The Intricacy Of Languages

If, as we believe, the history of languages is the history of the construction of an ideal artefact that permits a specific interpretation of the linguistic reality and helps to approve and assimilate a certain zone of diversity, enabling the accumulation of collective historical knowledge and making us identify it with a social community and a territory, then it must be agreed that languages are extremely complex entities. The new linguistic diversity that cultural globalisation and recent population movements have installed in most traditional linguistic territories has probably put the ideology of the national language into a state of crisis and, as a consequence, has made the ancient, intrinsic diversity of all languages visible, at least to the extent that this is still possible. Nowadays, then, the old linguistic diversity of dialects, of parlances, of local lexicons and the cultural forms that are reflected in these, of varieties and previously unsuccessful linguistic entities has been given a new opportunity in a world where the cohesion of societies and the welfare of citizens must be guaranteed using all available means. Looked at this way, the intricacy of languages may even open up an opportunity for local economic and social development.

This book is about dynamical, social-interactional aspects of the emergence of complexity in language, explained by linguists, cognitivists, and modelers.

Publisher Description

In 1962 a mimeographed sheet of paper fell into my possession. It had been prepared by Ernest Adams of the Philosophy Department at Berkeley as a handout for a colloquim. Headed 'SOME FALLACIES OF FORMAL LOGIC' it simply listed eleven little pieces of reasoning, all in ordinary English, and all absurd. I still have the sheet, and quote a couple of the arguments here to give the idea. • If you throw switch S and switch T, the motor will start. There fore, either if you throw switch S the motor will start, or, if you throw switch T the motor will start . • It is not the case that if John passes history he will graduate. Therefore, John will pass history. The disconcerting thing about these inferences is, of course, that under the customary truth-functional interpretation of and, or, not, and if-then, they are supposed to be valid. What, if anything, is wrong? At first I was not disturbed by the examples. Having at that time consider able personal commitment to rationality in general and formal logic in par ticular, I felt it my duty and found myself easily able (or so I thought) to explain away most of them. But on reflection I had to admit that my expla nations had an ad hoc character, varying suspiciously from example to example.

Through his innovative study of language, noted Heidegger scholar Lawrence Hatab offers a proto-phenomenological account of the lived world, the “first” world of factical life, where pre-reflective, immediate disclosiveness precedes and makes possible representational models of language. Common distinctions between mind and world, fact and value, cognition and affect miss the meaning-laden dimension of embodied, practical existence, where language and life are a matter of “dwelling in speech.” In this second volume, Hatab supplements and fortifies his initial analysis by offering a detailed treatment of child development and language acquisition, which exhibit a proto-phenomenological world in the making. He then takes up an in-depth study of the differences between oral and written language (particularly in the ancient Greek world) and how the history of alphabetic literacy shows why Western philosophy came to emphasize objective, representational models of cognition and language, which conceal and pass over the presentational domain of dwelling in speech. Such a study offers significant new angles on the nature of philosophy and language.

First published in 1983. This series, Children’s Language, reflects the conviction that extensive work on entirely new fronts along with a great deal of reinterpretation of old-front data will be necessary before any persuasive and truly orderly account of language. For all volumes in the series there is a common scheme of operation with two tactics. First, to give authors sufficient planning time and freedom to arrive at a chapter-length account of their area of thinking which vividly shows both the progress and the problems in that area, with the author of each chapter free to find a workable proportion of new experimental contributions, review, and theory. The second tactic concerns the selection of topics for each volume. This is Volume 4. Structures about language and thought and children as employed in certain other fields may well be shaken and stimulated, particularly in education, sociology, anthropology, literature, and language remediation.

Doing Research within Communities provides real-life examples of field research projects in language and education, offering an overview of research processes and solutions to the common challenges faced by researchers in the field. This unique book contains personal research narratives from sixteen different and varied fieldwork projects, providing advice and guidance to the reader through example rather than instruction and enabling the reader to discover connections with the storyteller and gain insights into their own research journey. This book: provides advice, practical guidance and support for engaging with a community as a research site; covers the real-life theoretical, ethical and practical issues faced by researchers, such as language choice in multilingual communities, and the insider/outsider status of the researcher; discusses challenges posed by a variety of mono- and multilingual settings, from remote island communities to large urban areas; includes research from across the Asia-Pacific area, including Australia, New Zealand and East Timor, and also the US. Doing Research within Communities is essential reading for early career researchers and graduate students undertaking fieldwork within communities.