TY - CHAP
T1 - Chomsky's paradigm
T2 - What it includes and what it excludes
AU - Radwańska-Williams, Joanna
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2010 - John Benjamins B.V.
PY - 2010/2/18
Y1 - 2010/2/18
N2 - In the structuralist tradition, the semiotic nature of the linguistic sign was seen as grounded in the psychological association between sound and meaning. On the one hand, this association is arbitrary, since sound and meaning are dissimilar in nature; on the other hand, the language system as a whole is partially motivated through various associations by similarity, which group paradigmatic relations and are a factor in semantic change. The system relies on the social fact of language use as the guarantor of the stability of conventionalized form-meaning associations, but also as the agent of change, which is a slow disruption and restructuring of the stability of the system. The article discusses evidence for the semiotic nature of language from the domain of poetic iconicity, which heightens and highlights the possibility of non-arbitrary association between meaning and form. The importance of the dimension of language use is also discussed with reference to Mufwene's (2001, 2005, 2007) 'uniformitarian' theory of language contact, according to which idiolectal contact is the linguistic locus of social interaction and language change. It is argued that, in discounting language use, i.e., 'linguistic performance' and 'E-language', the Chomskyan theoretical framework is incomplete as an account of the nature of language.
AB - In the structuralist tradition, the semiotic nature of the linguistic sign was seen as grounded in the psychological association between sound and meaning. On the one hand, this association is arbitrary, since sound and meaning are dissimilar in nature; on the other hand, the language system as a whole is partially motivated through various associations by similarity, which group paradigmatic relations and are a factor in semantic change. The system relies on the social fact of language use as the guarantor of the stability of conventionalized form-meaning associations, but also as the agent of change, which is a slow disruption and restructuring of the stability of the system. The article discusses evidence for the semiotic nature of language from the domain of poetic iconicity, which heightens and highlights the possibility of non-arbitrary association between meaning and form. The importance of the dimension of language use is also discussed with reference to Mufwene's (2001, 2005, 2007) 'uniformitarian' theory of language contact, according to which idiolectal contact is the linguistic locus of social interaction and language change. It is argued that, in discounting language use, i.e., 'linguistic performance' and 'E-language', the Chomskyan theoretical framework is incomplete as an account of the nature of language.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84958938873&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1075/z.154.03rad
DO - 10.1075/z.154.03rad
M3 - Chapter
AN - SCOPUS:84958938873
SN - 9789027211699
SP - 43
EP - 71
BT - Chomskyan (R)evolutions
PB - John Benjamins Publishing Company
ER -