Functional Approaches to Language

Description

Functionalism, as characterized by Allen, (2007:254) "holds that linguistic structures can only be understood and explained with reference to the semantic and communicative functions of language, whose primary function is to be a vehicle for social interaction among human beings."  Since the 1970s, inspired by the work of Jespersen, Bolinger, Dik, Halliday, and Chafe, functionalism has been attached to a variety of movements and models making major contributions to linguistic theory and to various subfields within linguistics, such as syntax, discourse, language acquisition, cognitive linguistics, typology, and documentary linguistics. Further, functional approaches have had a major impact outside linguistics in fields such as psychology and education, both in terms of theory and application. The main goal of functionalist approaches is to clarify the dynamic relationship between form and function (Thompson 2003:53). Functionalist perspectives have gained more ground over the past decades with more linguists resorting to functional explanations to account for linguistic structure. The authors in this volume present the current state of functional approaches to linguistic inquiry expanding our knowledge of language and linguistics. Highlights functionalism as the new trend in linguistics Introduction 1 Introduction 2 The Volume Papers Acknowledgments References On the Intellectual Roots of Functionalism in Linguistics 1 Antiquity 2 Middle Ages to the 19th Century 3 The 19th Century 4 Structuralism 5 Chomsky 6 The 1970’s pragmatic synthesis References Functional Explanation and its Uses 1 Preliminary Remarks 2 Explaining the Zero in Verb Morphology 3 Explaining Grammatical Asymmetries and Hierarchies 4 Explaining Grammaticalization 5 Additional Examples of Typological Explanation 6 Explanations: From Typological via Teleological to Rational 7 Sense-Perception and Its Complementary Notions: Introspection < Empathy < Intuition 8 In Which Sense Do Typological Explanations Qualify as Functional? 9 What Other Types of Explanation May Be Needed? 10 Conclusion References Structure and Function: A Niche-Constructional Approach 1 Introduction 2 Linguistics and evolutionary theory 3 The structuralist-functionalist dichotomies – in the light of nicheconstructional evolution 4 Conclusion References Toward a Thought-Based Linguistics 1 Language function 2 Looking through the wrong end of the telescope 3 What are thoughts anyway? 4 Two views of language design 5 Thought structure 6 From thoughts to a semantic structure 7 From semantics to syntax 8 From syntax to phonology and sounds 9 Thought and language as a continuous flow 10 Does language shape thoughts? 11 Interdisciplinary convergence 12 Summary References Changing Language 1 Introduction 2 Syntactic Adaptations 3 Phonological Adaptations 4 What Kind of Learning System? 5 Concluding Remarks References An Outline of Discourse Grammar 1 Introduction 2 Discourse Grammar 3 The two main domains of DG 4 The categories of TG 5 Non-restrictive meaning and the situation of discourse 6 Cooptation 7 Types of theticals 8 Earlier accounts 9 Conclusions Abbreviations Acknowledgements References Towards an Experimental Functional Linguistics: Production 1 Introduction 2 Why do experiments? 3 Why study production? 4 The observer’s paradox and the ‘design space’ of functional language production experiments 5 Beyond recipient design: Strategies, choices, and brain-traps 6 Two things that functional linguists need to know about how the brain works: Lexical and structural priming 7 Experiments and their design 8 Conclusion Acknowledgements References Index