New Books in Language

In language, as in life, history is constantly repeating itself. In her book The Linguistic Cycle: Language Change and the Language Faculty (Oxford University Press, 2011), Elly van Gelderen tackles the question of such ‘cyclical’ changes. The book is a catalogue of examples of linguistic history repeating itself, with over a thousand example sentences drawn from nearly 300 different language varieties, and ranging over negation, tense, case, object agreement and beyond. Beyond this descriptive role, however, the book is also an attempt to understand the processes that we see within a Minimalist syntactic framework, in which economy on the part of the language acquirer is crucial for language change and semantic features are continually reanalysed as syntactic before being lost entirely. In this interview, among other things, we discuss the notion of the linguistic cycle, the relationship between historical linguistics and syntactic theory (sometimes strained, but usually mutually beneficial), the polysynthetic languages of the Americas, and whether Old English can be classified as polysynthetic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

The only disappointment with A History of Psycholinguistics: The Pre-Chomskyan Era (Oxford UP, 2012) is that, as the subtitle says, the story it tells stops at the cognitive revolution, before Pim Levelt is himself a major player in psycholinguistics. He says that telling the story of the last few decades is a task for someone else. The task he’s taken on here is to describe the progress made in the psychology of language between its actual foundation – around 1800 – and the point at which it’s widely and erroneously believed to have been founded – around 1951. The story that the book tells is remarkable in many ways: not only for its vast breadth and depth of scholarship, but also for the number of misconceptions that it corrects. Levelt uncovers how many modern theories in psycholinguistics are in fact independent rediscoveries of proposals made in the 19th century, and charts the significant positive contributions made to the science by figures who are often overlooked or even derided now (we discuss a couple of such cases in this interview). He vividly depicts how the rapid march of progress was catastrophically disrupted in the early 20th century, by a combination of political strife and scientific wrong turns, before being restored in the 1950s. In this interview we talk about some of the recurring themes of the book – forgetting and rediscovery, the remarkably prescient nature of much 19th century theoretical and experimental work, and the collective misunderstanding of the history of the discipline. And we touch upon the intentional misunderstandings that allowed research in psycholinguistics to be exploited for financial gain or more sinister purposes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

Linguists are apt to get excited when a language is identified that exhibits exotic properties, and gladly travel halfway round the world to document it, particularly if they think it’s going to support a pet theory of theirs. Nick Enfield‘s fieldwork in Laos differs from this paradigm in at least three respects. First, his choice of location reflects a prior interest in the culture of the region; second, the object of his study is gesture rather than just speech; and third, it’s quite possible that the forms of gesture he documents are actually very typical – we just don’t know yet. However, as well as the fieldwork, which is attractively summarised and depicted in The Anatomy of Meaning: Speech, Gesture, and Composite Utterances (Cambridge University Press, 2009/2012), there is a theory at stake, or at least a theoretical outlook. For Enfield, the use of gestures alongside speech illustrates something profound about the nature of meaning, specifically that it is a composite notion to which justice is not done by an insistence on treating speech and gesture separately. In reality, language users are adept at conveying and comprehending complex packages of (at least) speech and gesture, and our theories should encompass that versatility. In this interview, we talk about the motivations for both the fieldwork and the theory, and consider how the bewildering complexity of gestural interaction can be approached by the analyst. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

Building upon The Origins of Meaning (see previous interview), James R. Hurford‘s The Origins of Grammar (Language in the Light of Evolution, Vol. 2) (Oxford University Press, 2012) second volume sets out to explain how the unique complexity of human syntax might have evolved. In doing so, it addresses the long-running argument between (to generalise) linguists and non-linguists as to how big a deal this is: linguists tend to claim that the relevant capacities are unique to humans, while researchers in other disciplines argue for parallels with other animal behaviours. James Hurford sides with the linguists here, but not without giving careful consideration to the status of birdsong, whalesong, and similar systems. Meanwhile, at the other end of the evolutionary process (so far), interest is growing in accounts of human syntax that are incidentally much more gradualist in nature and which invite potential explanation in evolutionary terms. Moreover, the idea of quantitative limits on human processing are being appealed to, in conflict with the tradition view of ‘infinite’ generative capacity. In the second part of the book, Hurford charts a course through this field in order to characterise the ‘target’ of the evolutionary story. Finally, he turns to the process itself, positing a role for the ‘symbolic niche’ in the rapid co-evolution of culture and individual capacities throughout the span of humans’ existence, and considering how grammaticalisation might be responsible for the earliest, as well as the most recent, innovations in human language. In this interview, we touch on many of these topics, and try to situate this work within the history of linguistics. We consider the implications of new trends in linguistic theory and research practice, and look at how evolutionary claims might be validated – or at least shown to be plausible, in the face of residual scepticism. And we discuss whether and when genome research will inform linguistic analysis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

Evolutionary approaches to linguistics have notoriously had a rather chequered history, being associated with vague and unfalsifiable claims about the motivations for the origins of language. It seems as though the subject has only recently come in from the cold, and yet there are already rich traditions of research in several distinct fields that offer relevant insights: insights that are crucial if we consider Dobzhansky’s maxim, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”, also to apply to human language. In his two-volume (so far) work, James Hurford brings together many of these disparate strands of research and endeavours to answer the question of how humans, uniquely among extant species, came to have such elaborative, productive, referential language. His work is at once vast and authoritative, stimulating and original, and highly accessible. It serves both to introduce new ideas and to draw out potential connections between familiar ones. It’s critical without being dismissive, and seems to succeed in its goal of being genuinely interdisciplinary. This first interview revisits the 2007 book, The Origins of Meaning (Oxford University Press, 2007), which sets out some ideas as to how both meaning (as a relatively ‘private’ matter) and communication (a ‘public’ one) came to be elaborated in humans. We discuss how meaning can be characterised in a way that is evolutionarily friendly, and the kinds of neural processes that might underlie the shape of propositional thought. We look at the relation that might be argued between visual attention and (pre-)linguistic semantics. And we turn to studies of monkey alarm calls, and ask whether the origins of referential meaning are already exhibited by our distant primate cousins. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

In these days of increasing automation, the prospect of obsolescence is an alarming one for those of us who make a living by stringing words together instead of doing something demonstrably useful. From this perspective, it’s tempting to think of “computers”, “language” and “creativity” as the constituents of a literary behemoth that writes that brilliant novel, and a million others besides, only in seconds and for no money, while human authors starve in their garrets. The future as envisaged by Tony Veale in Exploding the Creativity Myth: The Computational Foundations of Linguistic Creativity (Bloomsbury Academic, 2012) is rather more benign. He sees the technology as assistive to human creativity, but able to inject a level of complexity and originality that cannot be achieved in static works of reference. In particular, by extracting patterns from large corpora – most obviously the World Wide Web – software can already, for instance, suggest expressions to achieve a certain effect, leaving it up to the human author to choose from the options available. In this interview, we talk about some of the insights into human language use offered by the computational approach, and how it may lead us to renegotiate our concepts of what constitutes creativity. We discuss how existing forms, including idioms, cliches and metaphors, can be re-used and re-purposed, and what goes into making a new variant truly original. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

If you had to bet your life on learning a language in three months, which language would you choose? Peter Trudgill’s first choice wouldn’t be Faroese or Polish; and in his book, Sociolinguistic Typology: Social Determinants of Linguistic Complexity (Oxford University Press, 2011), he suggests that there are good historical reasons for that. In the book, Peter Trudgill argues that human societies at different times and places may produce different kinds of language, and considers the influence of different language contact scenarios on linguistic structure. The book’s main thesis is that, while isolation and long-term co-territorial contact can lead to increased complexity, contact situations involving large numbers of adult L2 learners are likely to lead to increased simplicity – and that as a result the typological spread of the world’s languages today is probably strikingly unrepresentative of the situation throughout nearly all of human history. In this interview we discuss the implications of these ideas for certain long-held views, such as the view that all languages are equally complex, and the view that processes operative in the present should be used to explain the past. We also discuss the role of language acquisition, the urgent need for documentation of endangered languages spoken by societies of intimates, and how Peter’s ideas can be applied at other linguistic levels such as syntax. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

In When Words Are Called For: A Defense of Ordinary Language Philosophy (Harvard University Press, 2012), Avner Baz sets out to make a case for the reconsideration of Ordinary Language Philosophy, or OLP, in mainstream academic philosophy. I personally found Baz’s work in it interesting due to the fact that my familiarity with OLP comes solely from a literary perspective and both Baz, as a trained philosopher, and his argumentation present an interesting glimpse into the deep resistance towards OLP that can be found in mainstream philosophy. In fact, after reading When Words Are Called For, and even more so, after speaking with Dr. Baz, it became apparent just how differently philosophers and literary academics view, value, and understand OLP and what it has to offer the critics and the curious. For those readers who have either a deep affinity for OLP or who come at it from a literary, non-analytical philosophical perspective much of When Words Are Called For will seem spot on but ultimately unnecessary in the best sense of that word in that Baz spends a great deal of his time making a case for the legitimacy of a philosophical perspective that many who are familiar with it from a literary perspective will simply find a given. This is truly the result of a difference in disciplinary perspective more than anything else. Where When Words Are Called For does shine is in the epilogue, “Ordinary Language Philosophy, Kant, and the Roots of Antinomial Thinking,” where Baz offers some fascinating insights into the connections between Kant and OLP. Admittedly, When Words Are Called For is best for the skeptical philosopher, but it also serves a great purpose in illustrating the extreme differences in how two humanist disciplines can approach and come to understand a way of thinking about the world and conceptualizing the language that unites it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

Recent political debates around language have often been controversial, sometimes poorly informed, and usually unedifying. It’s striking to consider that such debates have, at least in the USA, been current for more than 100 years; and perhaps surprising to learn that they can be seen to have a striking effect on the development of modernist literature. In Accented America: The Cultural Politics of Multilingual Modernism (Oxford University Press, 2011), Joshua Miller begins by evoking a time when the existence and substance of a distinctly American national language is first being argued, and when Presidents, language mavens and the new breed of linguistics scholars are exchanging opinions in major public fora. Against this background, he reads the work of some of the major American writers of the interwar years as exploring and negotiating the relation between language and cultural identity. In this interview, we talk first about Mencken’s rehabilitation as a public figure through his work on language, and his role in the political debates on the status of American English. We then discuss how the cosmopolitan language backgrounds of Gertrude Stein and John dos Passos variously informed their work, how the relationship between language and African American identity plays out in the works of Jean Toomer and Nella Larsen, and how Spanish and indigenous languages shape the writing of Carlos Bulosan and Americo Paredes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

The idea that bilingualism can be enriching and beneficial for an individual is a popular one. But what about for a city? Here the associations are less positive, particularly if we automatically think of cities whose linguistic divisions echo the political or religious divisions between two communities unable to communicate. In Cities in Translation: Intersections of Language and Memory (Routledge, 2012), however, Sherry Simon develops an account of how civic plurilingualism can be a powerful creative driver. Her work explores how the linguistically-divided city is not only a location for ‘distancing’ – where communities develop their distinct independent identities – but, more interestingly, one for ‘furthering’ – the cultural encounters that are a pervasive force in modernity. With particular reference to the writers and translators of Calcutta, Trieste, Barcelona and Montreal, Simon demonstrates some of the ways in which translational practice has shaped the literatures of divided cities, and evokes their creative dynamics. Here we talk about the various Renaissances of these cities, as well as some of the themes that recur across time and space: the physical aspect of the city, and the passages through which ideas are transported; the practice and the consequences of ‘reading one language, writing in another’; and the role that self-translation can play in the development of an author’s voice as well as the contestation of their legacy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language