Bunge - Philosophical Problems in Linguistics - 1984

Philosophical Problems in Linguistics
Author(s): Mario Bunge

Source: Erkenntnis (1975-), Vol. 21, No. 2 (Jul., 1984), pp. 107-173
Published by: Springer
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MARIO BUNGE
PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS IN LINGUISTICS
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 107
1. CRISIS IN LINGUISTICS 109
1.1 Language and Linguistics 109
1.2 Chomsky's Upheaval 116
2. GRAMMAR 123
2.1 Syntax 123
2.2 Semantics 131
3. UNIVERS ALS AND NATIVISM 141
3.1 Linguistic Universals 141
3.2 Language Acquisition 147
4. METHODOLOGICAL PROBLEMS 158
4.1 Testing Linguistic Theories 158
4.2 Nature of Linguistic Research 163
5. CONCLUDING REMARKS 168
BIBLIOGRAPHY 170
INTRODUCTION
Language has attracted the attention of many philosophers since Antiq?

uity, but perhaps never so many and so passionately since the counter?
revolution in philosophy perpetrated by the second Wittgenstein (1953)
and the upheaval in linguistics and its philosophy and psychology brought
about by Chomsky (1957). These two reorientations share a single trait,
namely their glossocentrism: to them man is homo loquens rather than
faber or sapiens.
Aside from being both centrally interested in language, and of viewing
everything else in terms of word making, the positions of Wittgenstein
and Chomsky differ widely. Thus whereas according to the former lan?
guage is essentially a means of communication, to Chomsky it ismainly
the mirror of the human mind and only incidentally a means of com?
munication. To Wittgenstein speech is an instance of rule-directed be?
havior, whereas to Chomsky it ismostly an unconscious mental process.
To Wittgenstein the rules of grammar have been introduced by some in
Erkenntnis 21 (1984) 107-173. 0165-0106/84/0212-0107 $06.70

? 1984 by D. Reidel Publishing Company
108 MARIO BUNGE
dividuals and adopted by society, whereas to Chomsky we are born hav?
ing a tacit knowledge of universal grammar. Wittgenstein focuses on

speech acts whereas Chomsky focuses on language as a mental objet de?
tached from concrete To Wittgenstein
circumstances. the (pretheoreti
cal) analysis of linguistic expressions is the means for curing that quaint
disease called 'philosophy', whereas to Chomsky the theoretical analysis
of language is an end in itself as well as the best method to understand
man. And, whereas toWittgenstein linguistic inquiry is within the reach
of anyone, to Chomsky a
it is specialized endeavor within cognitive psy?
chology. These differences explain the differences among the followers

of each of the masters. Wittgenstein attracts people interested in words
but not in linguistics, and who seek the greatest returns on the least in?
tellectual investment. On the other hand Chomsky attracts people more
interested in theory than in facts, and moreover people who are not afraid
of abstraction.
In this study we shall be concerned with some of the methodological
and philosophical problems raised by contemporary linguistics and, in
particular, by transformational generative grammar (TGG in the fol?
lowing). This is of course the style of linguistic theorizing introduced by
Chomsky (1957, 1963, 1965, 1971, 1975, 1980, 1981) and worked out by
his numerous coworkers and disciples. TGG grew from, and also partly
against, the then dominant structuralist school. (There are no storms in
a blue sky: every scientific revolution has roots in some tradition or oth?
er.) Each linguistic school is committed to its own philosophy: Structur?
- to a
alism to positivism, and TGG - or at any rate Chomsky blend of
Platonism, Kantianism, and intuitionism, which Chomsky calls 'ration?
alism'. Chomsky's commitment to his philosophy explains in part his per?
sonal evolution since 1955: "in his earlier period, he applied philosophy
[particularly mathematical logic] to linguistics, and in the later period he

has applied linguistics to philosophy" (Hymes 1972).
It is clear then that linguistic inquiry is anything but philosophically
neutral. May this fact serve as a partial justification for the meddling of
- a - in
the present writer physicist turned philosopher linguistics. This
meddling is not disinterested but is hazarded with the aims of finding out
(i) whether TGG answers satisfactorily the basic philosophical questions

- with 'What is language?', and (ii) whether
about language beginning
TGG is necessarily tied up with the whole of Chomsky's philosophy, in
PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS IN LINGUISTICS 109
particular his mentalism, nativism, and methodological apriorism. How?

ever, these will not be the only problems to be discussed in the present
study. We shall discuss also several other features of the current meth?
odological and philosophical crisis of linguistics. In particular, we should
like to remove some of the roadblocks to further progress in linguistics.
1. CRISIS IN LINGUISTICS
1.1 Language and Linguistics
Linguists agree that their job is to study languages, but disagree on what
language is. Such disagreement may be explained by the fact that lin?
guistics has long roots in the humanities and only short ones in the sci?
ences, particularly anthropology. As in the case of other important con?
cepts, one may hope that language be eventually defined (implicitly) by
a comprehensive theory or system of theories. Meanwhile the diversity
of conceptions of language, which reflects conflicting philosophies as well
as differences of emphasis, affects linguistic inquiry by unnecessarily
deepening the chasms amongst the various linguistic schools. Table I ex?
hibits some of these differences.
The differentconceptions of language are related not only to the di?
-
versity of linguistic schools each of them attached to its own philosophy
- but also to the current of the study of language into half
fragmentation
a dozen different disciplines. These disciplines, that are only tenuously
connected to one another, are pure linguistics (the study of grammars),
psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, neurolinguistics, medical linguistics,
and applied linguistics. (Anthropological linguistics or ethnolinguistics has
been absorbed by sociolinguistics.)
For pure linguistics language is a system of symbols with certain syn?
tactic, semantic, and phonological features codified in grammars. For
psycholinguistics language is a psychological phenomenon: it expresses
feelings and thoughts, in an adjunct to action, and also a tool that facil?
itates the elaboration of thought. For sociolinguistics language is ameans
of communication; as such, it is an aspect of social behavior and there?
fore an ingredient of the cement of human society. For neurolinguistics
language is the set of speech processes, which are in turn physiological

(in particular neurophysiological) processes. For applied linguistics Ian
110 MARIO BUNGE
TABLE I
Some conflicting views on (L)

language
BASIC STRUCTURAL? MENTALISM BIOL. & SOCIAL

QUESTIONS ISM PSYCHOLOGY
A L is a set of phonemes a set of sentences a system of meaningful
signals
A L serves as a means of commu? the mirror of mind a tool for thought and a
nication means of communica?
tion
Grammars describe and codify generate and trans? describe and codify lan?
languages form sentences, as guages
well as explain and
predict them
A L is in culture the mind the brain-in-society
Linguistic universals cultural universals innate mental uni? evolutionary and histor?
are versals ical commonalities
The language faculty related to other cog? unrelated to other related to all sensory
is nitive faculties cognitive faculties motor and cognitive
abilities
Language is ac? learning by indue- selecting a grammar learning by imitation,

quired by tion association, induction,
hypothesis, etc.
Learning theory is optional unnecessary or even necessary

impossible
Grammars are dis? induction from lin? introspection and analysis of corpora &
covered by guistic corpora conjecture conjecture
guage is an ability that can be

taught. And for medical linguistics (or
language is a brain function that can be impaired by injury
aphasiology),
or disease of certain brain "areas" or "structures" (i.e. neural systems).
No doubt, every one of these concepts of language is useful. And, no
doubt, every one of them is only partial, for language is a multidimen?
sional object. To be sure the specialist is entitled to concentrate on his
chosen aspect, but by so doing he automatically precludes the possibility
of understanding the whole. And when dealing with a general question
such as 'What is language?' we must expect the whole to be taken into
consideration. More precisely, as Giv?n (1979 pp. 3-4) states, human
language cannot be properly understood unless the following "parame
ters" are taken into consideration and interrelated: (a) propositional

content (i.e. the sense and reference of the clause), (b) pragmatics (i.e.
the concrete circumstances of verbal
communication), (c) the processor
(i.e. the brain and the vocal
tract), (d) the cognitive structure of the
speaker, (e) the speaker's world view, (/) ontogeny, (g) diachronic lan?
guage change or history, and (h) the phylogeny or evolution of humans.
So far the study of each of the above listed aspects of speech has been
conducted by one discipline detached from the other sciences of verbal
communication. An adequate understanding of language can result only
from a rapprochement or, even better, from a merger or synthesis of the
various disciplines that deal with language. Such a merger can be pic?
- in
tured as a hexagon centered in philosophy particular the philosophy
of language, a part of ontology and epistemology, and the philosophy of
linguistics, a part of the philosophy of science. (We do not include lin?
guistic philosophy, or analytic philosophy ? laWittgenstein or Austin,
- or
because it pays no attention to linguistics any other science for that
matter: it is inexact, and it is hardly interested in the great ontological
and epistemological problems of philosophy.) The role of philosophy in
the linguistic hexagon is that of a wise (or evil) spider holding the various
threads of the web together, checking its weaknesses, and helping repair
- as well as
them hoping to catch the unwary specialist who fails to per?
ceive the very existence of the web. If anyone doubts the centrality of
philosophy he should remember that it is at the very eye of the current
storm in linguistics. See Figure 1.
PureL
NeuroL
Fig. 1. The linguistic hexagon or system of that study language. Here 'L'
disciplines
stands for 'linguistics'. Pure L is construed as the study of grammars, -
which since
-
Chomsky (1965) include syntax, semantics, and phonology.
112 MARIO BUNGE
Our basic question, 'What is language?', is an ontological one in the

same category as 'What is life?'. It is one of those questions that the pos
itivists used to declare meaningless, and Popper holds to be barren; yet
it is an authentic philosophical problem, and a deep and therefore hard
one to boot. However, like those other questions it cannot be properly
investigated by philosophy alone, for it is scientific as well as philosoph?

ical.
The nature of the question is likely to be better understood in attempt?
ing to answer the related question 'How does language exist?'. Accord?
ing to idealism language exists by itself, either as a sort of Platonic idea
people and hovering above them, or as a human creation

pre-existing
though one that is immaterial. Needless to say, there is no empirical evi?
dence for either variety of idealism. Moreover, whoever regards lan?
guage as an ideal object cuts the ties of pure linguistics with the other five
branches of linguistics. Worse: he isolates linguistics from the system of
factual sciences, all of which study concrete (material) things. And in?
sulation is the mark of pseudoscience.
Specific questions, such as "Why does language A lack phoneme B?",
may be tackled in a philosophically neutral manner. On the other hand
general questions, particularly those of interest to both scientists and
must be approached from a certain general viewpoint: they
philosophers,
a
call for Weltanschauung. "What is language?" is one of them. Hence
when investigating it one must start by declaring one's world view, which
had better be a comprehensive, precise, and science-oriented one if it is
to be of any use to scientific research.
We adopt a naturalistic (or materialistic) world view, which we take to
be the ontology of factual science and technology (Bunge 1977, 1979,
1981). On this view the world is composed exclusively of concrete chang?
ing things: everything else is the invention of particular concrete things

such as ourselves. Clearly, on this view language cannot exist in the same
way as stars and peorile exist, i.e. in and by themselves. On this view what
are real are not languages but people, or other rational beings, engaged
in producing, conveying or understanding linguistic expressions. Asking
whether exists is like asking whether life or mind exist. The an?
language
swer is an unqualified 'No'. There are no autonomous languages any more
than there is life or mind by itself. There are instead minding animals and,
in particular, animals capable of speaking and understanding speech. This,
the production and understanding of speech, we take to be the primary

-
linguistic fact. Everything else about language is construct starting with
language itself. Shorter: speech is real, language is not.
Of course, nothing prevents us from feigning that there are minds, arts,
sciences, or languages, independent of brain processes, in the same way
as we pretend that there are numbers and melodies in themselves. We
make that pretence whenever we abstract from the idiosyncrasies of
speakers and hearers, writers and readers, to focus on what they share.
- i.e. a
When such people share a grammar way of putting together and
- we
understanding certain sounds and symbols say that they speak or
write the same language. The word does not hover above its speakers and,
Heidegger notwithstanding, it is not the abode of Being. Rather, the word

dwells in rational beings and it thrives or declines with them. In short,
language is not autonomous. Therefore the study of language cannot be
autonomous either: itmust be but one aspect of the study of man.
Likewise, no matter how differently each of us may think of a given
mathematical object, we may feign that the latter belongs to an imper?
sonal and extrasocial conceptual system called 'mathematics'. Such fic?
tion is necessary to do mathematics and even to study the psychology and
sociology of mathematical research. The fiction becomes falsity only when
reified, i.e. when one populates one's ontology with such disembodied
objects as mathematical theories, symphonies, and languages in them?
selves, i.e. detached from mathematicians, musicians, and re?
speakers
spectively. (For the ontological status of such cultural objects see Bunge
1981.)
The pure linguist, like the mathematician, is entitled to pretend that
there is such a thing as a language detached from particular biological and
social processes. He resorts to such fiction when he focuses his attention
on the speech commonalities (or rather similarities) of the members of a
speech community. He does so when he construes a phoneme as an
equivalence class of sounds, or a sentence as an equivalence class of
meaning-carrying strings of sounds. He deals then with de Saussure's
langue in contrast with parole, and Chomsky's competence as distinct from
performance. The primary linguistic fact is one of parole or linguistic
"performance". Langue and linguistic "competence" are constructs: they
are conceptual models of concrete speech processes in or be?
occurring
tween brains.
114 MARIO BUNGE
I submit that pure linguistics deals only with such a model object,
whereas every one of the other five sides of the linguistic hexagon (recall
Figure 1) studies certain features of the primary linguistic fact of speech
production, understanding and utilization - i.e. parole or performance.
(From our point of view Chomsky's mistake in this regard lies not in dis?
tinguishing competence from performance but in asserting that the for?
mer is the steady state of the speaker-hearer rather than an elaborate
construct. More in Sect. 3.2.)
In addition to constructing such model objects as morphemes, sen?
tences, grammars, and languages, linguists are supposed to build theo?
ries describing such model objects, therefore, indirectly, accounting for
some aspects of the primary linguistic facts represented by the model ob?
jects. In particular such linguistic theories may describe psycholinguistic

processes or grammars of particular languages. And, as in the case of
other sciences, any given model object (e.g. a grammar) may be account?
ed for by different and even rival theories. Table II summarizes the above
and compares the situation in linguistics with that of two other sciences.
The contrast between pure linguistics and the other branches of lin?
as
guistics (recall Figure 1) can be summed up follows. Whereas pure lin?
guists deal with (infinite) sets of constructs, such as well-formed sen?
tences, the other linguists deal with events and processes in concrete things
such as speakers and linguistic communities. But of course the mediate
referents of pure linguistics are supposed to be linguistic facts involving
speakers and speech communities; and the latter cannot be studied with?
out using some of the conceptual tools wrought by the pure linguists.
Hence the relation between pure linguistics and the remaining branches
of linguistics is one of complementation not of mutual exclusion or of
domination. (However, it would be nice to derive grammars from psy?
cholinguistics and sociolinguistics.)

Another way of putting this is in terms of the concept of a system, as
to me by Mike Dillinger. A system can be modeled as a triple
suggested
composition-environment-internal plus external structure (Bunge 1979).
Whereas linguists build conceptual
pure systems, their colleagues in the
other of linguistics study real systems such as developing
branches indi?
viduals and evolving communities. (However, it should be clear that the
former systems presumably refer to real or concrete systems, which in turn
cannot be studied except in the light of the former.)
TABLE II
Facts and constructs in three sciences
ITEM_LINGUISTICS PHYSICS_BIOLOGY_
General theories Eventually, general General relativistic General theory of evo
(universal) theories continuum mechan- lutionby genie change

of ics. General non-re- and natural selection
speech produc-
tion, grammars, etc. lativistic continuum
mechanics
theories Theories of English Relativistic contin- Theories of human (or

Specific
model N?- uum mechanics of equine, etc.) evolu
(models) of (Mandarin,
objects huatl, etc.) syntax materials of special tion.
semantics, or kinds.
(or
Nonrelativistic con
phonology).
Sociolinguistic, psy- tinuum mechanics of
cholinguistic, and materials of special
neurolinguistic the- kinds.

ories of particular
linguistic phenome
_na._
Model objects Language in gener-?Flowing body. Coevolving popula

(conceptual repre- al. Deformable contin- tions in variable (con
sentations of real Particular languages uum. stant) environment,
things or processes) spoken by ideal Deformable system Single population in
speakers. of particles. variable (constant) en

Grammars. Rigid system of par- vironment.
Grammatical rules, tides. Simplified genome in
Transformation of Point particle. variable (constant) en
phrase structures. vironment.

Phrase structures.
Lexical categories.
Discourse.
Sentences.
Phrases.
Morphemes.
Phonemes.
Facts in real world Production and un- Moving bodies that Changes of various
derstanding of utter- absorb or emit heat, kinds occurring in real
anees. radiation, etc. populations immersed
in a variable environ?
ment.
116 MARIO BUNGE
In the first case the concept of a system applies to a language L by
making the following identifications:

=
Composition of L Vocabulary (set of morphemes) of L
Environment L = referents of items in the vocabu?
of Extralinguistic
lary of L
Structure of L
Internal = Rules of formation, transformation and pronunciation of
L
External = Semantic
and pragmatic rules of L.
Since in this conception the components of L are taken as timeless, the
system in question is likewise timeless, hence imaginary rather than con?

crete. (This holds a fortiori for language in general.) On the other hand
a real speaker-hearer is a concrete biosystem living in a society and
in the course of time. And a linguistic community is another
changing
concrete changing system: one composed of the speakers of a given lan?
guage, embedded in some natural and social environment, and related
among themselves, as well as to members of other linguistic communi?

ties, by (among others) linguistic links, which in turn are included in the
social structure of the community.
The various branches of linguistics may then be regarded as studying
systems of different kinds, some conceptual, others material. (See Bunge

1981 for the construal of cultures as material systems.) However, all of
them are supposed to account ultimately for the same basic linguistic facts
- even
though the latter are often, regrettably, lost sight of in the quest
for pattern and generality, which quest involves ever greater degrees of
abstraction.
Such variety of approaches will not result in rivalry provided neither

of them attempts to exclude or subordinate the others. But this is of course
what is happening right now in linguistics: namely that the pure (inter?
nalist or abstract) study of language, which focuses on syntax, claims its
own field of study to be preeminent. Hence the strife. But this strife de?
serves another section.
1.2. Chomsky's Upheaval
and its philosophy were profoundly altered by Chomsky's

Linguistics
manifestos of 1957 and 1965. The former culminated the early or pri
marily syntactic phase of TGG, whereas the latter expounded the

"standard theory" purporting to cover the whole of general linguistics,
psycholinguistics, and much else besides.

The change effected by the work of Chomsky and his school has often
been hailed as a scientific revolution. (See e.g. Harman (ed.) 1981, and
Smith & Wilson 1979.) Others have challenged this evaluation of Chom?
sky's contribution, holding that it was an outgrowth of post-Bloomfiel
dian structuralist linguistics (Derwing 1979, Koerner 1983). This latter is
-
surely the case but then every revolution has precursors. What matters
is to find out whether or not Chomsky and his coworkers introduced a
new conceptual structure - in particular new problems, methods, theo?
-
ries, and research goals into linguistic inquiry.
Regardless of the historical roots of TGG, it seems clear that it was
revolutionary in certain
respects, particularly syntax. (However, I will
argue below was counter-revolutionary
that TGG in other respects.) To
begin with Chomsky showed the inadequacy of phrase structure gram?
mars, in that they did not contain rules of transformation, and so did not
account for the mapping of declaratives into interrogatives, active forms
into passive ones, and the like. This deficiency led Chomsky to conceive
of a grammar in a new and more comprehensive way, namely as con?
taining not only formation rules (specifying phrase structures) but also
transformation rules (specifying transformations of phrase structures).
Moreover in this extended sense a grammar was also to contain
morpho
phonemic rules
(or rules of phonetic "representation") and, from 1965
on, semantic rules as well. New also was Chomsky's insistence on the need
for theory construction in linguistics, in particular the need for exact
(mathematical) theories, at the time when most linguists devoted most of
their time to field or taxonomic work, as is still the case in anthropology
(the cradle of modern linguistics). In sum TGG was revolutionary in some
respects.
On the other hand TGG is also to be seen as counter-revolutionary in?
sofar as its practitioners broke the tradition of empirical inquiry and pro?
moted a return to armchair speculation in the manner of Wilhelm von
Humboldt. may be regarded as a kind of humanistic
In fact TGG lin?
guistics parallel to the humanistic (as opposed to scientific) psychology
and sociology that began to gain some academic respectability shortly after
the first manifesto of TGG appeared. Chomsky himself (1972 p. 165) has
118 MARIO BUNGE
stated that TGG little if anything to science, and is on the other hand
owes
firmly rooted in the humanities, in particular in the rationalistic philo?

sophical tradition. (However, he has occasionally been accused of scien
tism: Robinson 1975.) This aspect of the Chomskyan upheaval helps to
explain its popularity not only among philosophers but also among the
students of the Vietnam war generation, who contested the value of sci?
ence. It also explains the mass emigration of linguists from anthropology
departments.
It seems also clear that Chomsky's theorieshave not been universally
so that this style of inquiry cannot
adopted by the linguistic profession,
be regarded as a new overriding paradigm on the same footing as the
paragons built by Newton or Darwin. (See Partee 1981 in Harman (ed.)
1981, and Percival 1976.) TGG played only a minor role in the Interna?
tional Congress of Linguists of 1982. Moreover the Chomsky school, so
homogeneous and powerful in the 1960s, has split into a number of
groups, not only with regard to the problem of meaning but to other
problems as well. (There are currently more than fourteen approaches to
syntax: see Moravcsik & Wirth (eds.) 1980.) Furthermore, Chomsky

- clear
himself is the main heresiarch evidence of his intellectual honesty
as well as of the uncertain status of TGG. Still, TGG is an established
research field, and Chomsky's multifarious work continues to inspire many
investigators throughout the world. At the same time, Chomsky's fasci?
nating personality and his outspoken (to many outrageous) opinions on

sundry matters, as well as his courageous actions, have earned him world?
wide admiration and have
powerfully contributed to popularizing lin?
guistics. Another factor contributing to Chomsky's popularity is that he

reasons and writes far better than the average linguist.
Whatever the size and lasting value of Chomsky's innovation, we live
in its aftermath. Philosophers, for once, have been quick to realize this
fact: many of them have joined the bandwagon. However, a philosopher
should not blindly buy the whole Chomsky package, because it contains
- he not be able to
not only technical novelties in linguistics which may
- but also a number of highly debatable philosophical theses on
evaluate
as well as several controversial methodolog?
linguistics and psychology,
ical maxims concerning the conduct of linguistic inquiry. The philoso?
pher should examine critically all such theses. He should also ascertain
whether they are essential or incidental to TGG. Should he find that some
of those theses are incidental, i.e. detachable from TGG, he would help
linguists assess TGG on its own intrinsic merits. (Parallel: In assessing
quantum mechanics one must start by separating the mathematical and
empirical grain from the philosophical chaff. It won't do to judge either
by the other.) This is precisely what we intend to do in the following.
We begin by listing what we take to be the most characteristic philo?
sophical and methodological theses held by Chomsky at some time or
other of his intellectual development.
Linguistic Theses
LI Overall thesis: A language is an infinite set of sentences in themselves,

i.e. detached from any concrete (biological, psychological or social) con?
texts or circumstances.
L2 Syntactic thesis: Every sentence has not only a surface syntactic struc?
ture discoverable with the help of ordinary (constituent or phrase struc?
ture) grammar but also a deep syntactic structure not so discoverable.
(This used to be "the central idea of transformational grammar": Chom?
sky 1965, p. 16. The distinction is unclear and Chomsky himself does not
make much of it in his recent writings, e.g. in 1980.)
L3 Semantic (or Katz-Postal) thesis: Deep structure determines semantic

interpretation, whence syntax dominates semantics. (This was "the basic
idea that motivated the theory of transformational grammar since its in?
ception": Chomsky 1965, p. 136. However, although Chomsky continues
to uphold the primacy and autonomy of syntax, he has given up the Katz
Postal thesis, holding instead that both surface structure and deep struc?
ture determine meaning: see 1980, Ch. 4, and 1981. he has
Regrettably,
not supplied a theory of meaning, so the meaning of the new thesis is
just
as indefinite as that of the earlier one.)
Psychological Theses
PI Mentalism: is in the mind - not in the brain, let alone in

Language
society. Hence every linguistic phenomenon must be explained in men
talistic terms. (However, the occasional theoretical homage is paid to fu?
ture neuroscience.)
120 MARIO BUNGE
P2 Language faculty: Man is unique in being born with difacult? de lan?

gage distinct from, and unrelated to, all other mental abilities; it is also
unrelated to the sensory-motor ones.
P3 Innatism: We inherit not only the facult? de langage but also all the
essentials of language (namely universal grammar). Acquiring a lan?
guage is not really learning it from scratch but selecting the grammar that
best accords with the fragmentary and noisy linguistic inputs we receive.
In other words every human being is born with a linguistic "compe?
tence". The exercise of "competence" only improves "performance".
P4 Development (ontogeny) and evolution (phylogeny) are irrelevant to

linguistic (<competence" , which is innate, universal, and invariable.
P5 Communication, a mode of social behavior, is likewise irrelevant to

linguistic "competence".
Methodological Theses
Ml The ultimate goal of linguistic research is to build comprehensive and

exact theories of linguistic "competence" and "performance".
- mental structures and events - to explain phe?

M2 Posit unobservables
nomena-sentences. "second order structures" must be as?
(For example,
sumed to "underlie" order capacities", which in turn "construct"
"second
first order mental "structures", which "underlie" mental capacities or fa?
culties, which, finally, are exercised in actual speech: Chomsky 1980.
Unfortunately the key notions of mental structure, construction, and un?
derlying, are not explicated.)
M3 Describe and explain everything linguistic in purely mentalistic terms

"without attempting, for the present, to relate the postulated mental
structures and processes to any physiological mechanisms or to interpret
mental function in terms of 'physical causes'" (Chomsky 1972, p. 14).
M4 Disregard the social function or purpose of language as a method of

communication: Chomsky 1980. (A practical consequence of P5.)
M5 Do not attempt to build learning theories (A practical consequence of
P5.)
M6 Value insight and explanation more than empirical confirmation and

coverage: Chomsky 1980, p. 11.
We shall examine these theses in some detail in the following sections.
Let us anticipate here some conclusions of our study, in order to be able
to complete our evaluation of the Chomsky upheaval.
Re LI No doubt, language can be studied (by pure linguists) as a set
of sentences in themselves, i.e. regardless of the manner in which they
are produced, understood and utilized. However, the production and
understanding of utterances must also be studied as physiological proc?
esses; and communication via speech must be studied as a social process.
These various studies are mutually complementary rather than exclusive.
(Recall Sec. 1.1.)

Re L2 The surface structure-deep structure distinction drawn by
Chomsky is far from clear. Consequently it cannot be seriously main?
tained that there are definite rules for transforming (mapping) the one
into the other. However, the distinction becomes clear and useful to se?
mantics if 'deep structure' is redefined as 'logical (conceptual or propo
sitional) structure': Sec. 2.2.

Re L3 We cannot say what determines semantic interpretation unless
the latter concept is properlyexplicated, i.e. unless syntactic theory is
supplemented by a semantic theory. So far TGG lacks a suitable seman?
tics. Itmay pay to investigate whether the author's semantics (Bunge 1972,
1973, 1974a, 1974b), which assigns a sense and a reference to every con?
cept and every proposition, can be applied to elucidate the concept of
linguistic meaning. (More in Sec. 2.2.)
Re PI No doubt, the production and understanding of speech are men?
tal phenomena; but there is nothing to be lost, and much to be gained,
in explaining mental phenomena as brain processes. Moreover, there is
no genuine explanation without mechanism, and no mechanism without
matter. (More on this in Sec. 3.2.) So, linguistics cannot really explain
anything unless allied to physiological psychology and social science.
Without these linguistics is like astronomy without physics, i.e. pre-New
tonian astronomy.
Re P2 There is ample evidence that the facult? de langage is intimately
122 MARIO BUNGE
related to other cognitive functions as well as to sensory-motor ones. Some

such evidence is psychological, other is neurophysiological. Therefore it
is self-defeating to study linguistic ability in isolation from other abilities
of the nervous system.
Re P3 There is absolutely no empirical evidence favorable to innatism,
and much against it. This does not entail that we are forced to embrace
The way out is that of physiological psychology: we inherit
empiricism.
a half-organized brain that we finish organizing in the course of our lives
as we perceive, cogitate, learn, feel, act, etc. Knowledge is not inherit?
able. In particular we are not born with a knowledge of universal gram?
mar; if we did we would not attempt to discover it.
Re P4 and P5 If we are seriously interested in understanding the ac?
quisition and use of language we must study development, evolution, and

social intercourse.
Re Ml Since there is no such thing as an innate, universal and constant
linguistic "competence", it is not possible to gather empirical evidence
for any theory about it. On the other hand it is possible to distinguish
theories in pure linguistics (i.e. theories about linguistic constructs such
as "language" and "word order") from theories in other branches of lin?
guistics (i.e. theories about actual speech processes such as reading).
Re M2 The positing of unobservables to explain phenomena is indeed
necessary and characteristic of modern science. However, it can be done
either scientifically (as in physics) or nonscientifically (as in psychoanal?
ysis). We cannot use any old unobservables to explain linguistic phenom?
ena, but only scrutable ones, i.e. unobservables represented by concepts
occurring in empirically testable theories. The mental "structures" pos?
tulated by Chomsky are not of this kind: he claims that we know them
tacitly and can speculate about them but cannot get at them by objective
means.
(e.g. neurophysiological)
Re M3 There is nothing wrong with postulating mental states and proc?
esses as long as mind is not regarded as self-existing. The injunction not
to neurologize is an arbitrary philosophical obstacle to scientific prog?
ress.
Re M4 The banning of sociolinguistic research is likewise an unscien?

tific interdiction, for language is inter alia a social phenomenon.
Re M5 We do need learning theories, although we can dispense with
the superficial learning theories proposed by behaviorist psychologists.
We need testable theoriescapable not only of describing learning but also

of explaining it in neurophysiological terms (e.g. theories including Hebb's
use and disuse hypothesis).
Re M6 Insight and explanation are not valuable in themselves, for they
can be supplied at low cost by pseudoscientific theories. What we need
- not mere
is the insight supplied by scientific explanation subsumption
under law or rule.
To summarize: (a) there is no doubt that the work of Chomsky and his
school has produced a major upheaval in linguistics; (b) this upheaval has
negative (or regressive) as well as positive (or progressive) aspects; (c) it

may be possible to detach all the negative features of the Chomsky pack?
age from its positive contributions, thus freeing TGG from an encum?
bering philosophy. Let us explore this possibility.
2. GRAMMAR
2.1. Syntax
According to classical
linguistics grammar is the same as syntax. Chom?
sky (1957) enlarged the concept of a grammar to include morphopho
nemic rules and, later on (1965), semantical (or meaning) rules as well.
(He has also often defined a grammar as a function that pairs sound or
sign sequences with meanings). In this section we shall be concerned with
this enlarged concept of a grammar and, in particular, with its syntactic
component. After all, what distinguishes TGG from its predecessors is
mainly the priority it assigns syntax. Moreover I suspect that, once the
dust and smoke of the current battle has settled, TGG will be viewed as
an important contribution to the theory of syntax.
According to Chomsky (1965, p. 4) "A grammar of a language pur?
ports to be a description of the ideal speaker-hearer's intrinsic compe?
tence". But, since such an ideal speaker-hearer is supposed to handle only
grammatical (well formed) sentences, grammars are prescriptive or nor?
mative, contrary to Chomsky's claim and in agreement with classical lin?
guistics. (We shall to this in a while.) Moreover,
return to
according
Chomsky (1965) grammars are theories allowing one to generate or de?
rive sentences the way mathematical theories allow one to deduce theo?
rems. In particular universal grammar, which is innate, would be a the
124 MARIO BUNGE
ory. It follows that "we assign to the mind, as an innate property, the
general theory of language that we have called 'universal grammar'"
(Chomsky 1972, p. 88). Hold your horses and continue to listen to the
master.
The function of a grammar of a language is to generate all and only the
infinitely many grammatical (well formed) sentences of the language. Such
generation is effected by grammatical rules, in particular the syntactic

ones. Chomsky conceives of such rules in analogy with the rules of math?
ematical logic. There are two sets of syntactical rules: the phrase struc?
ture descriptions, such as "Sentence??Noun phrase+Verb phrase", which
correspond to the rules of formation of well formed formulas in formal
systems; and the transformational rules (governing, e.g., the mapping of

sentences into their denials), which parallel the rules of deduction. Fi?
nally, every sentence is assigned a number of structures, in particular a

set of deep structures; in the standard theory the latter determine mean?
or written signs.
ings, whereas the surface structure is paired off to sounds
This conception of a grammar raises among others the following prob?
lems of philosophical interest, (a) What is a grammar? In particular, is it
a theory? (b) what is a grammatical rule: a prescription, a convention, a
law, or a trend? (c) in what sense can a grammar be said to "generate"
the sentences of a language? (d) how are grammars "represented" in the
mind (or in the brain)? (e) what are deep structures and what is their pre?
cise relation to surface structures? We proceed to investigate these prob?
lems.
It is well known 'grammar' is ambiguous:

that the word it designates
both the structure and a conceptual model of such struc?
of a language
ture. Thus different linguists may come up with different grammars (con?
ceptual models) of a given grammar (structure) of a language: Chomsky
notes this ambiguity only to conflate the two concepts, to the point of
that includes knowledge of a grammar or
stating linguistic "competence"
theory of a language.
Such a theory would "generate" all and only the sentences of the lan?
guage in question. The term 'generation' is taken from mathematics,
where a formula that defines recursively a given set of objects, such as
the infinite family of spherical functions, is said to generate this set. But
- as - the term
Chomsky himself has emphasized in linguistics 'genera?
tion' should not be interpreted literally, i.e. ontologically. (Only the hu
man brain or some artificial surrogate of it can literally generate sen?
tences.) Strictly speaking a grammatical rule can only characterize,

specify, or analyze well-formed sentences.
One novelty of TGG, in addition to its including tranformational rules,
is that the last step in the "generation" or "derivation" of a sentence is
- i.e.
the filling of category positions by particular words the operation
that Chomsky calls 'lexical insertion'. Thus the "rules" Art -+the and N
-+girl, applied to the categorial string Art#N, are said to "generate" the
terminal string the#girl. But surely these are not rules proper in any rec?
ognized sense of the word. They are instantiations of lexical categories
and, like any other instantiations, they cannot be part of a general con?
ceptual model. This is no mere quibble, for, if such instantiation "rules"
are not rules proper, then it cannot be maintained that a grammar can
generate any sentences: it can only be said to "generate" (describe, spec?
ify, analyze) sentence types.
There is only a similarity between sentence generation and logical de?
duction or derivation proper. In fact sentences are "derived" with the help
- or -
rather permission of grammatical rules plus instantiations ("lexical
insertions"), but they are not deduced the way theorems are. (Therefore
calling the initial 5 an axiom is a joke.) Hence, pace Chomsky, though
like theories, grammars are not theories. They only describe and codify
certain aspects of language: they do not explain anything (Black 1970, p.
455; Foley 1977, p. 4).
Genuine theories in pure linguistics have premises (postulates and def?
initions) entailing conclusions, and they constitute alternative conceptual
models of grammar in general (if the theories are completely general), or
the grammar of a particular language. If well organized, such theories of
grammars fit the axiomatic format (as does the theory proposed by Pak
1979). And those which, in addition, fit the facts, are pronounced true
(or faithful to the grammar in question). On the other hand the grammar
inherent in a language, i.e. the structure of the latter, is neither an axiom
system nor true (or even false).
To be sure a grammar, if adequate, subsumes or "covers" every pos?
sible sentence. But subsumption is not explanation proper. Only neu?
rolinguistics, psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics may eventually ex?
plain how we come to produce and understand sentences, by exhibiting
the mechanisms of sentence production and understanding. Likewise
126 MARIO BUNGE
biochemistry can explain the food processing prescribed by cook books,

and social science can explain the social behavior prescribed by the codes
of law.
To see that the logical relation of entailment (or deducibility or con?
sequence) does not occur in any grammatical rules, consider the rules de?
scribing the transformation of a sentence into its denial or into the cor?
responding question. Surely a sentence cannot be said to imply its denial,

much less the corresponding interrogative. Or, to be more specific, con?
sider the following phrase structure rules and instantiations:
S-+NP+ VP
NP->Art + N
VP-* V + NP
Art-* a
N^
[boy
\ girl
Ibook
Ikissed
1 read
These rules and exemplifications can be said to "generate" such sen?

tences as a boy kissed a girl, a girl read a book, a boy read a girl, and a
book kissed a boy. But none of these sentences follows logically from such
rules. In short, grammars are not theories. Hence theories about gram?
mars are not metatheories. (To be sure every linguistic theory contains
some metastatements, i.e. statements about statements, such as
"Every
sentence has at least one noun phrase and one verb", But this does not
make the theory a metatheory, i.e. a theory about some other theory. A
linguistic theory is supposed to refer, at least mediately, to linguistic facts.

Thus "English has prepositions" and "In English adjectives precede
nouns" represent features of speech not of theories.)
Chomsky tells us repeatedly that grammatical rules are not norms serv?
ing to canonize or excommunicate utterances produced by real speakers;

instead, they describe the competence (not the actual behavior) of an ideal
He also gives us a formal, albeit sibylline, characteriza?
speaker-hearer.
tion of a rule, namely as an ordered pair (X, Y) such that X-^> Y, which
is in turn to be read as "rewrite X as Y" (Chomsky & Miller 1963 p. 292).
Now, if (X, Y) is a formation (or phrase structure) rule, then it states only
that X is composed (hence can be analyzed as or into) Y. And if (X, Y)
is a transformation rule, then it states only that X transforms (obligato?
rily or optionally) into Y. In this construal grammatical rules are not in?
structions or prescriptions for doing something but are on the same foot?
ing as the algebraic laws of associativity and distributivity. (In fact

- in - identifies rules with course
Chomsky (1957), p. 49 laws.) Of any
such statements can be interpreted pragmatically, i.e. as instructions - e.g.
on how to analyze a formula. But this is true of every formula and, in
particular, of every law statement. In short, strictly speaking the gram?

matical rules do not generate anything. A grammatical rule of the form
"X ?> Y" asserts that an of type X can be into
only expression analyzed
a sequence of expressions of type Y (Chomsky 1962, p. 539).
The above construal of grammatical rules contrasts with their con?
strual as entities possessing a genetic power - which is how Chomsky
seems to have understood them sometimes. Thus he tells us that to know
a language "is to have a certain mental structure consisting of a system
of rules and principles that generate and relate mental representations of
various types" (Chomsky 1980, p. 48). Here rules are no longer descrip?
tions or analyses but active entities, albeit immaterial ones, driving or
guiding the formation of mental processes, much in the way Freud's
mythical superego, ego, id, and libido make us think, feel, and do certain
things. Clearly, one cannot have it both ways: either the grammatical rules
are constructs that describe or prescribe, or they are components of a
"mental that has the power of generating mental
structure" states.
The choice between the above rival construals is easy. First, the notion
of an active "mental structure", as distinct from an active brain, is tera
tological if only because structures (i.e. sets of relations) can have no
power over the things they are the structures of. (There is no such thing
as a structure in itself: every structure is the structure of some thing or
other. See Bunge 1979.) Second, there is no empirical evidence for the
mentalist hypothesis that the mind has both active and passive compo?
nents; nor is there any evidence for the presupposition that the mind is
other than a set of brain functions. in Section
anything (More 3.) Hence
we may lay to rest the construal of grammatical rules as entities possess?
ing a genetic power. Let us examine the other possibilities.
We are left with the following mutually exclusive possibilities: the
128 MARIO BUNGE
grammatical rules are either conventions or objective patterns; and, if the

latter, they are either exceptionless laws or trends ("rules of thumb"). At
first sight, the view that grammars are conventional is unbiological and
unhistorical. But not all conventions are freely adopted or else
imposed
by force. Thus calling a chair chair, silla or Stuhl, are so many conven?
tions, and yet none of them is likely to have been adopted by an assembly
or decreed by a despot. "Conventional" is merely the dual of "natural"
or "lawful" (in conformity with natural law). Unlike laws, conventions
can be observed or violated, and this inmore or less unwitting ways. So,
in principle it is possible that grammars are conventional. However, re?
search on linguistic universals, the history of language, and language-so?
ciety interactions casts doubts on the hypothesis of the full convention?
ality of language.
The other possibility is to regard grammatical rules as statements rep?
resenting linguistic patterns, perhaps laws, or at least trends. In this case
we must face the problem of the prima facieexceptions to the grammat?
ical rules: we must know how to recognize deviant or ungrammatical
expressions and what to do with them. (As will become clear in a mo?
ment, these two are just so many aspects of one and the same problem.)
The consistent empiricist will be reluctant to admit the very existence of
ungrammatical expressions: all he is prepared to do is to check whether
the suspect occurs in the corpus available to him and, if it does not, to
declare it uncommon. In theory, then, he is supposed to preach the an?
archist doctrine that anything goes. On the other hand the consistent ra?
tionalist is likely to outlaw as ungrammatical whatever expression does
not fit in with his grammar. In this way he is spared the agony of seeing
his pet model ruined by miserable counterexamples. And, to save the na
tivist thesis in the same breath, he will impute ungrammaticality to "ac?
cidents in performance", never to "competence", which he regards as
perfect, invariable, and universal.

In all likelihood real life grammarians engaged in writing grammars or
analyzing them are neither strict empiricists nor strict rationalists but
rather ratioempiricists both grammatical
admitting regularities and ex?
ceptions to them.
(See Bunge 1983 b for a synthesis of empiricism and
rationalism.) They are likely to admit that both the corpora and the
grammars that attempt to cover them are imperfect. And they are likely
to use some exceptions to recast some rules, and some rules to regularize
the irregulars or even reject them altogether. No vicious circle here but
rather a give and take between -
empirical data and conceptual models
just like in any other science. The difference is that, unlike the natural
- but like the - the
scientist technologist linguist can alter language, al?
beit only marginally inmost cases. In fact linguistic gate-keepers such as
literary critics and members of language academies, as well as language
reformers and planners, do this all the time. Think of such language re?
formers as Andr?s Bello and George Bernard Shaw, who reformed spell?
ing rules and regularized irregular verbs.
Adopting this third stand is tacitly admitting
that the grammatical rules
are neither pure conventions nor strict laws but rather trends. (Labov 1972
offers persuasive evidence for the hypothesis that linguistic rules are sta?
tistical trends.) Being trends they are capable of being corrected in the
interest of generality, simplicity, or euphony. In other words language is
neither fully conventional nor fully natural. Instead, it is a result of in?
vention constrained by laws and circumstances. In this respect language
does not differ from agriculture, art, or politics: all four and many others
are human creations blending necessity, chance and artifact. (By the way,
Chomsky contradicts himself when asserting the linguistic creativity of

every one of us and denying that languages are human creations.)
The next question in our agenda is: Wherein do grammars reside?
Chomsky (1972, 1975, 1980) holds that grammars are "represented" in
the mind, and universal grammar from birth. (Moreover, the child is
supposed to be able to decide which grammar fits best the linguistic sam?
ples he is being fed. More on this particular flight of fancy in Section 3.)
However, Chomsky does not explicate what he means by 'representa?
tion' and he does not explain the manner in which grammars are "rep?
resented" in the mind: are they map-like, symbolic, or what? The thesis
is so vague that it boils down to the platitude that grammars are con?
structs.
Only behaviorists would object to the thesis that grammars are con?
structs -
but they have been effectively disposed of by Chomsky himself
(e.g. 1959, 1972, 1975, 1980). The interesting question is whether gram?
mars reside in an immaterial mind, in the brain, or in neither. The first
possibility is ruled out by physiological psychology, which regards the
mind as a collection of brain functions (processes); and it is also implau?
sible in the light of neurology, which shows agrammaticism (or tele
130 MARIO BUNGE
graphic speech) to be a brain dysfunction. However, the failure of men

talism to square with contemporary brain research does not force us to
adopt the view that grammar is in the brain - e.g. as a brain circuit, a
neuron assembly, an engram, or even a mere disposition for certain neural
connections to be established. The reason is that the grammar of a lan?
guage, in the sense of a structure of it, is not detachable from the lan?
guage itself. The correct question would seem to be, instead, 'Where is
language, complete with its grammar?'.
However, this new question too is ill-conceived, for it presupposes that
language, like the sun or the Queen, must be located somewhere. If lan?
guage is regarded as a construct (recall Table I in Section 1.1), then it can
be nowhere, for only material entities are somewhere. What does have
a spatial and temporal localization is speech, or rather the total speech
- the Wernicke Broca "areas"
system and together with the vocal tract.
- or rather the
In other words speech production and understanding of
- is
utterances localizable and identifiable with a physiological process.
What holds for grammar as the structure of language holds also, mutatis
mutandis, for grammar as a model of such structure. Thus the TGG of
English is nowhere: it is not "represented" in the mind or in the brain.

Like any other construct, TGG exists only as a process: like speech (pa?
role), it is generated and understood by some brains. (More on the status
of constructs in Bunge 1981.)
We conclude this section with a remark on the plurality of syntaxes. A
syntax is part of the internal structure of a language: recall Section 1.1.

Therefore a syntax has no independent existence: it exists really only as
are properties;
part of the internal structure of real speech. (Structures
and properties, in particular relations and collections of such, have no
autonomous existence. What do exist are propertied material things. See
Bunge 1977.) For the same reason a syntax has no genetic power: it can
be "generative" only metaphorically. And, because a syntax is in the
structure of a language, there are as many syntaxes as languages, dia?
lects, and even idiolects. However, not all such syntaxes are normally in?
into what theoretical linguists call "the grammar of a lan?
corporated
guage". Indeed the latter includes only the syntax of the standard or
canonical variant of the language, which is the one supposedly spoken by
the best educated members of the linguistic community of interest. Field
are supposed to study real speech rather than
linguists, on the other hand,
an idealized model of it.
This an important and disturbing methodological

has consequence,
namely that what counts as an exception for the theoretical linguist may
not count as such for the field linguist. The former may attempt to rate
from his conceptual model as deviants (ungrammaticalities)
departures
rather than as counter-examples. This situation is unavoidable in the dis?
with man-made patterns that are a mixture of law and
ciplines dealing
-
convention i.e. that are neither purely conventional (like the laws of
mathematics) nor purely natural or objective (like the laws of physics).
A frank recognition of this situation should contribute to easing the ten?
sion between theoretical and field linguists.
This concludes for the moment our discussion of syntax. The matter of
deep vs. surface structure, which we included in our agenda, will be tak?
en up in the next subsection. We now leave the realm of exact theory to
enter that of intuition and hand-waving or even flag-waving.
2.2. Semantics
Before Chomsky (1965), linguists were careful to avoid the misty hills of
semantics; now they are lost in them. Chomsky and his school had the
excellent idea of emphasizing that, since meaning is an aspect of lan?
guage, linguistic theory should have a semantic component. (This idea
was of course familiar to philosophers since Peirce and Frege, but it had
not penetrated into linguistics.) They also had the good idea of attempt?
ing to exactif y the vague thesis of the Port Royal grammarians, that a full
understanding of a sentence involves digging up the ideas it expresses.
This intuition led to two innovations: the distinction between surface
structure and deep structure, and the thesis that the latter determines
meaning.
The gist of the concept of deep structure is that it "expresses the con?
tent of a sentence" (Chomsky 1965, p. 136). Thus an Indian taught her
and she learned from an Indian have different surface structures but the
same deep structure. Moreover they mean the same despite their differ?
ent appearances: deep below they are the same. This intuition was gen?
eralized and somewhat elaborated into the so-called Katz-Postal thesis
(Katz & Postal 1964), which became incorporated into the so-called
"standard theory" of TGG (Chomsky 1965).
Semantics seemed finally on a secure footing. For a while there was
132 MARIO BUNGE
exhilaration in the TGGcamp. The exhilaration did not last long: diffi?
culties cropped up with the Katz-Postal thesis, and Chomsky (1971) re?
placed it with the thesis that surface structure too contributes to mean?
ing. This theory came to be known as the "extended standard theory",
although it is not a theory proper. Moreover it is far from being accepted
by the majority of generative linguists.
Here we are interested in the following problems: (a) what is deep
structure? (b) how are deep structures to be determined? (c) what is
meaning according to TGG? and (d) how do structures and rules deter?
mine meaning according to TGG? It will turn out that TGG has no clear
answers to these questions: it does not define clearly the notion of deep
structure, and it has no clear concept of meaning. (TGG does not even
draw a distinction between sense and reference, familiar though by no
means to all philosophers.)
clear The whole thing is still just as fuzzy as
it was for the philosophical grammarians of Port Royal - only, more
complicated by a technical jargon that serves to disguise the lack of a
precise theory. Chomsky himself, with his characteristic candor, admits
that "there is no reasonably concrete or well-defined 'theory of semantic
representation'" (1971, p. 183). The reader will look in vain for a hy
pothetico-deductive theory of reference or of sense in the only systematic
survey of semantics by a sympathizer of the Chomsky school (Lyons 1977).
In any event, according to either the standard (1965) or extended
standard (1971) theory, we need to disclose deep structures in order to
determine meanings. Unfortunately there is no clear and general defi?
nition of "deep structure": all we have is examples. Moreover there can
be no effective procedure for determining deep structures. Indeed, the
methodological maxim M2 (Section 1.2) enjoins us to posit unobserva
bles to account for appearances,
in order instead of attempting to infer
the former from the latter. Thus, deep structures have to be conjectured.
There would be nothing wrong with this if we only knew for certain what
deep structures are. Lacking such knowledge the search for deep struc?
ture looks very much like the search for the Holy Grail as described by
Mark Twain.
Yet, in a way we do manage to conjecture (non-Chomskyan) deep
structures all the time without the guidance of TGG. Thus consider the
sentence he saw the moving van which is structurally ambiguous. It can
be made to "derive" from (i.e. it is compatible with) he saw the van mov
ing as well as with he saw the van that transports household things. When
presented with the original sentence (or its surface structure) the hearer
or reader must guess the proposition ambiguously designated by the giv?
en sentence, or he must make an inquiry. TGG won't help him to do the
guessing or the inquiring because this is a matter of substantive knowl?
edge not of grammar. What TGG can do is to analyze the process in terms
of underlying deep phrases and transformational rules. In other words,
the person puzzled by the moving van sentence will be told how to derive
what he does not need, namely the surface structure given him to begin
with.
At first sight this situation looks similar to the one in physics, where,
given the atomic composition of a material, one can determine its ma

croproperties, whereas the inverse problem has no unique solution.
However, there is an important difference, namely that physics contains
exact general theories linking atomic and molecular (i.e. deep) structure
to macrophysical (or surface) properties. Whereas the physicist has
abundant exact knowledge of his deep structures, the linguist lacks the
parallel knowledge. Consequently, whereas the physicist can proceed ra?
tionally, the linguist must proceed intuitively. A further disanalogy is this.
Microphysics can predict some macroproperties, such as superconductiv?
ity, and superfluidity, unknown to macrophysics; i.e. the former can cor?
rect and enrich the latter. On the other hand the linguist is not supposed
to correct or enrich sentences and their surface structure in the light of
his in-depth analysis.
In sum, we do not seem to know exactly what deep structure is or how
to determine it. Yet there is a simple solution to the first of these prob?
lems: it can be solved by redefining "deep structure" and proceeding as
follows (Bunge 1972, 1973, 1974a, 1974b). First, identify the object un?
derlying the given sentence with the proposition^) designated by the
sentence. (Recall that propositions, like concepts, are conceptual objects
not linguistic ones, and that one and the same proposition can be ex?
pressed variously in a given language. Moreover propositions are invar?
iant under changes of language - at least in a family of languages with
the same expressive power.) Second, identify the structure of the deep
object with the logical form of the proposition, as proposed by such for?
mer generative linguists as G. Lakoff, J.D. McCawley and J. R. Ross,
and by Harman (1972). For example, the logical form of the proposition
134 MARIO BUNGE
designated by the sentence the girl read the book isRab, where 'R' stands
for the act of reading, V names the girl, and (b' names the book. The
logical form of the proposition underlying the passive the book was read
by the girl is Rba, where R is the converse of R. And that of the propo?
sition designated by the girl read the book yesterday is R'abc, where V
names the day before and R' is now a more complex (namely ternary)
relation.
The proposed alternative solves the problem of characterizing deep

structures (by identifying them with logical forms) but not that of deter?
mining them. Indeed, it is still up to the individual hearer-reader to de?
cide which proposition(s) are designated by the sentence he comes across.
(Syntactic analysis does not help reveal logical form. Thus the sentences
she just came and sie ist eben gekommen, though structurally different,
stand for the same proposition.) If the sentence is ambiguous, the hearer
may have to conduct an inquiry in order to determine which proposition
the speaker had inmind when uttering the sentence. In this respect he is
no better off than with TGG - but at least he knows what he must look
for.
Nor is the proposed method likely to simplify matters. On the contra?

ry, it is bound to exhibit hidden complexities. Thus consider the word
'opened' in the following sentences:
(1) the door opened;

(2) Mary opened the door;
(3) Mary opened the door yesterday;
(4) Mary opened the door yesterday with this key.
In (1) 'opened' designates a unary predicate - call it 01. The logical form
of the proposition designated by (1) is then 0xd. In (2) the same word
designates a binary predicate 02, and the logical form is 02md. The con?
cept designated by the word 'opened' in (3) is now a ternary predicate
logical form is 03mdy. Finally, the proposition un?
03. The corresponding
a
derlying (4) has the logical form 04mdyk, where now 04 is quaternary
Each of these analyses corresponds to a different reading of
predicate.
the fuzzy word 'opened'. (The reader may wish to introduce even more
can the same word In
complex concepts that be designated by 'opened'.)
short conceptual analysis can exhibit a complexity unsuspected at the
surface linguistic level. In particular, it may exhibit the dependence of
syntactic structure upon meaning.

In sum, the proposed trick boils down to distinguishing words from the
concepts that some of them designate, and sentences from the proposi?
tions that some of them designate. In other words, it consists in exhibit?
ing (or rather conjecturing) the conceptual strata underneath the linguistic
ones. This method has two advantages. The first is that there is a theory,
namely mathematical logic, helping us to disclose the logical form of any
proposition, and this in an unambiguous fashion. (Ambiguity is always
linguistic, never logical.) Second, there is a theory, namely the semantics
formulated by the present writer (Bunge 1972,1973,1974a, 1974b), that
assigns a definite meaning to every single concept and every single prop?
osition. Although this theory was originally built to handle hypothetico
deductive systems formulated in an exact (mathematical) manner, itmight
be applicable to ordinary language as well. Let us make a preliminary ex?
ploration of this possibility.

The gist of our semantics is that every concept and every proposition
has both sense and reference, and that the meaning of a construct (con?
cept or proposition) is the ordered pair formed by its sense and its ref?
erence. Both are contextual in that they depend on the body of knowl?
edge in which they occur. Moreover the sense of a construct in a given

context is defined as the set of all its implicants (or presuppositions) and
- i.e. as its its
implicates (or entailments) logical ancestry plus logical
progeny. (I call the former the purport and the latter the import of the
construct.) And the reference (class) of a construct is the set of all the
objects (whether material or not) to which it applies, whether truthfully
or not. (Note that reference is in general different from extension or do?
main of validity. And note also that meaning precedes truth.) Call #c(c)
the sense, and 2ftc(c) the reference, of a construct c in a context (or body
of knowledge) C. Then the meaning of c in C is defined to be Mc(c) =
<3>c(c),2Mc)>. See figure 2.

(Janet Fodor 1977 and a few other linguists identify meaning with what
we have called import, which in our opinion is only a part of sense. And
Smith & Wilson 1979 propose a modification of Fodor's entailment doc?
trine of meaning. None of these authors treats reference, and none of
them refers to our work. Moreover none of them uses any mathematical
tools to make his notions exact. On the other hand our notions are exact
136 MARIO BUNGE
sentences
\ i / SURFACE
designate
Construct
says means refers to DEPTH

/ i \
Vc(p) <-^cip)- ^cip) Meaning
sense meaning reference
Fig. 2. A sentence s designates a proposition p with a meaning The latter has left
Mc(p).
or sense, and right projection
projection tfcip) 2ftc(p) or reference.
or formalized. Thus we define the sense of a contruct c in a context C as
=
<f?c) Purc(c) U Impc(c)
=
{x E C |x h c} U {x e C Ic h x},
where h designates the relation of entailment. To define the reference

class of a construct we must start by exhibiting the logical form of the lat?
ter. In the case of an n-ary predicate P occuring in a given context C, we
construe it - using clues in C - as a function from n-tuples of objects to
- -
the set S of the propositions true, false, or undecided containing P.
More exactly, we set
P :A x B x ... x JV-> 5.
We now stipulate that P refers to the members of all of the Cartesian fac?
tors in its domain, i.e. we set
= A\J B\J ...\JN.

Sftc(P)
Finally we stipulate that the reference class of a proposition, regardless

of the connectives and quantifiers occuring in it, equals the union of the
reference classes of all the predicates occurring in it. Thus the reference
class of "All beavers build some dams" is the same as the of "Some dams
are built by beavers", namely the union of the class of beavers and the
class of dams. Note that in our theory reference differs from extension.)
Our semantics can help us, in case of doubt, make it clear what exactly
we are talking about (reference) and what we are in effect saying (sense).
As an illustration take Chomsky's famous sentence they are flying planes.
In our view this sentence designates ambiguously the propositions
(5) "those flying objects are planes"
and
(6) "those people are piloting planes."
The root of the difference (5) and (6) is a difference

between in refer?
ence: whereas (5) refers exclusively to certain flying objects, (6) refers in
addition to certain people. (In this case a source of ambiguity is the pron?
oun 'they'.) As a consequence of this referential ambiguity, the senses or
contents of (1) and (2) differ as well. Thus (1) entails e.g. that there are
some flying objects in sight, whereas (2) entails inter alia that the people
in question have learned to fly. Note that we point out a couple of en
tailments but abstain from listing any implicants. This is because in an
open context, such as ordinary knowledge, it is hard to pinpoint the im?
plicants of any proposition. Things are different in the case of a well or?
ganized context such as a theory: in this case the implicants of a propo?
sition are all the premises from which it derives. Therefore the entailment
theory of sense (adopted by Janet Fodor 1977 and Smith & Wilson 1979)
- sense is not equated with
may suffice for ordinary language provided
meaning but only with one of the coordinates of meaning, the other being
reference.
Another famous example of Chomsky's is the pair of sentences:
(7) I persuaded a specialist to examine John.
(8) I persuaded John to be examined by a specialist.
Chomsky (1965 p. 23) proposed the following deep structures underlying

(7) and (8) respectively:
138 MARIO BUNGE
(7') I-persuaded-a specialist-a specialist will examine John.

(8') I-persuaded-John-a specialist will examine John.
In our terminology, the propositions underlying (7) and (8) are the con?
junctions:
"I persuaded a specialist & a specialist will examine John."

(7")
(8") "I persuaded John & a specialist will examine John."
However, this construction can be simplified by observing that "deep

down" the relation of persuading is ternary: x persuaded y to do z. Hence
the preceding are just different instances of Pxyz:
propositions
(7'") Pabc, where a=l, b=a specialist, c= examining John;

(8'") Pade, where d= John, e= to be examined by a specialist.
Our next example is yet another pair of Chomsky's celebrated sen?

tences:
(9) John is easy to please

(10) John is eager to please
which receive the same structural analysis in phrase structure grammar.

There is no need to concoct any linguistic deep structure to realize that
there is a radical difference between the propositions designated by the
above sentences. Suffice it to note that, whereas "is easy to please" is a
unary predicate, "is eager to please" is a binary one. (Whereas (9) is syn?
onymous with "John is easily pleased", the corresponding adverbial form
"is eagerly pleased" makes no sense.) In other words, whereas the logical
form of (9) is Pa, that of (10) is "there is at least one individual x such
that Qax". So, even though (9) can still be said to be syntactically similar
to (10), the corresponding propositions are structurally different.
What about the infamous colorless green ideas sleep furiously? Chom?
this sentence in 1957 and ungrammatical in
sky declared grammatical
1965. In our view the sentence is syntactically unobjectionable and more?
over itmakes sense - this being why we can discard it.We discard it for
-
as nothing can be both colorless and colored
being self-contradictory,
e.g. green. And also for involving a category mistake, as being green and
sleeping cannot be predicated of ideas: they cannot be because the re?

sulting propositions, "Ideas are green", and "Ideas sleep", are false (not
meaningless). Grammar cannot be expected to replace logic or to supply
factual knowledge.
Our final remarks some apparent counterexamples
concerns to the so
called entailment
theory of meaning. Smith and Wilson (1979, Ch. 6)
claim that, although the sentences (11) and (12) below have the same en
tailments, they are not synonymous:
(11) Jane spoke to Alex.

(12) Jane spoke to Alex.
The written sentencesmay be the same, but the spoken ones are not, as
suggested by the stresses. In fact they designate different propositions,
namely
(H') "Jane, and nobody else, spoke to Alex."

(12') "Jane spoke to Alex, and to nobody else."
Another pair of sentences that supposedly refute the entailment the?

ory of sense is
(13) Shelley was a poet.

(14) Either Shelley was a poet or Ibsen was a clown.
Since (13) entails (14), the meaning of (14) should be included in the
of - which
meaning (13) is counterintuitive. True, but this and worse is
bound to happen in open contexts. The entailment theory of (part of)
sense was designed to apply strictly only to exact languages. In these no
new names and predicates are supposed to occur once the basic
(primi?
tive) ones have been listed; as a consequence the logical axiom of addi?
tion will not play havoc. Analogy: elementary geometry applies exactly
to ideal geometrical objects and only approximately to real objects such
as a rugged coastline. The only way to apply to real
elementary geometry
situations is by disregarding irregularities. If one whishes to model real
objects more faithfully then one needs higher geometry. Just as the the
140 MARIO BUNGE
ory of fractals handles rugged coastlines, it is possible that a refined ver?

sion of the entailment theory of sense may account for the complexities
of ordinary language. (See Smith & Wilson 1979, Ch. 7 for an attempt in
this direction.)
To sum up, there is something valuable about Chomsky's notion of deep
structure and even about the Katz-Postal thesis, but all this is too hazy.
The valuable intuition in it is captured by the semantic theory according
to which concepts and propositions, not sentences, are the bearers of
meaning, which is composed of sense and reference. Our proposed re?

orientation of semantics has a number of consequences, among which we
note the following.
(i) The attempt to devise or discover grammatical rules effecting the

surfacing of deep structures is doomed to failure, not only because of the
vagueness of the notion of deep structure in TGG, but also because what
"underlies" (are designated by) sentences are propositions, not further
sentences.
(ii) The tasks of discovering meanings and of rendering them more def?
inite are tasks for conceptual analysis and theory building, not for gram?
mar.
(iii) Because meaning is contextual, conceptual analysis is always to be

conducted in definitive cognitive contexts, not at the linguistic level, which
is supposed to be epistemically neutral (i.e. beyond truth and falsity).
(iv) Syntactic analysis has limitations that only logical or semantical
analysis can transcend. For one thing syntactic analysis applies only to
sentences, which constitute only a subset of the collection of linguistic
(Think of 'More coffee?', 'Go away!', or even 'Hmmm' and
expressions.
'Ouch!', all of which are nonsentential but significant expressions. See
Robinson 1975.) For another, sometimes syntax cannot even cope with
the task of identifying lexical categories. For example, in the Texan say?
ing the bigger the better, the two occurrences of 'the' cannot mean the same
and, moreover, neither is really the definite article. (This is suggested by
the German and Spanish je grosser desto besser, and cuanto
translations
m?s grande tanto mejor, respectively.) On the other hand the logical
analysis is unambiguous: For all x and y, if x and y are material objects,

then: if x is bigger than y, then x is better than y.
(v)Whereas syntactic analysis is linguistically conservative, logical and

semantical analysis may reveal the need for reforming language. Thus the
expression we repair all kinds of shoes, though syntactically wellformed

- and moreover to most English -
acceptable speakers is ill-conceived,
for the shoemaker does not touch any classes with his tools. The correct
expression is we repair shoes of all kinds.
(vi) Revealing logical forms helps getting at language-invariant fea?

tures, i.e. revealing cognitive universals beneath linguistic idiosyncrasies.
But the subject of universals deserves a separate section.
3. UNIVERSALS AND NATIVISM
3.1. Linguistic Universals
Linguists, no less than other scientists and humanists, yearn to uncover

unity amidst diversity, and pattern beneath apparent chaos. Not surpris?
ingly, before the empiricist interregnum in linguistics, a number of phi?
losophers and linguists had speculated on linguistic universals, in partic?
ular on the categorial, syntactic, and phonological commonalities of the
known languages. In the case of philosophers the basis for the conjecture
of the existence of such universals was the thesis of the unity of the hu?
man species. (At that time this thesis was rejected by the racists and was
no better than a liberal prejudice.) However, little has been done to dis?
cover such universals beyond Jacobson's discovery of the distinctive
phonological features.
To Chomsky there was nothing surprising about the failure of the clas?
sical linguists to discover universals, for they had remained confined to
surface structures, which, indeed, vary considerably across languages. On
the other hand the idea of deep structure and the hypothesis of innate
ness led inevitably to the search for a grammar fitting all natural lan?
guages. (Many a scientific hypothesis has a spurious origin. The pedigree
of a hypothesis matters little compared with its truth and explanatory
power.)
In fact, by the time he formulated the "standard theory" of TGG,
Chomsky (1965) was firmly committed to the idea of universal
grammar
(UG). He initially defined this as "the study of the conditions that must
be met by the grammars of all human languages" (1972, p. 126). Later
he repudiated this characterization adopting instead that of "the initial
state of any learner of any language", i.e., the innate language faculty
142 MARIO BUNGE
(1980, p. 69 and 1979, passim). And more recently the "initial state" is
equated to an entity, the "language acquisition device" (LAD), acting like
a black box that receives experiental inputs and outputs the grammar
(Chomsky 1981, p. 35). Let us pass over the mistakes of identifying a state
(of a thing) with a thing, and of believing that a black box model, such
as LAD (=UG), can explain anything. (Black boxes describe and can
occasionally predict but they do not explain: only translucid boxes or

mechanisms can explain: See Bunge 1967, 1983 b.)
Chomsky made the study of linguistic universals respectable after a long
eclipse, but their serious investigation has been conducted outside his
school. It has been conducted mostly without the benefit of TGG and
without the dead weight of the speculation that all humans are born with
a tacit knowledge of UG. One example is the study of nasalization and
assimilation as universal phonological processes (Foley 1977). The best
known empirical investigation of linguistic universals has been conducted
by Greenberg (1966) and those influenced by him (Greenberg et al. (eds.)

1978). These researchers have used a typology that groups languages with
-
respect to the order of the basic classical syntactic categories subject
- in sentences. Thus is said to be
(S), verb (V), and object (O) English
of the SVO type, Japanese of the SOV type, and Welsh of the VSO type;
the VOS and OSV types have very few representatives, and the OVS type
has no known representative. However, some languages seem to be de?
- a of current debate.
prived of 5 altogether subject Presumably, using
the categories of TGG would lead to a different typology. (By the way,
the Greenberg typology is not a classification proper because it is not ex?
haustive. In fact some languages, e.g. classical Latin, seem to have no
basic word order but allow all the permutations of the major lexical cat?
egories, as needed of emphasis.)

for purposes
One may distinguish universal categories,
between such as V and O,
and universal patterns (principles, rules or laws), such as ease of delivery
and perception. In principle both categories could be phonological, syn?
tactic, and semantic. (There may be phonological, lexical and syntactical
universals but it is unlikely that there be semantic universals.) However
not all universals are strict or absolute: some are just tendencies, or in?
variant across most but not all languages. (Such regional universals are
no article, and
incorrectly called 'statistical'.) For example, Russian has
inmost (though not all) languages every sentence has a subject, and the
subject precedes the object. Another example: languages with VSO bas?
ic order type have prepositions instead of postpositions.
The very notion of a linguistic universal poses at least two problems of
philosophical interest: how to go about finding them, and how to explain
them. The former is a methodological problem. The obvious solution to
it is that linguistic universals can be established only by the study of a great
many languages and, more precisely, by the investigation of a repre?
sentative sample of all 4,000 of them. This is the course chosen by all the
serious workers in the field. This course is perpendicular to that of the
Chomsky school, according to which, since UG is (fancied to be) innate,

an in-depth and synchronie study of a single language, such as English,
should suffice. Needless to say, this methodological prescription is un?
scientific and has been severely chatised as such (e.g. by Giv?n 1979 and
Comrie 1981).
Trying to discover "the essence of language" (or linguistic "compe?
tence") by examining a single language is like trying to find "the essence
a single biospecies - and moreover an extremely
of life" by studying
complex one such as ours rather than the more modest Escherichia coli.
Predictably, the aprioristic and synchronie approach has not yielded any
linguistic universals. What little is known about them has been learned
by studying a few hundred languages. And this study is far from having
-
disclosed any full fledged UG which does not prevent transformation?
alists from talking about UG as if they had seen its birth certificate.
Explaining the (assumed) existence of linguistic universals is no prob?
lem for Chomsky, since he has postulated that UG is inborn and, more?
over, that it is the 'language acquisition device'. Accordingly he has re?
jected emphatically all attempts to explain linguistic universals in
or historical terms - the
evolutionary way evolutionary biologists explain
the commonalities of living beings, or historians those of human socie?
ties. In fact, although Chomsky has suggested that linguistics should be
cultivated as a natural science, he rejects the hypothesis that human lan?
guage has evolved from a more primitive system of thought and com?
munication (Chomsky 1972,1980). His reason for doing so is that human
language "is based on entirely different principles" from those of animal
communication. Therefore "to speculate about the evolution of human
language from simpler systems" seems to him "perhaps as absurd as it
would be to speculate about the 'evolution' of atoms from clouds of el?
ementary particles" (1972 p. 70).
144 MARIO BUNGE
But of course physicists and chemists, from Prout on, have speculated
about atomic and molecular evolution; there is even a respected Journal
of Molecular Evolution. Moreover such investigation is becoming less and
less speculative, and much of it has become a mainstay of evolutionary
biology. Chomsky's rejection of the evolutionary approach to language,
together with his nativism, stem from his mentalism as well as from his
misreading evolutionary biology as precluding the emergence of radical

- is of course
novelty which precisely what evolutionary biologists try to
explain. (See Piatek 1982 for further criticisms.)
Chomsky goes further and denies
explicitly that language is a human
creation that has evolved together with culture. He asks: "Have you or
I 'made' English? That seems either senseless or wrong. We had no choice
at all as to the language we acquired; it simply developed in our minds
by virtue of our internal condition and environment. Was the language
'made' by our remote ancestors? It is difficult to make any sense of such
a view. In fact, there is no more reason to think of language as 'made'
than there is to think of the human visual system and the various forms
that is assumes as 'made by us'" (1980, p. 11).
In asking whether a language is the work of a single individual Chom?
sky is addressing a straw man: the thesis that language isman-made must
be understood in a social and historical sense. Likewise mathematics was
not the work of a single individual but that of thousands of persons over
thousands of years. Nonetheless mathematics is a human creation and
even a comparatively recent one: mathematical theories are not found in
nature and they were unknown until a few thousand years ago. And surely
"language developed in our minds by virtue of our internal condition and
- but so did the rest of our mental and cultural
environment" equipment.
note the confusion between development, or ontogeny, and
(Incidentally
evolution, or phylogeny. If individual development did in fact recapitu?
- as - then infants and chil?
late evolution Haeckel thought studying how
dren acquire certain skills and concepts we would learn how hominids and
early men acquired them, as suggested by Parker & Gibson 1979. But
Haeckel's 'law' is not really a law. Infants do not have a mature nervous
system and they do not earn a living or cope with wild beasts and other
environmental hazards.)
Chomsky's view of language is static, in remarkable contrast with ev?
olutionary biology, anthropology, and human history, neither of which
speak of an invariable human nature, in particular of a constant mental

equipment. As Dobzhansky used to say, nothing in biology makes sense
except in evolutionary terms; the same can be said of psychology and the
social sciences. After all, communication is part of culture - indeed, an
essential component of social structure - and culture must be studied not
only synchronically but also diachronically. In particular it is necessary
to study the evolution of language from more primitive modes of com?
munication, as well as the diachronic changes in syntax, semantics and
phonology, if we wish to understand the present state of a language.
To be sure there are very few empirical data about the origin and ev?
olution of human language, as is to be expected from a very young and
difficult field of research beleaguered by the mentalist army. Still, there
are some, such as the study of the relatively recent emergence of new
languages (cr?oles) out of pidgins in Hawaii and elsewhere (Bickerton
1982). Another is the identification of Broca's area in a couple of clean
endocasts of hominid skulls as old as 2 million years. (If confirmed, this
finding would considerably weaken the queer hypothesis that language
evolved only a few thousand years ago, as held by Jaynes 1976.) In any
event all historical studies are in the same boat with regard to paucity of
empirical evidence, much of which is unavoidably circumstantial. The
hypothetical reconstruction of a protolanguage, such as Proto-Indo-Eu?
ropean, is just as risky as the hypothetical reconstruction of the early phase
of the expansion of the universe.
To advance the investigation into the origin and evolution of human
languages we should work out a number of hypotheses, among them the
following. First, the hominid body (particularly its brain and vocal tract)
must have been preadapted to the acquisition of the language faculty, i.e.
the possibility of evolving it must have pre-existed. That is, some non
speaking hominids must have been equipped with the right neural cir?
cuits, neurotransmitters, etc., necessary to produce and understand speech
of some kind. (There is nothing mysterious about preadaption. Most ad?
aptations are of this kind: evolution is opportunistic not principled. Thus
the larynx and the tongue were not "designed" but just "used" to
speak.)
- i.e.
Second, only symbolic languages languages capable of expressing
- are
thoughts likely to be peculiarly human.
because of the unity of the human species - i.e. its
Third, origin from
a single ancestor species - all
languages are likely to have evolved from
146 MARIO BUNGE
a common trunk. This, the monogenesis hypothesis, is verisimilar in an
evolutionary perspective.
Fourth, since speech is not only a method of communication but also
a thinking tool, it must have evolved along with knowledge. In fact, it is
likely that symbolic languages became possible only when reasonings were
formed and the need to discuss them arose. Before that time a far more
primitive language may sufficed. The hypothesis

have of the coevolution
of language and knowledge is reinforced by developmental psychology,
which shows that the language "faculty" is not detached from other men?
tal "faculties".
Fifth, and last, since speech is not only "the mirror of mind" but also
a social relation, a knowledge of social organization is bound to tell us
something about the level of evolution required for language to discharge

certain social functions.
In any case it is possibleto study the origin and evolution of language;
moreover, such study is under way (e.g. Harnad (ed.) 1976). But if this
research is to make any headway three philosophical obstacles must first
be removed. One is the empiricist injunction to stick to data and to ab?
stain from conjecturing. If this maxim were observed, no data of new
kinds would ever be sought. We must not shun speculation per se but only
untestable and barren speculation. The second obstacle is the thesis that
the facult? de langage (or linguistic "competence" or UG) is invariable
and innate. For, if it is, then there is no evolution to be investigated. The
third is conceiving of language in such a way that only the existing lan?
guages will fit the definition, and no room for less evolved ones ismade.
We must make room for the latter if only to account for the ones we al?
ready know, such as baby talk, telegraphic speech, and pidgins. The
grammars studied by TGG are likely to be comparatively late acquisi?
tions. And UG may have been the grammar of a protolanguage (orWorld
Language), the most primitive of all languages, from which all the mod?
ern ones may have descended. This hypothesis is not more
speculative
than that of the very existence of UG. (Presumably a protolanguage had
two categories: noun and verb. After all, names
only lexico-syntactical
and predicates are all we need in elementary logic, where Mary is black
is construed as "Mary blacks".)
To conclude, I suspect that there are more linguistic universals than
meet the eye, though perhaps not as many as Chomsky suspects. More
over it seems clear that some

linguistic universals are manifestations of
cognitive (perceptual and conceptual) universals, which in turn are root?
ed to neural, environmental, and social universals rather than to a myth?
ical constant human mind. All human beings, whether Australian abo?
rigines, South American
presidents, or New York sophisticates, are born
with similar brains, and they all breathe, eat, excrete, move about, love,
hate, learn, think, and communicate. Therefore, in conducting their dai?
ly affairs all humans engage in some activities that are similar in all so?
-
cieties such as lying down, getting up, doing something with their hands,
and talking or using a speech surrogate such as ASL. And, whether
scholars or laymen, they all know something about the real world and
- or
they all do something with it else they do not survive. These ana?
tomical, behavioral, mental and environmental commonalities, as well as
a common biological origin, are likely to be the source of the cognitive
commonalities, which are in turn the basis of linguistic universals.
Given such cognitive universals, what is surprising is not that there are
linguistic universals, but that so few of them have been established so far.
There are two plausible and mutually compatible explanations for this
paucity. One is that only a few cognitive universals do have linguistic
- i.e. that
counterparts language is a highly artificial device. Another is
that linguistic universals have been either denied or taken for granted
rather than investigated. Whatever the reason, new linguistic universals
are unlikely to be found without taking into account a fair sample of all
the known - - and
languages pace Chomsky's opinion without making
use of sophisticated - as
linguistic theory Chomsky rightly insists.
To sum up, the hypothesis of UG is interesting and fruitful, but is still
hazy andis yet to be confirmed. We do not know yet whether" all lan?
guages share a basic structure, what this structure (UG) might be, let alone
how it originated. And yet that half-baked and unconfirmed conjecture
lies at the heart of the psycholinguistics inspired by Chomsky, to which
we turn next.
3.2. Language Acquisition
Psycholinguists study, among other problems, that of language acquisi?

tion. They are divided into two main camps with regard to this problem:
the nativists and those who hold that knowledge of language, like any
148 MARIO BUNGE
other knowledge, is learned. The foremost representative of nativism

nowadays is Chomsky, who holds that every person is born knowing the
essential principles of universal grammar (Chomsky & Miller 1963,
Chomsky 1972,1975 and 1980, and in Piattelli-Palmarini (ed.) 1979). His
opponents are in turn divided into two main factions: the dwindling be
haviorist school, according to which language learning is a simple matter
of conditioning; and the growing neuropsychological school, according
to which normal persons are born with specialized neural systems (in
particular the Wernicke and Broca "areas") capable of learning a lan?

guage, but won't learn it unless the brain matures normally in a suitable
social environment. (We disregard the so-called
dispositionalism, ac?
cording to which we are born with a disposition or natural gift for learn?
ing languages, because everybody accepts this harmless thesis that ex?
plains nothing.)
Chomsky (1959) discredited effectively the behaviorist doctrine of ver?
bal behavior and acquisition by pointing out that any of us can create
sentences which he has never heard or read before. He holds that the
newborn human, unlike any other primate, is equipped with a linguistic
"competence" that is far more than the mere ability to learn languages:
it would be no less than a knowledge of UG, or the basic structure of all
languages. Furthermore, since according to Chomsky every grammar is
a theory - a view we shot down in Section 2.1. - the baby would be born
knowing a theory. This "theory" is very general; new hypotheses and data,
to be acquired during development, are needed for the grammar of a
specific language to "grow in the mind" of the child, much as he needs
nourishment for the growth of his body.
Normally the child is exposed from birth to a barrage of phrases. Ac?
cording to Chomsky the child's problem is not that of understanding them

but "to determine which of the (humanly) possible languages is that of
the community in which he is placed" (Chomsky 1965, p. 27). "The child
is presented with data, and he must inspect hypotheses (grammars) of a
fairly restricted class to determine compatibility with his data. Having se?
lected a grammar of a predetermined class, he will then have command
of the language generated by this grammar" (Chomsky 1972, p. 159; also
Chomsky & Miller 1963, p. 277; and Chomsky 1980, p. 134). In short,
children would learn their first language much in the same way accom?
plished theoretical physicists choose among rival theories competing for
a given set of empirical data. Never before had human babies, known to
be among the poorest performers in the animal kingdom, been credited
with such remarkable competence.
Chomsky's view on language acquisition makes too much room for in?
nate wisdom and too little for experience and creativity. In fact to Chom?
sky, as to Socrates and some rationalist philosophers, experience would

only bring out, elicit, trigger, or hone what we already have at birth: a
human animal could learn only to perfect the details of that which is al?
ready "represented" in his genome. Skinner had been mainly interested
in learning but, being a radical empiricist, he denied that we need a the?
ory of learning. Chomsky, who ismainly interested in theory, denies that
we need an explicit theory of learning, or at any rate of language learn?
ing, because we have got from birth an implicit theory of language learn?
ing (1962, p. 528; 1975 p. 28). Fodor (1975) takes the final step by de?
claring that learning theories are not just unnecessary but impossible,
because actually we do not learn anything: all ideas are innate. (It would
follow then that the historians of ideas are wasting their time.)
One think that reheating the views of Socrates and Leibniz on
should
learning in the second
half of the 20th century takes not only consider?
able chutzpah but also powerful reasons and astonishing experimental
findings. In fact Chomsky offers only two reasons, neither of which is
sufficient. His first argument is from the failure of radical behaviorism:
since a normal child learns to speak "very fast", and since it is impossible
to learn or internalize a grammar from "the meager and degenerate data"
accessible to the child, the latter "must" have been born with a knowl?
of - a sort of
edge universal grammar filing cabinet where the infant can
file all the data he is presented with. Chomsky's second argument is from
the alleged functional rigidity of all our organs: even the brain would be
or genetically
totally preformed programmed (prewired), just like the
heart and the eye, so that the suggestion that we can learn to speak is just
as absurd as the idea that the heart must learn to its function.
discharge
These are Chomsky's sole reasons for upholding nativism, and neither of
them holds water.
The argument from the failure of behaviorism to account for speech
production would be valid if behaviorism were one of the horns of a di?
lemma, the other horn being nativism. Chomsky makes it abundantly clear
that he sees no via media between behaviorism and nativism: concepts
150 MARIO BUNGE
must be determined essentially in an innate manner "since we do not know

of any other way of accounting for their acquisition" (in Piattelli-Palmar
ini (ed.) 1979, p. 257). Clearly this is an argument from ignorance and
therefore invalid. It reminds one of the old argument that, since we do
not know how life came about, itmust have been created by some deity.
There is of course a tertium quid: We are inventive and learn by com?
bining experience (perception and action) with reason. Whereas we learn

some ideas from experience (or by inductive generalization from the lat?
we learn others by imitation, and still others are original inventions
ter),
(e.g. hypotheses) that owe little or nothing to experience. There is no
mystery in this: the human brain is remarkably plastic. The failure of be?
haviorism is no excuse for turning the clock back to Socratic nativism.
The right strategy is to acknowledge the cognitive component of learning
and its creative nature, as most psychologists do nowadays. Thus Bartlett
(1958), Hebb (1949) and Bindra (1976) were constructivists and so was
Piaget: "an epistemology in agreement with the data of psychogenesis

could be neither empiricist nor preformationist: it could not consist in
a constructivism, with the continual elaboration
anything other than in
of new operations and structures" (Piaget 1979, p. 53).
Consider for example the task of learning to pair stimuli of a certain
kind 5 to responses of a kind R when the organism is in a given physio?
the task is that of constructing the suit?
logical state. Formally speaking,
able function F from S into R. An empiricist would say that we construct
F step by step, pairing every member of 5 off to the appropriate element
of R. But this is of course impossible when S is very large, as is the case
with verbal stimuli. So, the nativist imagines that we must be born with
a knowledge of F and need experience only to activate such dormant
knowledge. However, this conclusion is invalid because the empiri
cism/nativism alternative is not exclusive. There is a way out: we may
guess F on the strength of a few instances and possibly with the help of
some generalizations learned earlier. We may hazard now one form of
on a suf?
F, now another, subjecting each guess to some tests until we hit
to the right F- or give up. (See Bunge
ficiently close approximation 1983a,
Ch. 2.).
Chomsky's second argument for nativism is the supposed functional
of the brain. He claims that the work of Hubel, Wiesel, and oth?
rigidity
ers, on the visual cortex, supports nativism by showing that the neurons
in that region are highly specialized from birth although they degenerate
unless activated by suitable experiences at the right time (Chomsky 1979,
passim-, and 1980, p. 39). In my view those remarkable neurophysiolog

ical findings lend no support to the hypothesis of innate ideas because they
concern visual
sensation, not perception, let alone ideation or speech
production. (See e.g. Hubel 1982, and Wiesel 1982.) Not surprisingly, the
neurons in the primary visual cortex are specialized and are organized into
systems the specific function of which is seeing. (It is unlikely, though,

that all of the inter-neuronal connections are inborn, and it is certain that
their strength depends upon experience.)
What happens in the sensory cortex need not happen in the associative
one: in the latter plasticity may dominate over prewiring. Thus the fact
that there is a critical period for language learning suggests that, unless
the neurons in the language "areas" are organized into neuron assem?
blies for the production and understanding of phrases, they may be "re?
- or
cruited" to discharge different functions none, as plasticity is likely
to decline with In short, while itmay well be that the visual system
age.
and other sensory systems are to a large extent genetically determined,
it is almost certain that the associative cortex is extremely plastic, to the
extent that we organize it ourselves as we learn. Such plasticity has been
amply demonstrated in recent years. (See e.g. Bliss 1979; Goddard 1980;
Baranyi & Feh?r 1981; and Flohr & Precht (eds.) 1981.) Yet Chomsky
denies it.
The latest and most sensational discovery about neural plasticity con?
cerns a phenomenon that scientific psycholinguists should pay attention
to, namely birdsong. Nottebohm (1981) found that the size of the song
control nuclei in the canary's brain changes with its song repertory. The
nuclei grow during learning and shrink as the songs are discarded during
the late summer and early fall. In other words, the subsystems of the brain
that "subserve" (do) the song learning change anatomically from one
season to the next as the song repertory varies. This suggests that similar
anatomical changes occur in the human brain as it learns and unlearns
language. However, this hypothesis will not be investigated as long as
human language is regarded as a mysterious gift, totally unrelated to oth?
er methods of animal communication as well as not learnable like a song
or a theorem.
Linguistic nativism is open to the following additional objections.
152 MARIO BUNGE
Firstly, linguists have not yet discovered whether all languages do share
a basic structure and, if so, what this is: recall Section 3.1. Hence to at?
tribute to newborns the perfect command of that which linguists ignore
is bizarre, and in any case it exemplifies explicatio obscurum per obscu
rium. In other words, "explaining" language acquisition in terms of in?
nate knowledge is like saying that "we are the way we are because that's
the way we (genetically) are" (Giv?n 1979, p. 22). Secondly, nativism
lacks inductive empirical support. (This is no blemish for a rationalist or
apriorist, but it is a serioushandicap for anyone else: scientists are not
supposed to defend doggedly a theory in the absence of positive evidence
for it.)
More to the point, there is ample indirect (circumstantial) anatomical,
behavioral and cognitive evidence against nativism. The first is that the
infant cerebral cortex is very poorly organized: its neurons are small and
have a scant arborization, so that presumably the inter-neuronal contacts
are few, whence there are probably no neuronal systems capable of
minding. (See the revealing plates in Conel 1939-67.) The behavioral
evidence comes from developmental psychology, which shows that the
child develops his abilities ("faculties") only gradually, though by stages,
and this only provided he is subjected to the right stimuli at the right times.
To be sure children learn to speak "fast". But, as Galileo would ask, how
fast is "fast"?
As for the cognitive evidence against nativism, it boils down to this.
Although we still ignore the precise mechanism of language learning, we
do know that it is not the exercise of a single isolated "faculty", but only
one aspect of a complex sensory-motor-ideational process. That is,
speaking and listening involve knowing and doing. (See, e.g., Dale 1976.)
Chomsky's rejoinder, that even idiots learn to speak, is not to the point.
Some feeble-minded children learn to play chess, and others to make
quick mental calculations beyond the reach of the average normal adult.
Idiocy, like proficiency in language learning, is a matter of degree. In any
event, the case of mental retardates who learn to speak only proves that
it is abnormal for language to be dissociated from intelligence. Normally
the development of conceptual skills goes together with that of sensory
motor skills.
Contemporary psychology, in particular developmental and physio?
logical, offers a viable alternative to both linguistic nativism and empi
ricism (Hebb et. al. 1973; Whitaker 1973; Bindra 1976). Here are some
of the recent findings likely to contribute to a correct solution to the
problem of first language acquisition: (a) a large fraction, perhaps as many
as half, of the neurons in the associative cortex are uncommitted at birth;
(b) these uncommitted neurons seem to self-assemble in the course of life,

part spontaneously and part under sensory stimulation; (c) the resulting
neuron assemblies are of short, medium, or long duration; (d) all of the
mental (perceptual and ideational) processes are processes in such mod?
ifiable (plastic) neuronal systems; (e) learning is likely to consist in the
-
formation of new plastic neuronal systems or, equivalently, in the re?
inforcement of certain inter-neuronal connections, in agreement with
Hebb's use and disuse
hypothesis; (f) the thought and speech centers,
though closely interconnected, are different (some aphasies can continue
to think, whereas others continue to talk but have ceased to think nor?
mally); (g) all of the plastic subsystems of the brain are interconnected,
so they influence one another - whence the various mental "faculties" are
interdependent. In other words, unlike the rest of the nervous system and
unlike every other organ, the associative cortex of the human brain is
largely plastic. As A.R. Luria used to say, the human brain is the self
made organ, i.e. the organization of which is not totally predetermined
by the genome. Shorter: Every one of us builds up his own brain as he
learns.
The consequences of the above findings for psycholinguists are or ought

to be momentous. Firstly, the newborn brain is capable of learning but
does not know anything: it is just as mindless as Aristotle thought. Sec?
ondly, learning and the failure to learn certain things depend not only
upon sensory stimulation but also on internal factors, mainly on inter
neuronal connectivity and plasticity. (The slate is indeed blank at birth,
but the inscriptions that emerge on it are not the exclusive work of the
environment: they are partly self-inscribed.)
Thirdly, an animal knows only that which it has learned - and the more
he knows the more new items he can get to know. (On the other hand
nativism predicts that there are drastic limits to what man can get to know.
Chomsky himself has hinted that we may already be inAct V of the hu?
man comedy.) Fourthly, the language "faculty" (speech centers) is not
independent from the other mental "faculties" (neural centers) but is
- hence the
closely connected with them acquisition and use of language
154 MARIO BUNGE
is just one aspect of a general cognitive (and social) activity. Fifthly, lan?
guage learning does not occur in a social vacuum: severely neglected
children develop poor language.
In short, we are of course genetically endowed with the organ of mind,
namely the brain; moreover, different people are presumably born with
different abilities. However, we must learn how to speak, just as we must
learn how to do sums and even how to walk. To put it differently: we
may espouse moderate or potential nativism, not radical or actual nativ?
ism. According to the former every one of us inherits peculiar abilities,
e.g. to learn manual skills or to play with abstract ideas. On the other
- of the kind held or Kant - as?
hand radical nativism by Plato, Leibniz,
serts that we are born with certain ideas. Both moderate and radical na?
tivism are compatible with psychophysical monism as well as with dual?
ism. However, only moderate nativism, i.e. the doctrine that we inherit
different abilities or propensities, is consistent with contemporary neu?
roscience and psychology.
(Yet itmust not be forgotten that this kind of nativism had been much
-
"in the air" for centuries e.g. in the old adage Quod natura non dat,
Salmantia non prestat. Huarte (1575) explained it in a famous work that
was translated into several languages and reprinted many times - as well
as censored by the Inquisition. He regarded the various mental "facul?
- - as functions of
ties" memory, imagination, and intelligence subsys?
tems of the brain, and explained the differences in inborn abilities as dif?
ferences in the composition of the brain. Contemporary neuroscience and
to with him - without
physiological psychology tend side though accept?
on the composition of the brain which he took from
ing the primitive ideas
Galen.)
In particular, aphasiology confirms the biological view of speech for?
mation and understanding. Thus lesions within Wernicke's "area" may
destroy a person's ability to understand speech, and damage to the left

angular gyrus may destroy his ability to read, though not to speak. The
case of bilingual aphasies is even more interesting. Their recovery fits into
half a dozen or so different patterns: whereas in most cases the patient
recovers both languages roughly at the same pace, in others the recu?
loss
peration is successive; in still others the patient experiences complete
of one of his former languages, or he alternates them or even mixes them
up. What is philosophically interesting is that (a) the site of lesion deter
mines the type of deficit, and (b) the pattern of recovery depends on both
-
the site of the lesion and the linguistic history of the patient e.g. more
often than not the second language is erased more easily than the first
(Paradis 1983).
These suggest that knowledge
studies of each language is "stored" in
a precise neural system - separate from, though linked with, the cogni?
tive "store". Unfortunately all our knowledge about these fascinating facts
comes from just 150 or so aphasia cases reported in the world literature.
Even so, these case studies are shedding much light on the processes of
speech formation and understanding. For one thing, they have confirmed
that insults to the brain (e.g. strokes, injuries, and tumors) result inmen?
- which should if the mind were an immaterial
tal deficits be impossible
entity.
I am not claiming that we have already obtained a satisfactory expla?
nation of language acquisition. I am claiming instead that this is a gen?
uine open problem but, at the same time, that we know enough to adopt
the correct approach to it. (On the other hand Chomsky believes that,
by postulating that we are born with a of the
knowledge mysterious UG,
he has solved the problem in its essentials.) I am also claiming that the
correct approach to this, or to any other factual problem, is not that of
armchair speculation but, instead, the observational, experimental, and
(incipiently) theoretical approach adopted by developmental and phys?
iological psychology.
This approach eschews the imprecise notion of a "mental structure",
central yet nowhere defined in Chomsky's work, which remains confined
to prescientific mentalistic philosophical psychology. It is not that science
must ignore the mind, but that itmust study it as a set of brain functions.
This is in a nutshell the thesis of physiological psychology, the newest and
fastest growing branch of psychology. According to it the study of mind
is ultimately an aspect of brain research. To be sure we cannot
dispense
with molar or phenomenological psychology; however, such studies pro?
vide only data and regularities to be explained in neurophysiological
terms.
True, occasionally Chomsky pays lip service to neuroscience, as when

he admits that knowledge is ultimately "represented" in our brains (1980,
p. 5 and passim). However, he does not explain what he means by
'rep?
resentation' in this case - which is confusing because he also
employs the
156 MARIO BUNGE
expressions 'phonological representation', 'semantic

representation',
'mental representation', and the like. And he never
states in so many
words that we think and speak with the brain (rather than with the mind).
All he states is that neuroscience knows hardly anything about all this,
so that we are forced to continue using "abstract" (i.e. mentalistic) for?
-
mulations which is not quite true. So, one suspects that his mentalism
is not just opportunistic (methodological) but principled (ontological).
Chomsky has rightly insisted all along on the need for going beyond
mere description, into explanation. Unfortunately his own notion of ex?
planation
- which oscillates between
subsumption and insight - is not the
one used in science. In science, to explain a group of facts is to describe
their mechanism with the help of an empirically confirmed theory (Bunge
1983 b, Ch. 10). We explain the propagation of light by disclosing the
mechanism of generation of the magnetic component of the field by the
electric one and conversely. We explain a chemical reaction as inelastic
scattering of atoms or molecules. We explain the origin of life in terms
of the self-assembly of subcellular units, which in turn would self-assem?
ble from molecules. We explain our having ideas in terms of the activity
- now
spontaneous, now elicited - of plastic neural systems. And we ex?
plain the formation and dissolution of social systems in terms of social
relations.
In each case an explanation, unlike a mere account, involves resorting

to some mechanism which, though not necessarily mechanical, is neces?
sarily material. Science does not know of any mental mechanisms be?
cause the mental is no more (and no less) than a collection of brain func?
tions. What is in the process
science of discovering is the neural
mechanisms that explain mental phenomena. On the other hand Chom?
"mental structures", that would "underlie" the mental
sky's postulated
"faculties", do not explain anything: they just redescribe the known facts
and surround them with a thick fog that cannot be pierced by either ex?
or mathematical modeling.
periment
Let us take a look at the way physiological psychology, in particular
my own view (Bunge 1980), might explain the generation and under?
standing of phrases or,

more realistically, "the larger events in which
sentences and nonverbal cues occur" (Menzel & Johnson 1976). The
central hypothesis is that minding, in particular forming or understand?
is the specific or process, of cer
ing bits of language, function, activity,
tain plastic neuron assemblies which I call psychons. (A neuron assembly

is said to be plastic if its connectivity, in particular its synaptic connectiv?
- in contrast
ity, is variable in the course of time after birth with the rigid
or genetically programmed neuron assemblies that control genuinely in?
nate functions such as breathing or sucking.)
According to this theory a simple idea is the ephemeral activity of a
psychon, and a complex idea that of two or more psychons activated either
simultaneously or sequentially. (Each such psychon is likely to be com?
posed of thousands of neurons, and any one of it having a concept is like?

ly to be a process lasting only a fraction of a second.) Thus thinking up
the thought expressed by the sentence / want my mum may consist in the
successive activation of two psychons, one for the verb phrase and the
other for the noun phrase.
Likewise forming the idea of a beautiful flower may consist in the ac?
tivation, either or
simultaneous
sequential, of psychons for the concepts
"beautiful" and "flower" respectively. At a deep level the order of these
two concepts may not matter, but it will if the thought is expressed in an
utterance. If you are speaking English, the psychon for "beautiful" will
have to be activated that for "flower" whereas,
before if you are speaking
Spanish (flor bonita), the order will be reversed. Speech errors, in par?
ticular mispronunciations, dyslectic phenomena, and spoonerisms, can
be explained as wrong connections. For example, if I utter John Peter
kicked instead of the correct sentence, itmay be because the psychon for
kicked was delayed as a result of the inhibition by some other psychon.
To be sure, these and similar neuropsychological explanations of lin?
guistic phenomena are still coarse and tentative because the whole the?
ory is still in the oven. But they are possible scientific explanations be?
cause they jibe with neuroscience -
whereas mentalism does not.
To conclude, I suggest that psycholinguists should give up mentalism
- even the of or
cryptomentalism cognitivism functionalism. They should
become physiological (and evolutionary and developmental and social)
linguists. The reason is that we happen to produce and understand speech
with the brain not with the mythical soul, let alone with the computer.
The advantages of the proposed radical reorientation of psycho-linguis?
tics are many. First, it is forward looking - unlike mentalism, which is
stuck to traditional philosophy or even to theology. Second,
physiologi?
cal linguistics can investigate a host of new problems that cannot even be
158 MARIO BUNGE
the narrow mentalistic -

stated within framework such as 'What kind of
neural connections are established when the toddler learns to form his
first sentence?', 'Why does bilingualism favor overall cognitive ability?',
and 'How does drug or lesion X affect speech production or understand?
ing?' Third, physiological psycholinguistics can make use of evolutionary
(or comparative) and developmental psychology, shunned by mentalism.

Fourth, physiological linguists try to explain speech production and un?
derstanding by revealing the brain mechanisms of these processes. Fifth,
this way of conceiving of psycholinguistic research facilitates its merger
or integration with other sciences, in particular neuroscience and social
science. We shall return to this matter in Section 4.2.
4. METHODOLOGICAL PROBLEMS
4.1. Testing Linguistic Theories
To anyone coming from natural science much of linguistics looks like an

armchair occupation, as was anthropology before our century. He is
bound to be puzzled on hearing a transformationalist discuss the hy?
potheses made by hypothetical infants when weighing the relative merits
of hypothetical grammars with respect to sets of hypothetical data. Very
often the alleged data occurring in such speculations are just anecdotes
- much as the tales of distant lands that travellers and missionaries used
to tell the gullible 19th century anthropologists. At other times the data
are genuine but they consitute too small and arbitrary a sample of the
- which
total corpus explains why so many of the hypotheses formulated
succumb under counter-examples as soon as
by the transformationalists
they are published.
To be sure one must start somewhere, and a handful of carefully se?
lected examples, such as John is certain to leave and Visiting relatives can
be a nuisance, ismore suggestive than a random sample. However, once
the hypothesis has been formulated it must be confronted with a maxi?
mum of empirical evidence if any claims concerning its truth or falsity are
to be justified. In short, whereas data selection is advisable at the stage
of hypothesis formulation, statistical processing ismandatory at the test
stage. There should be no difference in this regard between linguistics and

other sciences. But there is a difference, not only because of the specu
lative tendency of transformationalists, but also because of the very na?

ture of linguistic data.
I submit that linguistic data split into two very different kinds: factual
and factual-normative. The datum schema "Sentence S was uttered by
speaker W, belonging to linguistic community X, when in state Y and in

circumstance Z", is of the factual kind. On the other hand the schema
"Sentence 5 is grammatical (or acceptable) in language L in context X'
is of the factual-normative type, for it excludes many factual data - such
as you ain't seen nothin' yet - as ungrammatical (in standard English).
The above distinction between the two kinds of data is the key to un?
derstanding the role of exceptions and the nature of prediction in lin?
guistics. As we saw in Section 2.1, whereas in natural science the discov?
ery of exceptions to a generalization usually forces one to alter the latter,
in pure linguistics exceptions can be transformed away. In fact they can
- case
be declared ungrammatical or, in the of transformationalists, they
can be said not to conform with the "linguistic intuition" of the "ideal
speaker-hearer". For example, the perfectly logical sentence / combed I
is declared ungrammatical and forced to change into / combed myself'by
virtue of certain rules. Clearly, whereas factual data do have a test pow?
er, factual-normative data have none.
A related problem is the way unfavorable factual data are sometimes
written off by the Chomsky school. For example, according to the stand?
ard theory "the intrinsic meaning of a sentence and its other grammatical
properties are determined by rule, not by conditions of use, linguistic
context, frequency of parts, etc." (Chomsky 1972, p. 150). Were some?
one to exhibit counterexamples showing that the semantic (and phonol?
ogical) properties of a sentence are context-and-use-sensitive, a staunch
partisan of the standard
theory of TGG would rejoin that such external
factors may affect
performance not competence. The compe?
tence/performance distinction is thus used to block possible disconfir?
mation. Botha (1973; 1978) has shown many examples of such disconfir
mation-blocking procedures in TGG. (I call them mala fide ad hoc
hypotheses to distinguish them from the bona fide ad hoc hypotheses,
which are testable and are proposed to represent facts of a narrow range,
instead of serving exclusively to protect another hypothesis from refu?
tation: see Bunge 1983a.) Giv?n (1979) calls this manoeuvre "the gutting
of the data base".
160 MARIO BUNGE
Linguists, particularly the transformationalists, often claim that a lin?
guistic theory, like any other scientific theory, should be able to predict.
To render this claim plausible they phrase some of their sentences in such
a manner that they look similar to genuine forecasts. For instance, in?
stead of saying 'Expression Xis acceptable', they may say 'Expression X
will be acceptable'. (See Botha 1981, Ch. 8, for a detailed but different
discussion of linguistic prediction.) To a methodologist of science that
stylistic trick does not effect the conversion of a factual-normative state?

ment, whether it be a datum or a hypothesis, into a forecast. One reason
is that, as we saw a moment ago, a statement of that kind does not say
what is but what ought to be. Another is that predictions (and postdic?
tions) concern facts, whereas the statement that a certain expression be?
a a me
longs to a grammar (or even to corpus) is not fact. Let explain.
In science only facts are the object of prediction or postdiction. And
facts are states or changes of state (i.e. events or processes) of concrete
or societies. For the utterance of a
things, be it atoms, people, example,
someone are
phrase by someone and its understanding by else facts and,
in principle, they could be predicted if psycholinguistics were advanced
a
enough. Likewise we may safely predict that, if foreign word inluding
the syllable ta, te, ti, to, or tu, is incorporated into the American English
lexicon, it will end up being pronounced /Da/, /De/, /Di, /Do/, or /Du/
respectively. This again is a genuine (though possibly false) prediction
because it concerns a possible fact. On the other hand, whether or not a
given phrase is grammatical

or acceptable is not a fact: it is neither a state
of a concrete thing nor a change in the state of a material entity. Hence
it is neither predictable nor unpredictable. Likewise, whether a given
mathematical formula is well formed (or has a sense in a given theory,
or is true of a particular object), is not predictable because it is not a fact.
-
In general, conformity to a more or less conventional standard and
as we saw - is a datum
grammars are partly conventional in Section 2.1.
but not a fact; hence it is not predictable. In short, pure linguistics can
make no predictions. Put negatively: The predictions claimed by the
transformationalists are phoney.
Genuine linguistic predictions are not made by pure linguistic theory,
which is centrally concerned with grammars. Predictions are made in?
stead with the help of psycholinguistic, neurolinguistic, and sociolinguis
tic theories. Thus "Expression Wis (or is likely to be) used by the speak
ers of linguistic community X when in state Y under circumstances Z" is

a genuine forecast schema. In fact it foretells something about a possible
real event. For instance, we may foresee that the expression he don' know
nothin\ while acceptable to most slum dwellers and many teenagers in
the USA, is unacceptable to the readers of The New Yorker. Likewise
the sociolinguist is in a position to make predictions concerning whole
- for that or the massive
human groups example, rapid industrialization,
influx of tourists, are likely to cause a sharp decline of the local dialect,
whereas a reinforcement of political regionalism is bound to strengthen
the local dialect. (See Gumperz 1982.) Pure linguistics is impotent to make
such forecasts because it detaches language from face to face communi?
cation in real society.
As for the alleged predictions and postdictions made in historical lin?
guistics on the strength of the so-called sound laws, two remarks will have
to suffice. The first is, that is has not yet been proved that the sound reg?
ularities are laws proper, i.e. well confirmed hypotheses belonging to hy
pothetico-deductive systems. They look rather like stray propositions
representing tendencies, i.e. culture- and time-bound patterns. The sec?

ond is, that it is obviously very difficult to put such hypotheses to the test.
After all, man did not record his voice until a century ago; so, all phon?
ological evidence concerning the past is circumstantial.
Note that this is not mere quibbling for, if linguistic theories are pre?
dictive, then they should be tested in the same way as physical theories;
whereas, if they are not, then they must be checked in a different way. I
suggest that they are tested by comparison with grammars rather than by
confrontation with linguistic reality; and that, in turn, grammars should
be tested only in part by their agreement with linguistic facts, for being
normative as well as descriptive, as we argued in Section 2.1. As Chom?
sky himself has rightly stressed, in addition to agreeing with the available
corpus, a grammar should be able to analyze discourse by assigning every
sentence its proper transparent structural description (phrase marker).
In principle any number of grammars can account for a given linguistic
corpus. How do we choose among them? According to Chomsky (1957)
the choice rests largely on intuition and simplicity. More precisely, he
stipulates that, if grammars Gx and G2 agree equally well with the data,
then Gi is preferable to G2 just in case (a) Gx accounts better than G2
for the "linguistic intuitions" of the native speaker of the language, and
162 MARIO BUNGE
(b) Gi is simpler than G2. Unfortunately the key notions of intuition and
simplicity are left undefined. And yet we know that resorting to intuition
is unreliable because one man's intuition is someone else's paradox
(Bunge 1962). And resorting to simplicity is self-deceptive, for there are
many kinds of linguistic simplicity (syntactical, phonological, semantic,
pragmatic), and some of them are mutually incompatible (Bunge 1963).
Hence the finding that Gx accords better than G2 with one's intuition
should not count as evidence; and the claim that G\ is simpler than G2
(in what respects?) should not count as a reason. Of course, Chomsky is

likely to rejoin that linguistic evaluation must rest on the intuition and
the simplicity perception of the ideal speaker-hearer. But this is no em?
pirical test because there are no ideal people and because self-evidence
is anything but objective. In short, TGG does not include an evaluation
procedure comparable to those used in science.

In linguistics, as in every other science, we must count on evidence of
two kinds: intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary. (A piece e of evidence
for a given hypothesis belonging to a research field R can be said to be
intradisciplinary if and only if e belongs exclusively to R, and interdisci?
plinary if it belongs to R and to some other research field.) Botha (1973)

writes about internal and external evidence respectively and notes that,
whereas synchronie data about languages constitute internal evidence for
a linguistic theory, diachronic, dialectal, neurolinguistic, and psycholin
guistic data are external evidence for it.Whereas empiricists tend to re?
(external) evidence as irrelevant, realists rate both
gard interdisciplinary
kinds of evidence as equally important. (Needless to say, rationalists are
not much bothered by evidence.) The ultimate reason for this is that hu?
man knowledge is one: disciplinary borders are somewhat arbitrary.
Although Chomsky does not deny the value of interdisciplinary or ex?

ternal evidence for linguistic theory, he makes no use of it in his technical
work. In particular he makes no use of neurolinguistic or sociolinguistic
data and hypotheses, although these are indispensable to understanding
the mechanism of speech production and understanding (Section 3.2.).
Many other linguists too are disinclined to investigate
linguistic hy?
- not
potheses for which no intradisciplinary data are available only out
of prudency but also because they believe in the autonomy of pure lin?
guistics.
Take for example the hypothesis that primitive man spoke (a primitive
language). Because writing, recording and taping are very recent inven?
tions there can be no direct empirical evidence for or against that hy?
pothesis. But then there is no direct evidence either for the hypothesis
that primitive man slept, thought, or loved. What evidence there is, is
circumstantial and interdisciplinary, namely via general principles of bi?
ology, psychology, and sociology. Thus we are sure that primitive man
had all our physiological needs (though not all our wants) because biol?
ogy tells us that he belonged to the same genus as we do; we are certain
that he thought, because he had a large skull and because tool making -
in particular making tools for fashioning further tools - requires imagi?
nation, foresight, planning, and communication; and we are reasonably
certain that he spoke because language is a useful adjunct to thought, a
tool of communication, and a component of social structure. In sum we
make use of circumstantial and interdisciplinary evidence by virtue of
certain general principles drawn from neighboring sciences. The auton?
omous linguist does not permit himself such liberty. More in the next
section.
Figure 3 summarizes the preceding discussion. For a different schema,

more congenial with Chomsky's ideas, see Botha (1981, p. 437).
4.2. Nature of Linguistic Research
How is linguistic research being conducted, and how should it be con?

ducted? Should it be conducted a
in purely conceptual or a priori man?
ner, like mathematics, or empirically as well as conceptually, like chem?
istry? And should linguistics be regarded as a branch of the humanities
on a par with literary criticism and the history of literature, or as a sci?
ence such as anthropology? These and related
questions are still being
debated by many linguists because they have not reached a consensus on
what their discipline is about. To be sure they all agree that linguistics is
about languages, but they do not agree on what language is nor, there?
fore, on how best to study it. This is partly due to the fragmentation of
linguistic studies (Section 1.1) and partly to the fact that the question of
the nature of language is not a narrow technical one. In fact it is a
philosophicoscientific problem on a par with the problems of the nature
of mind and of society.
Speech is admittedly a very complex phenomenon. It is produced and
164 MARIO BUNGE
LINGUISTIC inspire PSYCHO- AND SO

THEORIES check CIOLINGUISTIC
THEORIES
\ \
suggest
c
test
?H
analyze
codify
LINGUISTIC REALITY (SPEECH)
Fig. 3. Salient features of the relation of theories in pure linguistics with theories in psy
cholinguistics and sociolinguistics, and between those theories and data as well as facts (which
form a superset of the data). Note that only a subset of the totality of data, namely lin?
guistic data proper, are directly relevant to pure linguistics.
understood (or misunderstood) by real people as part of their mental life

and their social intercourse. It is therefore both a mental (neural) phe?
nomenon and a social one. This is why speech is studied not only by
grammarians but also by neuroscientists, psychologists, and social sci?
entists. Besides being studied as a real process in brain and society, i.e.,
as parole, speech is studied in the abstract, i.e., as langue. In fact theo?
retical linguistics does not concern itself with linguistic facts but with a
model of actual speech, namely a language, or even with language in
general. This model disregards the neural and possibly also the social cir?
cumstances of concrete speech acts. There is nothing wrong with such a
study as long as it is not forgotten that it concerns a construct and as long
as some contact with facts once in a while. But, alas, nei?

is established
ther of these cautions is always observed. In particular, the TGGs treat
language as a Platonic idea detached from its use (Harris 1981).
This idealistic orientation of TGG is consistent with its atomistic ap?
proach. By this Imean that TGG focuses (a) on the individual speaker
hearer with neglect of his or her linguistic community, as well as (b) on
the sentence with neglect of the text or discourse. In other words, the ob?
jects of study (or "units of analysis") of TGG are the individual and the
sentence, both of which are actually components of systems. In a system?
ic perspective, on the other hand, the natural referents or "units of anal?
ysis" are the linguistic community and the text or discourse. The advan?
tages of this alternative approach are the general advantages of systemism
over atomism (Bunge 1979) plus a number of particular advantages to the
linguist. One of them is that the social matrixand role of speech is not
overlooked. Another is that pathological speech can be distinguished
qualitatively from normal speech, for psychotics are perfectly capable of
forming correct sentences, but they are often unable to deliver coherent
texts. (See Martin 1982 for a criticism of the use of Chomsky's model of
language in research into schizophrenic language.)
To return to the complexity of speech and language, and the corre?
sponding multidimensionality of linguistics: the latter cannot but be a

mongrel research field rather than a homogeneous one. (Geography and
space science are mongrels too.) Linguistics is not only a natural science
because speech, though a biological function, is very strongly molded by
society. Nor is linguistics an exclusively social science because speech is
also a subjective experience. Besides, linguistics also studies language as
if it were a self-existing object, one detached from both brains and so?
cieties. Hence current linguistics resembles a three-headed monster. See
Figure 4.
The mongrel nature
of linguistics, though quite obvious, is seldom ex?
plicitly recognized. For example, some mathematical linguists believe that
linguistics is a branch of mathematics, just because some linguistic con?
cepts and theories have been mathematized. (Cf. Thomason (ed.) 1974.)
On the other hand the structuralists hold that linguistics is an autono?
mous science. And the transformationalists too act on this tacit belief al?
though they declare that linguistics is a branch of cognitive psychology.
For being partly a natural science, linguistics is concerned with finding
166 MARIO BUNGE
PureL
'
^?\ N
' studies ^
/ n
y 1 \
PsychoL O language O SocioL
% models <?
^SPEECH /
Fig. 4. The three headed monster. 'L' stands for "linguistics", PsychoL is understood as
united with neurolinguistics, and SocioL as comprising not only proper but
sociolinguistics
also anthropological, geographical, and historical linguistics. The broken lines symbolize
the (so far) tenuous links among the three heads.
and using natural laws. And for being partly a social science, linguistics
is also interested in disclosing some of the man-made laws, i.e. rules and
conventions. Surely conventions may ultimately be understood in terms
of laws and circumstances, as when one discovers that certain conven?
tions are given up because they have ceased to be valuable. But the point
is that, whereas natural laws are inherent in concrete things and are quite
impregnable to human efforts, conventions are man-made: we invent

them, though not always wittingly, and we teach ourselves and others to
observe or violate them. Finally, for pretending that there is such a thing
as language (or the speech of an ideal hearer-speaker) above and beyond
real speech (parole), linguistics is also, partly, past natural and social
concerns.
Our next question is whether linguistics, which is a factual research field

can be in particular an ex?
(though one with a normative component),
one. At first sight no linguistic experiments can be made.
perimental
When pure linguists study language (as opposed to speech) they disre?
gard concrete circumstances; and when they study speech (parole) they
would seem to confine themselves to observation. However, this limita?
tion is self-imposed: it does not derive from the nature of the object of
study and therefore it can be lifted.

In fact the limitation is ignored when teaching foreign languages, re?
forming a system of characters, or imposing a uniform official language
on a recently constituted multilingual nation. True, these are not scien?

tific experiments, for they lack controls: they are in the nature of socio
technical actions. they ruin the thesis that linguistics must be con?
But
fined to observation. Besides, there is an incipient though growing body
of experimental linguistics, particularly in phonology (e.g. Lehiste 1982)
and psycholinguistics (e.g. Prideaux (ed.) 1979). However, much of what
passes for linguistic experiment consists merely in interrogating inform?
ants, and so is observation. Genuine experiment involves modifying some
- the pitch and timing of speech to determine
variables e.g. changing
-
whether understanding depends crucially on one or the other variable
and comparing with control groups. Unfortunately most linguists do not
distinguish between experiment and observation, and consequently they

cannot take advantage of the vast technical literature on experimental
design.
The final question we must address is whether linguistics is a science
in the strict sense of the English word or in the lax sense of the German
Wissenschaft. There seems to be consensus among linguists at least on this:
that linguistics is a science, though an immature one like anthropolgy
rather than a mature one like biology. One reason for this evaluation is
the paucity of language and speech laws. (Recall from Section 2.1 that
the rules of grammar do not qualify as natural laws, or objective pat?
terns, if only for the conventional ingredient in them.) A second reason
is that pure linguistics does not explain anything. Chomsky's criticism of
structuralism, that ismainly descriptive and classificatory (Chomsky 1957),
applies to his own work on the grammar of English. Indeed, although it
does provide a codification and analysis of the English language, a gram?
mar of it, even if transformational generative, is not a theory but a de?
scription of the language (Section 2.1). In any event that which calls for
explanation is not language (langue), which is a construct, but speech
(parole). And the latter can only be explained by the other branches of
linguistics, chiefly psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. In conclusion,
linguistics is an incipient science or protoscience rather than a full fledged
science. (See Bunge 1967, 1983b for the concepts of science, protosci?
ence, and pseudoscience.)
Like many a young science linguistics contains some pockets of bogus
science. Paradoxically some of these are linked - via an obsolete
philos?
-
ophy to advanced linguistic theories such as those proposed by the
168 MARIO BUNGE
transformationalists. In fact the methodology usually (though not nec?

essarily) associated with TGG includes the following ingredients which
are typically pseudoscientific: (a) an almost exlusive concentration on
language (a model of speech output) with disregard for speech proper,
and consequently (b) the conduct of linguistic inquiry in total independ?
ence from neuroscience, social science, and even scientific psychology
(since Chomsky's mentalistic speculations cannot pass for science); (c) the
confinement to comparatively little data from few languages; (d) the dis?
counting of counterexamples as "mere performance phenomena", (e) a
heavy reliance on intuition and a feeling of simplicity. The first blemish
is the original sin of the Chomsky school, from which all its other sins
derive. It is intimately allied to Chomsky's philosophy, a blend of ration?
alism and intuitionism closer to Kant than to Descartes. And it has been
regared as the reason for the failure of linguistics to attain a fully scien?
tific status (Derwing 1979).
To conclude, although linguistics has come a long way in the course of
our century, it still has a long way to go before it becomes a full fledged
science. However, itwon't move much further unless it gets rid of its un?
sound philosophical and methodological ballast and achieves the integra?
tion of its various branches.
5. CONCLUDING REMARKS
Like every other discipline, linguistics poses a number of philosophical

problems. The foremost among them is that of examining critically and
evaluating its own philosophical presuppositions. One of Chomsky's
merits has been his exhibiting certain links between linguistics and phi?
losophy; his fault has been, in my opinion, that of adopting a wrong, ob?
solete philosophy instead of promoting a renewal of philosophy. Con?
what usually passes for TGG is actually a large package
sequently
containing not only linguistic components but also sundry philosophical
and methodological components. The latter should be carefully distin?
for itwould be wrong to accept
guished from the technical contributions,
or reject these just because of their philosophical motivations or justifi?
cations. (Never mind the motivation; all we want is education.)
It is usually admitted that the advent of TGG has constituted a revo?
lutionary event and moreover one that has had important repercussions
in psychology and artificial intelligence. However, whereas the tradition?

al linguists of a non-theoretical cast of mind reject TGG for having gone
too far, I submit that it is not revolutionary enough, and this because (a)
it does not approach language in its full complexity (as a brain and social
phenomenon), and (b) it has retrieved a number of ideas and practices
from the cemetery of philosophy.
Among the disvaluable components of what we have called the
'Chomsky package' we have listed the following: (a) the conduct of lin?
guistic research in total isolation from the realities of brain and society;
an almost exclusive concentration on a single language, namely Eng?
(b)
lish, even while purporting to study linguistic universals; (c) a prolifera?
tion of unacceptable hypotheses concerning ghostly "mental structures
underlying mental abilities" and innate capacities; (d) an unorthodox way
of dealing with counter-examples; (e) an unbiological (in particular non
evolutionary) and unhistorical (synchronie) perspective on language; (f) a
lack of interest in empirical research; (g) plenty of obscure yet key no?
tions, such as those of linguistic competence (or UG), linguistic intuition,
-
and deep structure; (h) reliance on intuition or "tacit knowledge" e.g.
- rather than on explicit principles or rules;
in disclosing deep structures
(i) sundry methodological heresies, such as that grammars are explana?

tory and predictive theories and that, to evaluate a linguistic theory, cov?
erage matters less than insight; and (j) incessant talk of meaning without
proposing a theory of it.
I suggest that the sound technical core of TGG is conceptually (though
not heuristically) independent of the above mentioned objectionable
features. It is up to linguists to substantiate this thesis by freeing TGG
from them. Accomplishing this task should facilitate the integration of all
-
the disciplines dealing with speech i.e. the building of the hexagon in
Figure 1. All of these disciplines study ultimately, in different ways, one
and the same thing, namely the speech functions of the living human brain
immersed in real society.
To conclude, linguistics is in the throes of a severe crisis. Indeed, it is
fragmented into half a dozen disjoint fields, and nearly every field is in
turn split into a number of schools - more than a dozen in the case of
pure linguistics. The crisis is largely one of methodology and philosophy;
it has its source inmutually incompatible views on the nature of language
and the best way of studying it. In fact each of the main schools of lin
170 MARIO BUNGE
guistics presupposes either an empiricist or a rationalist philosophy or

some combination of the two. Just as in philosophy it is possible and de?
sirable to adopt a system combining the positive aspects of all schools,
and one promoting the progress of knowledge rather than blocking it, so
in linguistics it is possible and desirable to adopt such a unified philoso?
phy capable of guiding the investigation of the various aspects of speech
(parole) and language (langue) with a view to producing a comprehen?

sive and deep synthesis allowing us to understand how and why we speak,
and perhaps even how we came to speak.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to Professor E.F. Konrad Koerner (Linguistics, University

of Ottawa) for having invited me to present the gist of this paper at the
XIHth International Congress of Linguists (Tokyo, August-September
1982). I thank my colleagues Harry Bracken (Philosophy) and Michel
Paradis (Linguistics), as well as my student Mike Dillinger (Psychology),
- some
for a number of useful remarks and criticisms of which I have not
heeded risk. I am also grateful to Professor Roy Harris (University
at my
of Oxford) and to Professor James Foley (Simon Fraser University) for
a number of criticisms. The research involved in writing this monograph
was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
of Canada, which also assisted me in attending the Tokyo Congress. Last,
but not least, I am grateful to Professor Hiroshi Kurosaki (Philosophy,
Seijo University) and the Japan Association for the Philosophy of Sci?
ence for their warm hospitality.
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Philosophical Problems in Linguistics

Author(s): Mario Bunge

PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS IN LINGUISTICS

Language has attracted the attention of many philosophers since Antiq?

Erkenntnis 21 (1984) 107-173. 0165-0106/84/0212-0107 $06.70

dividuals and adopted by society, whereas to Chomsky we are born hav?

ing a tacit knowledge of universal grammar. Wittgenstein focuses on

chology. These differences explain the differences among the followers

[particularly mathematical logic] to linguistics, and in the later period he

(i) whether TGG answers satisfactorily the basic philosophical questions

particular his mentalism, nativism, and methodological apriorism. How?

1.1 Language and Linguistics

language is the set of speech processes, which are in turn physiological

Some conflicting views on (L)

BASIC STRUCTURAL? MENTALISM BIOL. & SOCIAL

A L is a set of phonemes a set of sentences a system of meaningful

A L is in culture the mind the brain-in-society

Language is ac? learning by indue- selecting a grammar learning by imitation,

Learning theory is optional unnecessary or even necessary

guage is an ability that can be

ters" are taken into consideration and interrelated: (a) propositional

Our basic question, 'What is language?', is an ontological one in the

investigated by philosophy alone, for it is scientific as well as philosoph?

The nature of the question is likely to be better understood in attempt?

ing to idealism language exists by itself, either as a sort of Platonic idea

people and hovering above them, or as a human creation

ing things: everything else is the invention of particular concrete things

the production and understanding of speech, we take to be the primary

Heidegger notwithstanding, it is not the abode of Being. Rather, the word

jects. In particular such linguistic theories may describe psycholinguistic

cholinguistics and sociolinguistics.)

(universal) theories continuum mechan- lutionby genie change

theories Theories of English Relativistic contin- Theories of human (or

cholinguistic, and materials of special

neurolinguistic the- kinds.

Model objects Language in gener-?Flowing body. Coevolving popula

speakers. of particles. variable (constant) en

phrase structures. vironment.

In the first case the concept of a system applies to a language L by

making the following identifications:

system in question is likewise timeless, hence imaginary rather than con?

among themselves, as well as to members of other linguistic communi?

systems of different kinds, some conceptual, others material. (See Bunge

Such variety of approaches will not result in rivalry provided neither

1.2. Chomsky's Upheaval

and its philosophy were profoundly altered by Chomsky's

marily syntactic phase of TGG, whereas the latter expounded the

psycholinguistics, and much else besides.

firmly rooted in the humanities, in particular in the rationalistic philo?

problems as well. (There are currently more than fourteen approaches to

syntax: see Moravcsik & Wirth (eds.) 1980.) Furthermore, Chomsky

nating personality and his outspoken (to many outrageous) opinions on

guistics. Another factor contributing to Chomsky's popularity is that he

LI Overall thesis: A language is an infinite set of sentences in themselves,

L3 Semantic (or Katz-Postal) thesis: Deep structure determines semantic

PI Mentalism: is in the mind - not in the brain, let alone in

P2 Language faculty: Man is unique in being born with difacult? de lan?

P4 Development (ontogeny) and evolution (phylogeny) are irrelevant to

P5 Communication, a mode of social behavior, is likewise irrelevant to

Ml The ultimate goal of linguistic research is to build comprehensive and

- mental structures and events - to explain phe?

derlying, are not explicated.)

M3 Describe and explain everything linguistic in purely mentalistic terms