (for example, “She hammered it flat”) and so on arise from projection of systems of narrative structure. It is grammatical structure, not single lexical items, that arises from the projection of story.

  There is a standard objection to any view that grammar arises from concep- tual structure: we find in grammar various extremely odd formal quirks that seem to have no conceptual counterpart or functional explanation; therefore, so the logic goes, there must be an independent (innate) grammatical mechanism to give us 100 percent of grammar, including the quirks. But if grammar arises through parable, then grammar is based on everything involved in narrative imagining. It is based on all the sensory modalities and submodalities, on motor capacities, and on perceptual and conceptual categorization, which result in abstract structures like image schemas and dynamic integrative connections across different distrib- uted activities in the brain. If it seems plausible that a genetically instructed gram— mar module would have quirks, we must a fortiori grant that the neurobiological and cognitive activity involved in all these other poorly understood systems would also have quirks—evolution is so notorious for producing quirks that the exist— ence of quirks is a good test for separating evolved systems from rationally designed systems. Projection could project versions of those quirks when it gives rise to language. There is ample opportunity for the creation of quirks in grammar by projection from all of the systems underlying narrative imagining, without hav— ing to hypothesize an extra mechanism just to get the quirks.

  There is also the possibility that some of the quirkiness may be arbitrary but necessary for consistency or efficiency in the system. Consider the analogy to copy text: We usually write to express meaning, and when we do so, it does not matter whether we write dates in the form “March 24, 1954” or “24 March 1954.” Such matters are largely arbitrary. Accordingly, we resort to manuals of style for consistent decisions on arbitrary matters. There might be a great deal in gram— mar that works one way as opposed to another for the sake of essentially formal consistency. There is room in linguistic analysis for both parable and arbitrary formal patterns, regardless of the question of the existence of a genetically instructed grammar module in the brain.

  Vast and complicated as language is, it is small compared to conceptual struc— ture, communicative purposes, and local construction of meaning. Conceptual activity and communicative situation place a great range of constraints on lan— guage to operate effectively and efficiently, and yet to stay relatively small and manageable. As grammar evolves, it must satisfy many and varied purposes and meet many and varied constraints. Some of the pressure on grammar comes from conceptual activity, some from communicative purpose, and some from prob-

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  lems of internal organization of the system of grammatical constructions. A con— sistent and workable solution to the problem posed by all these conflicting pres- sures is the grammar of a language, which will not look uniformly like a set of local and simple pairings between grammatical structure and story structure. Plenty of strange opportunistic tricks, many of them ad hoc, are to be expected, with quirks as one of their manifestations.

  On the other hand, there is nothing in the view of grammar as arising from the projection of story that in principle
rules out the evolution of specialization for the projection of narrative structure to the particular target of voice, and there— fore nothing to say that quirks in grammar as we know it could not arise from genetic specialization. But the specialization is not in principle needed to get quirks.

  Linguistics typically discusses grammar at the level of the sentence. The theory of grammar as arising from parable invites us to ask whether the structure of units of discourse higher than the sentence might share structure with sentential grammatical constructions. Grammatical constructions are units of discourse; higher units of discourse contain them. A handbook like Style—--Joseph Williams’s summary of his collaboration with Gregory Colomb—which is dedicated to helping writers make their prose easier for readers to parse, tells writers that a major improvement can be achieved simply by making the subjects of clauses correspond to “the cast of characters” in the story and making the verbs that go with those subjects correspond to “the crucial actions those characters are part of.” Williams and Colomb observe that readers are more likely to find prose clear and direct when it seems to present characters and their actions, thereby telling stories. What Williams and Colomb do not observe is that such prose is clearer exactly because the grammar arises from those basic stories. Readers naturally expect the stories being told to line up with the structure of the grammatical constructions being used. They read prose more easily when it follows such an alignment. Williams and Colomb recognize that many things that are not actu- ally characters or actions are understood as such by projection, and they frame their advice accordingly. They advise those who want to write clear prose to change passages like the firstversion below into passages like the second version:

  Because the intellectual foundations of evolution are the same as so many other scientific theories, the falsification of their foundations would be necessary for the replacement of evolutionary theory with creationism.

  In contrast to creationism, the theory of evolution shares its intellec- tual foundations with many other theories. As a result, creationism will displace evolutionary theory only when it can first prove that the foun- dations of all those other theories are false.

  LANGUAGE E2. 159

  The cast of “characters” in the second version includes creationism, evo— lutionary theory, and other theories. The actions include sharing, displac— ing, and proving. The second version presents characters in the story and the actions in which they are involved. The first version does not. The second version is easier to read. In my words, the grammar carries expectations about narrative structure because it is created by projection from narrative struc— ture; the second sentence meets the inevitable expectations of correspondence better than the first.

  According to Williams and Colornb, readers will regard a paragraph as more cohesive if the topics of its sentences present consistent information—which usually means referring to the characters in the story. Such paragraphs will also be more coherent if their sentences’ topics present a consistent “point of view.” In my terms, the larger grammar of the paragraph derives from the conceptual structure of a story, in which characters are involved in actions. Readers there— fore expect the string of topics from sentence to sentence to connect the main characters, and expect one of those characters to dominate this topic string so as to present the scenario from a consistent viewpoint.

  If this is right, then the prototypical grammars of clauses, sentences, and texts all derive from the same source: parable.

  Everyone agrees that acquiring language helps an infant develop mentally by making it possible for the infant to express thought and to understand the expression of other people’s thought. If grammar arises through parable, acquir- ing language could help the infant develop mentally in an additional, altogether differentway. A grammatical structure corresponds to a story structure; the two structures are blended in a grammatical construction. Under parable, there can also be projection back from the blend to input spaces. The development of gram-- matical constructions could therefore reinforce the learning of story structure. The learning of a language may quite literally change the neurobiology of the infant in ways that are influential over cognition. This creates the intriguing possibility that speech and writing could be ways for the brain of one person to exert biological influence upon the brain of another person: thinking may be affected abidingly by experience with language.

  If we use the old metaphoric conception of'the brain as an agent who “deals with” language or as a container that for a moment “holds” language while ex- amining it for storage or discard, then it is natural to think of the biology of the brain as unchanged by its dealings with language. But if we use instead the con— ception of the brain as an active and plastic biological system, we are led to con- sider a rather different range of hypotheses: The brain is changed importantly by experience with language; language is an instrument used by separate brains to exert biological influence on each other, creating through biological action at

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  a distance a -virtual brain distributed in the individual brains of all the partici- pants in the culture; early experience with language affects cognitive operations that go beyond language.

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  Given the current state of linguistics, there are at least two predictable responses to the theory that language arises through parable. One is that it is trivially wrong; another is that it is trivially true, or at least obvious, something we have always known. I prefer the second view and am prepared not only to grant it but to make a gesture toward documenting it. Among literary critics and poets, it is an extremely common view, found in passages like the following from Fenollosa, where he pro- poses that a flash of lightning is a model (type) provided by nature of the gram- matical sentence:

  The type of sentence in nature is a flash of lightning. It passes between two terms, a cloud and the earth. No unit of natural process can be less; than this. All natural processes are, in their units, as much as this. Light, heat, gravity, chemical affinity, human will, have this in common, that they redistribute force. Their unit of process can be represented as: term from which, transference of force, term to which. If we regard this trans-- ference as the conscious or unconscious act of an agent we can translate the diagram into: agent, act, object.

  In typical fashion, Fenollosa sees grammar as arising by projection from reality rather than from story. But with only minor violence to such a passage, we can modify it into the claim that unmediated reality is not the basis of the projection; rather, abstract stories we use to make sense of reality are the basis of the projection.

  Aristotle makes this claim explicitly in On Interpretation. Fenollosa views reality as objectively narrative, and so thinks reality is the basis of the projection to grammar. Aristotle, by contrast, says little about narrative structure but does understand that the projection begins not from reality but from conceptual struc— ture. The form of language, Aristotle explains, arises by projection from con- ceptual structure.

  In its broad outlines, this is not an uncommon view today. Neuroscientist Gerald Edelman, in elaborating the theory of neural Darwinism and neuronal group selection, offers a very brief proposal that grammatical structure arises from conceptual structure. Syntax arises from the projection of semantics onto pho- nology. Edelman rejects on neurobiological grounds any notion of a genetically programmed language module.

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  In its most simplistic version, the view that grammar arises by projection from story can be paraphrased colloquially by saying that sentences are small stories. The form of a sentence “is” the form of a story. Sentences are small sto— ries that come from big stories. A noun is a person, place, or thing; a verb is an event; an adverb modifies an event; tense indicates temporal viewpoint and focus on a story; and so on. Such an ideational view of language is intuitive to anyone who has ever spoken, even though it cannot account for all of language.

  At sophisticated levels
, the theory that the origin of language is the proj ec- tion of story is compatible with some other work in cognitive linguistics, in the minimal sense that it shares some basic assumptions with other work in the field. One of the most basic assumptions in cognitive linguistics is that linguistic struc- tures can have conceptual bases. Perhaps the most immediately accessible analysis based on this view is Leonard Talmy’s analysis of ways in which force—dynamic conceptual structure is grammaticalized in English. A view of grammar as a dynamic system of interrelated grammatical constructions appears to be broadly compatible with the theory of grammar offered by Charles Fillmore and Paul Kay. The view that some basic grammatical constructions represent some basic human stories is compatible with work done by Adele Goldberg. Although Gilles Fauconnier and Ron Langacker do not speak exactly of the projection of story, they have in different ways analyzed with great insight and in great detail the ways in which projection from conceptual structure systematically underlies vari— ous aspects of grammar. Indeed, although Langacker and Fauconnier, like nearly everyone who works on tense, offer explanations of basic tenses that start from the temporal relation between the event reported and the moment of speaking, they nevertheless explicitly make the case for tense as the grammaticalization of viewpoint and focus. Various of Fauconnier and Langacker’s graduate students and colleagues have also done work on tense as arising essentially from focus and viewpoint.