r

THE NEW PSYCHOI10GY

OF LANGUAGE
Cognitive and Functional
Approaches to Language Structure
*
Volume 2
Edited by
Michael TOlnasello
Max Planck Institute jiJr AnthlD/}()l
Leipzig, Gennany
1m LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PliBLISIIERS
2003 Mahwah, NewJersey
Introduction:
Some Surprises for Psychologists
Michael Tomasello
Max Planck Institute
Linguistics can sometimes he a technical discipline, with a rcalit\, and a v()-
cabu\;uyall its OWII. For this reason, psychologists have oneil \\ailcd ('or lin-
guists to tell them what langllage is-that is, give them a good
according to the latest theory-so tbey can go on to study its
sion, processing, and acquisition. But mllch of the lllcol'cti(,d fralll('\\ork
and vocabulary of modern linguistic theories relies on the calegories and
terminology of traditional linguistics. Traditional Wcslt'rn lillgllis-
tics arose historically in the Middle Ages (Iinl11 Greek and ROinan
mainly for the teaching of Latin as a language of scholarship, '!OUIlS ,mel
verbs, and objects, predicate adjcClin's and pr('(II(;[I(' lIominaL-. arc
manifestly not phenomena that were ueated by psychologists, or ('\'('11 lin-
guists with a psychological bent, with the goal of descrihing hm\ ;t!! Ill<' peo..
of the world, speaking more than 5,000 dilferenl
}
comprehend and use a naturallangllage. Many of thcm arc not
R
at all to many non-European languages (Croft, in press;
\
It may be that some of these categories arc indeed lIscful for the
tory purposes of psycholinguists. But some lllay not be; it is in each case all
empirical question, And that is oIle of the revolutionary aspects of the IlCW
-"
wave oflinguistic theories that By under the banner of FUllctiona! ,md/or
Cognitive Linguistics. Although they too IISC technical
of it from the traditional vocabulary-in principle each
defined with respect to the function it serves in real proccsses of
communication. I n addition to this general fUllctional (Hicillal i( 1Il. (:( )[!;ni-
2 TOMASELlO
tive-Functional (Usage-Based) linguists also make the "cognitive commit-
ment" to couch their definitions and explanations as much as possible in
constructs and terminolob'Y that are compatible with those of
theotherCognitiveSciences (Lakoff, 1990).Thismakestheworkmoreac-
cessible to psychologists, andindeeditis even possiblenow that
gistscanshareinthediscussionandhelptoidentifypsychologicallyreallin-
guistic entities involved in processes oflinguistic communication.
This is the reasoning behind the title The New PI),cholo{,,'Y Lang;uage,
which is descriptive ofthe chapters both in Tomasello (1998) and in the
currentvolume.Structurallinguisticsadoptsmanycategoriesoftraditional
Western linguistics uncritically-indeedpositingthemas innateasoectB of
a supposed universal grammar-andthengoesOIl to create new
categories based noton theircross-linguistic applicability oron their psy-
chological plausibility, but rather on their formal adequacy within the
framework ofa speciflc mathematical theory oflanguage. (Thus, when a
formaladvanceis madeinthetheory,asin thenewminimalism[Chomsky,
it is automatically assumed to be a partofuniversal grammar,with
no empirical verification deemed necessary.) Cognitive-Functional Lilli
gllistics.ontheottwrhand,adoptsthecategoriesoftraditionalWesternlin-
guisticsonlytentativelyandprovisionallybasedontheircorrespondenceto
the actual patternsoflise ofparticularpeople llsingparticularlanguages;
whenitcreatesnewcategoriesitjustillesthemonthebasisof howpeoplein
a particular language, or set oflanguages. use them in acts of
commnnication.
Intheintroduction to thefirstvolume,Iattemptedto giveanoverview
ofCogJlitive-Functional Linguists for psychologists and psycholinguists,
in thehopesthatthismightprovide themwithsomenewperspectivesfor
basic processes oflinguistic communication (Tomasello,
Inthemoremodestintroductiontothis thesecondvolume,Isimplywish
to highlight, and to briefly explore, someofthe discoveries-orin some
cases, rediscoverieswith modern reformulations-ofmodern Cognitive-
Functional (Usage-Based) Linguistics,withspecialreferenceto thosethat
seem to have most. direct relevance for psychologists. Many ofthese dis-
cO\'eries-oratleast the new light in which they are cast in modern Us-
age-Based theories-will be surprising to psychologists and psycholil
guists who have not kept up with recent research on such things as
grammatical analyses of non-Indo-European languages, grammaticali-
zatiol1 inlanguage history, the relation between written andspoken lan-
guage, and the relation between languageand humancognition andso-
cial interaction.In myopinion,a seriousconsiderationofthesenewfacts
about. language could change fundamentally the way psychologists and
psycholinguists go about their business.
INTRODUCTION
:1
SpokenLanguageDoesNotWorkLikeWrittenLanguage
Everyone agrees that the primary foclis of Linguistics, and (l
Psycholinguistics, should he spoken language. Spoken lallgllage was 1>1i-
malYbymanytensofthousandsofyearsill hllman history.alld indccd. llll-
til quiterecently,themajorityofhumanbeingson the
a written languageatall. Today, spokenlanguage is still
years in individual ontogeny, and the struggles 01 lllallY childl
learningtoread-ascomparedwith therelativeeasewithwhich
I(alll
to speak-attests to the "unnaturalness" ofwritten language.
Theproblemis thatlearningtousea wriUell language-Ilot10 llWlltioll
metalinguistic skills for talking about it, as ill "Western grallllll,\1
schools-profoundly influences the way ,,'e think about language" Olsou
1994, pp. 258-2(5) argued this point forcefully in a series of
someofwhichare: (a) Writingwas responsible historically lill'
ofspoken language intoconsciollsawareness, that is, lor
peeL'> oflanguage into object" ofreflection, analysis, and design; (I 1'\0
writing system brings all aspects ofwhat is said in spokcll language illlO
awareness, and thoseaspect"ofspoken language thalarenol rcprcsclllnl
writtenlanguageareextremelydifficulttobringinto and
Thoseaspectsofspoken languagerepresentedby writtell languagearc
felt by individuals, erroneously, to bea complete model oflanguagc. ,llld
oncethismodelhasbeeninternalized,itis extremelydi!ficuh tollllthil1k il
and look at spoken language "naively."
Theway to dealwith this problem, ofcourse, is to focus \lot Oil
mati cal sentences" found introspectively-as is commou ill milch ofLill-
guistics-butrather to actually observe, record. and analy/.c spontallcOllS
spoken speech Ford, Fox, & Thompson, this volullle). This is llot as
easy as itsounds,andindeeditis onlywith the inventioll ofal]fmlahlc re-
cordingequipment (and resourcesfor paying transcribers) that it has 1)("_
cornea possibilityatall. With theinvention ofcOIllputational lools for tag-
and searching transcripts ofspoken language. a whole lIew world 01
corpuslinguisticsis openingupthatallows for Iheanalysis ofd("(,ClIl-"i/{d
corpuses that represent what people aetnally do when tiln 'Iwak -.g..
Biberct aI., 1998;Sinclair, 1991). Hereis a partial list ofSOllH" oftil<' filld-
ings thatemergewhen one looksatspontaneousspoken speech (.'-ISS) ill
comparisons with
There is very little in SSS that conesponds to a "sentence," as many
peoplediscoveredwhentheyfirstreadtranscriptsoftheinl(H"lllai COllvns;{-
tions ofpoliticians as recorded on the infamous tapes. Pcople
speakin "intonation units," which consistofprosodicallyandsemantically
III
4
5
TOMASELLO
coherentstretchesoflanguage typically containingonlyone new pieceof
information (DuBois, this volume). These intonalion linils arc lypically
unitsofonesortoranother NOlIll Phrases,Adpositional
Phrases, Clauses), but only sometimes are they entil'e "sentences" on the
model ofwritten language.
Whatareoften thoughtofasprototypicalutterancesina languageac-
tuallyarenot. Forinstallce,uttel'ancesliketheEnglish']ohnboughta mo-
" in which there arc full HOUIlS (i.e., noun phrases) designating
bothofthemainparticipants,areextremelyrareinSSS (butreasonablyfre-
quentin writing). In SSS, whatpeople preferto domostly is to introduce
the main referent in one intonation unit, and then predicate something
aboutitin another (often usinga pronominal reference to thejustintro-
ducedentity),as in:"hey...y<1 knowthatguyJohn...downatthepoolhall
.,.heboughta Harley...if youcanbelievethat." (Chafe, 1994,1998).
Whatare thoughtofas the prototypical lISCS ofceI'lain linguisticcon-
structionsoftenarenot.Forexample,textbookstell usthatEnglishrelative
clausesserve to "restrict" reference,as in "Themotorcycle thathebought
uses diesel fuel," and theyoften dodo this ill writing. But, it turilS out, in
SSS peopleveryseldom use a relative clause to restrict the refer-
ence ofthe primary participant (subject), which, as noted previously, is
mostoftena pnmoun.Also,peopleseldomusethewordthaI tointroducea
relativeclauseinSSS. Thisleadsonceagaintomorenaturalutteranceslike
"ya know thatmotorcycle he bought....[it uses diesell" (Fox & Thomp-
son, I
Utterances high in transitivity (an agellt does something to cause a
changeof stateina patient),whichareoftcnusedasthcprototypeof asen-
tence in mallY languages, arc not so frequent in SSS. In one analysis,
ThompsonandHopper(inpl'ess) fmllidthatonlyaboutonequarterofthe
clausalintonationunitsill SSShadtwo pal'ticipanIS, andmanyof thesewere
low in transitivity (primaryparticipantnotvery agentiveorsecondarypar-
ticipantdidnotundergochangeofstate).TherewerealsolIlany
verbal predicatesinsteadof lexical verbs (e.f:5., have a hard timp
go to allthp trouble 0/ V-ing, wander around etc.).
Whenonesystematicallycomparesstichthingsas nounphrases,subor-
dinateclausesofall types,focusconstructionsofall types,andmanyothers,
one finds that SSS andwritten language are very different grammatically
(Miller & Weinert, 1998). Many constructions occllr ollly or mainly in
speech,forexample, imperativesandinterrogatives,oronlyinwriting, for
example,some types ofcomplex nominals (e.g., "a rigorous andvalid ex-
aminationofAppliedEconomicsthatconsistsofthreepapers"),hutnotin
both.
INTRODU<:nON
Theseareenoughexamplesto make thepoint.Thereallhillg-spollta-
neow;spokenspeech-haspropertiesofit.s own thataredilkrcllt,in SOlIW
casesverydillcl'ent,from theintuitivemodeloflanguagctil"tliterate,Cd!l-
catedpeoplecarryaround in theirheads. This internalized 1II0dd llIay of
course beused togenerate hypothesesaboutthestructure ofSSS, blll the
bctis thatSSS musthestudiedin its own right, by the normal processes01
scientific observation and experimentation, however ditIindt and
this may be.
GrammarArisesHistoricallyFromLanguageUse
Althoughitis notwell knownin theCognitiveScienceCOl1l111 II11 it\', lite lact
is thatvirtuallyall linguistswhoare involved in thedetailedanalysis ofindi-
viduallanguagescross-linguistically-mostlyknownaslingnistic
nowagreethattherearevel)'fewifanyspeciticgrammaticalconsll'uniol1sor
markers that are universally present in all lanf:5uages, There are mallY lall-
guages that simply do not have one or the other of clauses,
sentential complements, passive ('oBstructions, grammatical markers fell'
tense, grammatical markersofevidentiality, ditransitives, topic markers, ({
wjJUla (tobe), case mal'kingofgrammatical roles, subjullctive llIood, defi-
nite and indefinite articles, incorporated nouns, plural mark<'rs, and Oil
and on. Typological research has also established beyond a rc,!sonahlc
doubt that notonlyare specific grammatical constructions no! ullin'lsa!.
buthasicallynoneofthe so-called minorwordclasses orEnglish th,\! help
to constitute particular ('onstructions (e.g., prepositiolls. <!uxi\ian v('r\)s,
articles, adverhs, compiemcntizers, LlIld the
sal across languages either (Croft, in press; Dryer, I
This does not mean that there are no language universals-there dc-
monstrablyare-butonly thatwe mustlook for those ulliv(Tsals ill
besides particularlinguisticitems and constructions. Olle place to look is
humancognition,and ofcourse thatis oneofthe central tCllets of(
live Linguistics.Talmy(thisvolume) ontlinesfoUl' "conceptstructllrillg
terns" that, by hypothesis, underlie all languages. Thus, all IIll/lla1l
conceptualize the world in terms ofcertain configurations orspace ami
time, force dynamics and causality, perspective and attentiol1al distribu-
tion; andsolanguages,asconventionalsymbolicsystemsdesigncd to C()lll-
municate about this world, obviously reflect these uH1ceptllaliz;tti()lIs as
well. Kemmer (this volume) analyzes how many difIcrellt iangmigcs COll-
strue events andelaborate their participants, proposinga llllivcrsal
model thatthendifferentlanguages instantiatedifferentlyill theirvarious
constructions.Haspelmath (thisvolume) illustral('sgraphicallvsorncoji1lC
6
7
TOMASELLO
interestingandcomplexwaysinwhichuniversalformsofconceptualization
getsymbolizedintolanguagescross-linguistically,withbothsomeuniversal
patterns and also a healthy dose oflanguage-specific idiosyncrasies. An-
otherplaceto lookforuniversals is humancommunicationin thesenseof
thecommunicativegoals and needs ofhuman beings-someofwhich are
universal andsomeofwhich areparticularto particularspeechcommuni-
ties. Comrie (thisvolume) outlinessome possiblelinguistic universals due
tothekindsofthingsthathumansneedtotalkaboutmosturgentlyandthe
ways theyneedtotalkabouttheminordertoavoidambiguitiesandachieve
their communicative goals.
Ifgrammatical items andconstructionsare notuniversally given to hu-
manbeings,thenwheredotheycomefrom? Beginninginthelastcentury,
historical linguists have observed that many grammatical items in a lan-
guageseem to comefrom morecontentfullexicalitems. Someofthebest-
known European examples are as follows:
The main future tense markerin English comes from the full lexical
verbwill, as in I will it to hapjJen. Atsomepointexpressionsaroseofthe
form It'll happen (with the volitional component of will "bleached"
out).Similarly, theoriginaluseofgo wasformovement(I'm going to the
SlOTI') and this became I'm gonna do it tomorrow (with the movement
bleached out).
TheEnglish pastperfective, usinghave, is verylikelyderivedfromsen-
tencessuchasI have afinger broken orI have the prisoners bound (inwhich
have is averbofpossession).ThisevolvedintosomethinglikeI have bro-
ken afinger (inwhich thepossessionmeaningofhave isbleachedout).
English phrasessnchas on the top ofandin the side ofevolvedinto on top
of and inside of andeventuallyinto atop and inside. Insome languages
relator words such as these spatial prepositions may also become at-
tachedto nounsas case markers (althoughnotinEnglish)-inthisin-
stance as possible locative case markers.
InFrench,themainnegativeis theexpression ne . ..pas, asinJe ne sais
CurrentlyinspokenFrench,thene isbecominglessoftenusedand
jiaS is becomingthemainnegativemarker.Butthewordpas wasatone
pointthewordfor"step,"with theexpressionbeingsomethinglikethe
English "notone bit" or"notone step further."
In addition, larger constructions themselves are producLs of grammat-
icalization processes, albeit these processes may be somewhatdifferentand
sotheyhavebeencalledsyntactitization (Givan, 1979,1995).Thebasicideais
thatinsteadofsequencesofwordsbecomingoneword, ora wordchanging
INTRODUCTION
from a morereferential toa moregrammaticalfllnction, ora word tllmillg
intoagrammaticalmorpheme,in thiscasewholephrasestakc()Il a lICW kind
oforganization; that is, loose discourse sequences, often acr()ss illton;lti()1l
units, become tighter syntactic constructions. SOllie possible examples:
Loose discourse sequencessuch as Hf jmlleri Ihe door find il o/JI'III'I/llIav
becomesyntacticizedintoHf tmlled tlte door o/JI'TI (<I resultativt'COllstruc-
tion).
Loose discourse sequencessuch as AI, /JoJ/i"il'lld ...1/(' /J/I/XI /Jilli/{) ...
lie jJlays in a band. may become My bOY/rifllll filays /Jim/{) ill 1/ I}(II/d. Or,
similarly, My boyfriend . ..He rid!!s hOTSes ...HI' lifts Oil tlifill. Illaybccolllc
My boyfrimd, who riries hones, bets on thl'lli.
Similarly, ifsomeoneexpressesthebeliefthatMarywill wcdjollll,an-
otherpersonmightrespondwith an assentI bdil've Ihlll, /(lilowcil iJy a
repetition ofthe expressed belief that A1a') will wed ./111111, which iJc-
comesyntacticized into thesinglestatement I bdielll' Ihlll Mill)' lIIil1l1li'd
John.
Complexsentences may also derive from discourse sequcllces orini-
tially separateutterances,as in I wanl it . ..I buy il. enllvinginto!wllnl
to bny it.
Interestingly, along with plenty of idiosyncratic gralllllIaticali;ratioll
paths in individual languages, there would seem to be some ()r
nearly universal, grammaticalization and syntactitizatioll paths as \\'ell.
Among themostwidelyattestedarc such things as (a) main verb auxil-
iaryverb tense-aspect-moodmarker(e.g.,aprocessbegunhy Ellgli,h will
[future] and have [perfective]); (b) demonstrative definite article (e.g.,
English the from that); (c) thenumeral"one" indefinitearticle
uno/a, French un, English a); and (el) demonstrative cOllIplemcnti/.(T
(e.g., inEnglish I know that I know that shl'\ ("()lIIing). These h;q>pen scpa-
ratelyinseparatelanguages,presumablyattestingtocommoll processesof
change based on universal principles ofhuman cognitioll and lillgllistic
communication (Croft, 2(00).
Bybee (thisvolume) proposessomespecificexplanationsfor these(Olll-
mon grammaticalization paths in terms ofcognitive and connnllnicati\e
processeswell known topsychologists,suchas automatization,habituation,
decontextualization (emancipation), categorization, pragmatic inflTt'lJ(-
ing,andothers.Theseprocessesoccurasindividualsusepiecesoflanguage
incommunicationovertime,withspeakerscOllstantlytryingtosaynolllorc
thanis necessaryandlistenerstryingtomakesurethatspeakerssay enough
thattheycanunderstandadequatelytheintendedmessage.Van Hoek(this
8 TOMASELLO
certain processesofreference andanaphoraacross
clauses andintonation unitsoperatetheway theydoin Herex-
focuses on the way people package theirconceptualizationsfor
purposes ofinterpersonal communication.
TheUnitsofLanguageAreManyandVarious
andDoNotConstitute"AGrammar"
In traditional Western linguistics we speak of"The Grammar" ofa lan-
guage,andChomskyhasfollowed in this tradition speakingofchildren
with"A Grammar."Butlanguagesas theyarereallyspokenand
of"TheGrammar"ofa lan-
guage as a coherententity manyinterestingstrnctures mustsimply be ig-
nored. Forexample,itis well known thatin mlditionaltermsEnglishis an
SVO language; typically precede the verb
and agree with it in number. Thus we say:
She the piano.
They piaLthe piano.
this way we say:
There my shoe. Here is my shoe.
There are mv shoes. Here are my shoes.
In thiscase, itis theelementfollowing theverbthatagreeswith it in num-
berandsois, bythatcriterion,itssubject. (Makingmattersevenmorecom-
plicated, the,"crysimilarlookingutterance It is shoedoes not also have
thef(mn *Itart' m.'1 .Ihoes.) Itis alsowell known thatmanyso-called ergative
languageshaveergativeorganization in,forexample,first andsecondper-
son utterances, but acclisative organization in third person ul.lerances
can also be split based on tense; DeLancey, 1981).
is thatdifferentconstructionsina language often have their
own !(1IOsyncratic properties that do not lit neatly into the rules of"The
Grammar." Fillmore, Kay, and O'Conner in their famous 1988 paper in
Language(reprintedinabridgedform in thisvolume) exploresomeofthe
manyandvariousidiosyncraticconstructionsofEnglish,focusingespecially
on the construction exemplified in utterances such as She wouldn'{ Ziv' in
New YOTh, much less Boston. vVhereas it was always known thatall languages
have some idioms, metaphors, proverbs, and quirky constructions, what
thispaperunderlinesis thefact thatmanyconstnlctionsin a languageare
infact mixtur"es ofmore"rellular"andmore"idiomat.ic"subconstructions.
INTRODliCTION
9
Subsequentstudies on various other"odd" cOllstruction, haq' tllrlwd up
many othersimilar examples, most famously:
the nominal extraposltlOn construction ,II..: 1.;ulIlmcht,
as in It's am.azinf! the !JeotJuJ wmlt/.I'I'l lint'.
theWXDYconstruction
,asin \1//1111 '11/11'1/,11'''dlJ-
, as in fie smikd/ii.1 Wll)' il/lo !I/(,
constructioll (JackendofL as ill fII' \
caref''' awa_'1.
the -el" construction, as in Th' Tilher lhl')' IIrl', thl' nirl'l IIII'\' rill'.
the incredulity construction, as in Him bl' a dor/or!
Theseconstrtlctionsarenotjnst totallyweirdidioms,butrarhntlinrepre-
sentcomplexmixturesofregularandidiomaticcomponenIs, andsoin t 1;1-
ditional Linguist.ics it is difficult to know what to dowith th(,1I1.
Thetheoreticalmovein traditionalaswell asCllOl1lskian lillguistic,", has
always been to simply designate some items and constrlluiollS ora bll-
are then to tlie lexicoll.
has beenmostclearlyinstantiatedinCholllskY's (19HO) dis-
tinction between the Core and the Periphery in The Grall1l1lal ora lall-
guage. More recently, itis also evidentin thevVords andRliksapproaclI
ofPinker (1999) and Clahsen (\999), in which all irregularasp('ch ora
languagearein thelexicon-andsomust belearnedby rote-wlicr("lsall
theregularaspectsofa languagearea partof its grammaJ";lIId Edl ulI-
der a rule that then generates its structural description. The plOhlt-lII
again is thatthis tidydistinction is very diflindtto maintain ill tlw beeor
mixedconstructionssuchas thoselisted, inwhich itis al1llost
lO segregate the regularand idiomatic aspens. To look 1l1OIC
one example, the incredulityconstruction (Alv rnalhn rid!' II
cangenerale!lew ex-
In some ways it is like otherEnglish (OIl:'itlllctioIlS
(e.g., it has SVO ordering, the NPs are regular), butofcour..,(" til(' S is
marked as an pronoun (accusative case) and theverb is Ilollfillite
(notmarked for agreemellt). And so the question is: Is tliis a
construction oranidiom? Ifit is an idiom, it mllstbecalled,I prodllcti\('
idiom.Theproblemis thattherearethousandsandthousandsofpro<illc-
tive idiomsin a language thatare regularand idiomatic in myriadfliifn-
ent ways-so that they merge into more n.:gular constructiO!lS with 110
clear break (Nunberg, & Wasow,
Thediscovery-perhapsbestcreditedtoBolinger(I butdlle
to theworkofFillmore, Kay, andcolleagues-isthat there is nodeal"dis-
tinctionbetween the"core"andthe"DeI"iDhclv"ofa bm.rIl:HT{' andthisllll-
10 11 TOMASEI J'()
dermines the whole idea of The Grammar of a language as a clearly defined
set of rules. It is interesting and important that when linguists who have
worked for years ill the Cholllskiall tradition look Gu-efully at particular
grammatical items and constructions, they find that many of them that
were at one time considered members of the same categOlY (e.g., comple-
mentizer) or construction (e.g., complement clause) turn Ollt to be very dif:
fcrent from one another in detail-and so not assimilable to the same rigid
rule (Cullicovcr, 1999; Jackendoft, 1996).
The altcrmltive is to conceive of a language as "a structured inventory of
symbolic units," each with its own structure and fllnction (Langacker,
1987) _These units may vary in both their complexity and generality. For ex-
ample, the Olle word utterance Forf'! is a very simple and concrete construc-
tion llsed for a specific fllnction in the game of golf. Thank you and DOll'/
mention il are II1ultiword cOflstrunions used for relatively specific social
functiolls. Some other constructions are composed of specific words along
with "slots" into which whole classes of items llIay fit, for example, Down with
and Hooray jiJr There arc also constructions that are extremely gen-
eral and abstT<lct. Thus, the ditransitive construction in English proto-
typically indicates transfer of possession and is represented by utterances
such as lie gave the doctor money, abstractly described as NP+VP+NP+NP. Ab-
stTact linguistic constrnctions such as this have their own meanings, ill rela-
tive independence of the lexical items involved, and indeed this is the
source of much of the creativity of langlwge (Goldberg, 1995). Abstract
constructions are thus an important part of the inventory of symbolic re-
sources that language users control-and they do much of the work that
would be done by core grammar in more traditional accounts-bUl they
are best seen as just one form that linguistic constructions may take.
In genera!, the breakdown or the distinction between linguistic "core"
and linguistic "periphery" is a genuine scientific discovery about the way
language works, and sorting out its implications will playa key role in creat-
ing a new psychology oflangllage. V\'hen we conceive of linguistic construc-
tions as cognitive schemas of the same type as we tind in other cognitive
<: skills, that is, as relatively automatized procedures for gettillg things done
(in this case, communicatively), it is quite natural that they should not be of
only two kinds (regular and idiomatic) hut rather that they should valy
from simple to complex and, independently, from concrete to abstract in
many complex ways.
Frequency Counts
Individuals do not hear abstract constructions; they hear only individual IIt-
terances. To create abstract constructions, they mllst find patterns in the
language they bear around them. Children begin with constructions based
INTRODU(TIC)N
on concrete items and phrases; they then discover ,1 variety or rl'iatlvdv lo-
cal constructional patterns; and only laler do tlley discoHT ilIon' gell('ral
patterns among these local constructiollal patterns (Tomasello, 199:2,
2000). But as children create general constructions, they do lIoi
throwaway their more item-based and local constructions. The ide;1 tl1;11
people operate always and only with the most ahstract structlllcs 111<11 lin-
guists can find is what Langacker (1987) called the rulf-lis!jlllfllt). It rl'lkcts
a very deep difference in the theoretical goals or hmKtllilt!Iuists alld IHOIC
psychologically oriented linguists.
In cognirive\y and functionally oriented (usage-hased) appro<lclJ('s, pl'O-
pie can possess abstTact cognitive strnctures that they use ill ct'rt;lill ill-
stances, but they still operate on some occasions with the 1II0le COIHT('\C
structures that instantiate the abstraction. Asjust a handftd !if llI;lllY thou-
sands, or tens of thousands, of relatively cOllcrete alld fixed expressiolls
that native speakers of English control (which mayor lll<l) Hot i IIst,lIlt I;It(
more abstract constructions): I'm siml)ly amazed, / loo/m{ rtlPl)'whflf'lOI iI. rOil
k.ef'P out of this, That was a dose mlf, It'.s a moltn Ii/priorilil's. Jcinlll lillll' lolilll(,
... , I'd do il all otW! again, I'm surprisl'd to /tnti' thai, Do w/zal.)'III( ./(, lold.', / .\1'1'
whalyou mean, f thought you'd Tlevf,. ask, I fav!' .1(!IIlf 1/10/1'. You ((/11 '11w IIII!
IVhere did you find it?, He', bus,'Y right now, rou mil 't belil'1..l1' 1/ wllrd II(' \In.l. a II d
on and on (Pawley & Syder, 1983).
Bybee and Scheibman (1999) provided evidence that peopk SOllll'llIlH'S
produce complex utterances-which they know at sume level have illtcnlal
structure-as single processing They analyze in some depth nrio(!s
Ilses of the English word don't and find thaI in highly frequellt and 1'(:1;1-
tively fixed expression like 1 don 'f know people lend 10 redlice the
ation of don 'I, in some cases so rmlCh thaI it IS harelv recoglliza!)le ir Jj>(,II('d
to in isolation. Thus, the most common pronullciation of / dOIl'1 1111070 is ac-
tually something more like ldunno, and in some cases the C'xpressioll is
barely more than a characteristic intonation contour. This salllc )"edUC"lioll
or the word don't does not occur in other, less frequent exprC'iSiOllS and
constructions. Although most adults can allalyze this expressioll illto it-;
components-for if a questionel- persists they call say each or tht'
words slowly and emphatically, "I ... DON'T. , . KNOW!"-b'Olll a proct",-
ing point of view its great frequency has made it a productioll rowil1c.
Bybee (1995) argued thaI the token frequency of an expressioll MT\,(', to
entrench it in a speaker's repertoire and make it a processing \lllii.
frequency-repeated instantiations of the same pallern bll! with diff(T('1I1
concrete items-entrenches the pattern but also, at the same lilllt', makes il
more generally applicable to more items. Thus, young childrcll ill
form and use only very concrete and local construclional islallds (based Oil
specific lexical items) but with high type freqnency in one or 11101(' .,Iol'i. for
example: VVhere's (hr' X?, / wanna X, Mort' X, It:\ (J X, I'm X-inJ!: ii, Put X 111'1(',
12 13
T()MASEI,LO
Mommy it, [.et's X it, Throw X, X gone, I X-ed it, Sit on the X,
here, Then<s a X, X broken (Braine, 1976; Lieven, Pine, & Baldwin, see
Tomasello, 2000, for a review of the evidence).
Frequency also plavs a crucial role in grammaticalization and language
Thus, it is well known that the linguistic constructions that are most
resistant to change those that are most That is why most ilTeg-
ular verbs in a language are typically highly frequent (e.g., in English the
verbs to he and to have). Bybee and Thompson (in press) analyzed the exam-
ple of the subjunctive mood in Canadian French, which has basically been
lost. However, in a few highly frequent fixed expressions it lives on (as it
also does in frequent English expressions like "If I were you. . . . At the
same lime, highly frequent expressions also in some contexts become
grammaticalized, and so changt' their function, sometimes retaining the
old hmction in otht'r contexts (as in the English main verbs have and goand
their more recent instantiations as auxiliary verbs as well). In the context of
language acquisition, Brooks, Tomasello, Lewis, and Dodson (1999) ar-
gued and presented evidence thai the entrenchmenl of particular verbs in
particular constructions (in both comprehension and prodllction) is a rna-
CIctor preventing children from overgeneralizing their abstract con-
structions 10 inappropriate verbs. This finding (in combination with that of
Brooks &Tomasello, 1999, who demonstrated the importance of two other
usage-based thus solves in large measure the puzzle of why children
grammatical rules indiscriminately with their en-
tire be expected to if they possessed the abstract
ruics that formal grammar writers often attribute to them Pinker,
1984,
and entrenchment raises the specter of Behaviorism,
which, as is well known, was exorcised from Linguistics once and for all by
Chomsky (19,1)9). Butjust because frequency and entrenchment were im-
portant concepts for behaviorists-who knew little of the structure of lan-
guage-does not mean that they are useless in other, more cognitively and
sophisticated approaches, It turns out that both the type and
token frequency with which particular constructions are used makes an
enormous difference both in their historical and ill the way they are un-
derstood, acquired, cognitively represented, and used by contemporary
speakers of a languagt'.
CONCLUSION
Linguistics as a discipline hovers between the Humanities and the Behav-
ioral/Cognitive Sciences. For much of it'; history Linguistics consisted
solely of the analysis of texts and the teaching of rules, Many linQ'uists thus
INTROIllI( :nON
did not consider it their concern to worry about psvcilOiogicall('<tlily, or to
acquire expertise with the kinds of rigorons methods of
statistical analysis that are the fOllndation (lIthe Heitavioral/(
cllces. But, with t.he rise of Cognitive Science as an
prise, with the rise of new technolog-ies that make possihle the
and analysis of real live linguistic communication. and wil h 111<' li'iC or (
nitive-Functional (Usage-Based) approaches to ling-uistic IlH'my, tile bal
ance is beginning to tip toward the side ofsciencc. In a llllllit', lin-
guists and psYtchologists will work togetlrer to investigate the
psychological processes by means of which human being's ('(
produce, and acquire a natLIrallangliage, The chapters ill Ihis VOlllIlH'-<lS
well as those in the first volume-represent theoretical approaches Ihal \\ill
help us to make progress IowaI'd thai goal.
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