Філологія. Українська мова і література

В.Л.Кравченко

Методичні рекомендації

З ТКІМ

(Актуальні питання теорії англійської мови)

для студентів 5 курсу

 

Гуманітарні науки

Філологія. Українська мова і література

 

 

Полтава – 2012

УДК 811.111(072.2)

ББК 81.432.1-91

Методичні рекомендації з ТКІМ (Актуальні питання теорії англійської мови) для студентів 5 курсу(7.02030301 Філологія. Українська мова і література). – Полтава: ПНПУ ім.В.Г.Короленка, 2012. – 56` с.

УКЛАДАЧ:

КРАВЧЕНКО В.Л., к.ф.н., доцент кафедри англійської та німецької філології Полтавського національного педагогічного університету імені В.Г.Короленка

РЕЦЕНЗЕНТИ:

Король Л.Л. к.п.н., доц. кафедри іноземних мов та слов’янського мовознавства Полтавського національного педагогічного університету імені В.Г.Короленка

ПЛОТКІНА М.Г., к.ф.н., доц. кафедри англійської та німецької філології Полтавського національного педагогічного університету імені В.Г.Короленка

 

У методичних рекомендаціях з ТКІМ для студентів 5 курсу визначені мета і завдання вивчення дисципліни “ТКІМ”, представлені вимоги до умінь, знань та навичок, якими повинні опанувати студенти, визначено форми контролю та критерії оцінювання. Методичні рекомендації містять питання до кожного семінарського заняття, а також матеріал, що допоможе студентам при підготовці до занять.

 

 

Методичні рекомендації розглянуті та схвалені на засіданні кафедри англійської філології Полтавського національного педагогічного університету імені В.Г.Короленка

Протокол № від 20 року

 

Друкується за рішенням ученої ради Полтавського національного педагогічного університету імені В.Г.Короленка (протокол № від

20 року)

Зміст

ВСТУП …….…………………………………..…………………………... 4

СЕМІНАР 1..................................................... …………………………...8

СЕМІНАР 2……………………………..…………………………………… 21

СЕМІНАР 3..……………………………………………………………….... 31

СЕМІНАР 4 …………………………………………………………………. 52

СЕМІНАР 5.................................................... …………………………….54

СПИСОК ПИТАНЬ ДО ЕКЗАМЕНУ........... ………………………….. 58

Рекомендована література……………….………………………..…..63

ВСТУП

Предметом вивчення навчальної дисципліни є основні проблеми сучасної теорії англійської мови в контексті нових лінгвістичних концепцій та гіпотез. Значна увага приділяється сучасним методам дослідження мови й мовлення.

Міждисциплінарні зв’язки: дисципліна входить в коло наукових знань таких філологічних напрямів як лексикологія, семіотика, соціолінгвістика, дискурс-аналіз, культурологія, лінгвокогнітологія, лінгвопрагматика тощо. Курс має синтезуючий характер і ґрунтується на узагальненні знань, отриманих студентами під час вивчення історії англійської мови, теоретичних курсів з фонетики, лексикології, граматики та стилістики. Водночас дисципліна спрямовується на набуття студентами нових знань, опанування найсучаснішими відомостями про мову.

Метою викладання навчальної дисципліни “ТКІМ” є – ознайомити студентів із сучасним станом мовознавства в царині англістики: основними лінгвістичними напрямками, ключовими проблемами й базовими поняттями; узагальнити та систематизувати знання, отримані студентами під час вивчення теоретичних дисциплін. Вивчення дисципліни сприяє розвитку свідомого ставлення до актуальних проблем теорії англійської мови, поглибленню розуміння мовних явищ та фактів, формуванню аналітичних навичок та критичної думки.

Основними завданнями вивчення дисципліни “ТКІМ” є

- розгляд сучасних лінгвістичних напрямків як самостійних концепцій, що мають специфічні предмет вивчення, мету, завдання, методи й метамову опису;

- вивчення термінологічного апарату сучасних лінгвістичних напрямків;

- ознайомлення із сучасними методами дослідження мови й мовлення;

- екстраполяція сучасних лінгвістичних теорій на англійську мову;

- інтерпретація спірних питань англістики з точки зору сучасних теорій;

- формування навичок самостійного аналізу мовного матеріалу із застосуванням сучасних методів.

Згідно з вимогами освітньо-професійної програми студенти повинні:

знати:

1) знати основні питання, на розв’язання яких спрямовується методологічний апарат сучасної лінгвістики;

2) уміти виділяти нові аспекти давно відомих, “вічних” питань мовознавства та орієнтуватися в проблемах, які постали в мовознавстві на початку ХХІ ст.;

3) уміти охарактеризувати кожний із сучасних напрямків мовознавства, визначаючи предмет вивчення, мету, завдання, методи й метамову опису;

4) знати основні ключові терміни курсу;

вміти:

1) уміти проінтерпретувати спірні питання англістики з точки зору сучасних лінгвістичних теорій;

2) уміти застосовувати сучасні методи лінгвістичних досліджень для самостійного аналізу мовного матеріалу.

 

На вивчення навчальної дисципліни відводиться 54 години/ 1,5 кредитів ECTS.

Інформаційний обсяг навчальної дисципліни

Змістовий модуль 1. The Roots of the Modern Theory of Language

Тема 1. The notion of paradigm in science. The successive change of the main linguistic paradigms.

Тема 2. Comparative-historical linguistics. Structural linguistics. Peculiarities of the change of paradigms in linguistics.

Змістовий модуль 2. ‘Language and Thought’ as One of the Cardinal Problems in Linguistics. Anthropological Approach to the Study of Language.

Тема 1. The essence of the problem of Language and Thought. Propositional and syntactic structures.

Тема 2. Universal Grammar.

Тема 3. The Principle of linguistic relativity (Sapir-Whorf hypothesis).

Тема 4. Anthropological Approach to the Study of Language.

Seminar № 1 (2 hours)

Theme: The Roots of the Modern Theory of Language

I. Theoretical Questions.

1. The notion of paradigm in science.

2. The successive change of the main linguistic paradigms.

3. Comparative-historical linguistics.

4. Structural linguistics.

5. Peculiarities of the change of paradigms in linguistics.

III. Practical assignments.

1. Write the table of Comparative-historical paradigm.

2. Write the table of Structural paradigm.

Individual work:

Critical reading of the paper “The Structure of Scientific revolutions” by T.S.Kuhn. Make a short written essay.

Key words: Linguistics, paradigm, scientific paradigm, the change of scientific paradigm, Comparative-historical linguistics, Structural linguistics, structure, system.

IV. Literature to use:

1. Linguistics. An Introduction / by Andrew Radford, Martin Atkinson, David Britain, Harald Clahsen and Andrew Spencer – Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. ‒ 433 p.

2. Poluzhyn M.M. Lecture notes on historiography of linguistics. – Vinnytsya, 2004.

3. Амирова Т.А. и др. Очерки по истории лингвистики. – М.: Наука, 1975.

4. Вишняцкий Л.Б. Происхождение языка: современное состояние проблемы (Взгляд археолога) // Вопросы языкознания. – 2002. - № 2. – С. 48-63.

5. Кочерган М.П. Загальне мовознавство. – К.: Академія, 1999.

6. Кун Т. Структура научных революций. – М.: Прогресс, 1977.

7. Луньова Т.В. Актуальні питання теорії англійської мови. [Навчальний посібник для студентів 5 курсу спеціальності “Педагогіка і методика середньої освіти. Мова і література (англійська, німецька)”, “ Педагогіка і методика середньої освіти. Українська мова і література та англійська мова”] / Т.В. Луньова. ‒ Полтава, 2008. ‒ 104 с.

8. Семчинський С.В. Загальне мовознавство. – К.: Вища шк., 1996.

9. Лингвистический энциклопедический словарь. / Гл. ред. В.Н.Ярцева. – М.: Сов. энциклоп., 1990.

10. Штерн І.Б. Вибрані топіки та лексикон сучасної лінгвістики. Енцикл. словник для фахівців з теоретич. гуманіт. дисциплін та гуманіт. інф-ки. – К.: АртЕк, 1998.

Historical background

Greek philosophers in the 5th century BC who debated the origins of human language were the first in the West to be concerned with linguistic theory. The first complete Greek grammar, written by Dionysus Thrax in the 1st century BC, was a model for Roman grammarians, whose work led to the medieval and Renaissance vernacular grammars.

With the rise of historical linguistics in the 19th century, linguistics became a science. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries Ferdinand de Saussure established the structuralist school of linguistics (see structuralism), which analyzed actual speech to learn about the underlying structure of language. In the 1950s Noam Chomsky challenged the structuralist program, arguing that linguistics should study native speakers' unconscious knowledge of their language (competence), not the language they actually produce (performance). His general approach, known as transformational generative grammar, was extensively revised in subsequent decades as the extended standard theory, the principles-and-parameters (government-binding) approach, and the minimalist program. Other grammatical theories developed from the 1960s were generalized phrase structure grammar, lexical-functional grammar, relational grammar, and cognitive grammar. Chomsky's emphasis on linguistic competence greatly stimulated the development of the related disciplines of psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics. Other related fields are anthropological linguistics, computational linguistics, mathematical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and the philosophy of language.

Logical Positivism

A century ago it would, I think, have been possible to let the case for the necessity of revolutions rest at this point. But today, unfortunately, that cannot be done because the view of the subject developed above cannot be maintained if the most prevalent contemporary interpretation of the nature and function of scientific theory is accepted. That interpretation, closely associated with early logical positivism and not categorically rejected by its successors, would restrict the range and meaning of an accepted theory so that it could not possibly conflict with any later theory that made predictions about some of the same natural phenomena. The best-known and the strongest case for this restricted conception of a scientific theory emerges in discussions of the relation between contemporary Einsteinian dynamics and the older dynamical equations that descend from Newton’s Principia. From the viewpoint of this essay these two theories are fundamentally incompatible in the sense illustrated by the relation of Copernican to Ptolemaic astronomy: Einstein’s theory can be accepted only with the recognition that Newton’s was wrong. Today this remains a minority view. We must therefore examine the most prevalent objections to it.

The gist of these objections can be developed as follows. Relativistic dynamics cannot have shown Newtonian dynamics to be wrong, for Newtonian dynamics is still used with great success by most engineers and, in selected applications, by many physicists. Furthermore, the propriety of this use of the older theory can be proved from the very theory that has, in other applications, replaced it. Einstein’s theory can be used to show that predictions from Newton’s equations will be as good as our measuring instruments in all applications that satisfy a small number of restrictive conditions. For example, if Newtonian theory is to provide a good approximate solution, the relative velocities of the bodies considered must be small compared with the velocity of light. Subject to this condition and a few others, Newtonian theory seems to be derivable from Einsteinian, of which it is therefore a special case.

But, the objection continues, no theory can possibly conflict with one of its special cases. If Einsteinian science seems to make Newtonian dynamics wrong, that is only because some Newtonians were so incautious as to claim that Newtonian theory yielded entirely precise results or that it was valid at very high relative velocities. Since they could not have had any evidence for such claims, they betrayed the standards of science when they made them. In so far as Newtonian theory was ever a truly scientific theory supported by valid evidence, it still is. Only extravagant claims for the theory – claims that were never properly parts of science can have been shown by Einstein to be wrong. Purged of these merely human extravagances, Newtonian theory has never been challenged and cannot be.

Some variant of this argument is quite sufficient to make any theory ever used by a significant group of competent scientists immune to attack. The much-maligned phlogiston theory, for example, gave order to a large number of physical and chemical phenomena. It explained why bodies burned – they were rich in phlogiston – and why metals had so many more properties in common than did their ores. The metals were all compounded from different elementary earths combined with phlogiston, and the latter, common to all metals, produced common properties. In addition, the phlogiston theory accounted for a number of reactions in which acids were formed by the combustion of substances like carbon and sulphur. Also, it explained the decrease of volume when combustion occurs in a confined volume of air the phlogiston released by combustion “spoils” the elasticity of the air that absorbed it, just as fire “spoils” the elasticity of a steel spring. If these were the only phenomena that the phlogiston theorists had claimed for their theory, that theory could never have been challenged. A similar argument will suffice for any theory that has ever been successfully applied to any range of phenomena at all.

But to save theories in this way, their range of application must be restricted to those phenomena and to that precision of observation with which the experimental evidence in hand already deals. Carried just a step further (and the step can scarcely be avoided once the first is taken), such a limitation prohibits the scientist from claiming to speak “scientifically” about any phenomenon not already observed. Even in its present form the restriction forbids the scientist to rely upon a theory in his own research whenever that research enters an area or seeks a degree of precision for which past practice with the theory offers no precedent. These prohibitions are logically unexceptionable. But the result of accepting them would be the end of the research through which science may develop further.

By now that point too is virtually a tautology. Without commitment to a paradigm there could be no normal science. Furthermore, that commitment must extend to areas and to degrees of precision for which there is no full precedent. If it did not, the paradigm could provide no puzzles that had not already been solved. Besides, it is not only normal science that depends upon commitment to a paradigm. If existing theory binds the scientist only with respect to existing applications, then there can be no surprises, anomalies, or crises. But these are just the signposts that point the way to extraordinary science. If positivistic restrictions on the range of a theory’s legitimate applicability are taken literally, the mechanism that tells the scientific community what problems may lead to fundamental change must cease to function. And when that occurs, the community will inevitably return to something much like its pre-paradigm state a condition in which all members practice science but in which their gross product scarcely resembles science at all. Is it really any wonder that the price of significant scientific advance is a commitment that runs the risk of being wrong?

More important, there is a revealing logical lacuna in the positivist’s argument, one that will reintroduce us immediately to the nature of revolutionary change. Can Newtonian dynamics really be derived from relativistic dynamics? What would such a derivation look like? Imagine a set of statements, E₁, E₂,... E_n which together embody the laws of relativity theory. These statements contain variables and parameters representing spatial position, time, rest mass, etc. From them, together with the apparatus of logic and mathematics, is deducible a whole set of further statements including some that can be checked by observation. To prove the adequacy of Newtonian dynamics as a special case, we must add to the E_i’s additional statements, like (v/c)² << 1, restricting the range of the parameters and variables. This enlarged set of statements is then manipulated to yield a new set, N₁, N₂,..., N_m, which is identical in form with Newton’s laws of motion, the law of gravity, and so on. Apparently Newtonian dynamics has been derived from Einsteinian, subject to a few limiting conditions.

Yet the derivation is spurious, at least to this point. Though the N_i’s are a special case of the laws of relativistic mechanics, they are not Newton’s Laws. Or at least they are not unless those laws are reinterpreted in a way that would have been impossible until after Einstein’s work. The variables and parameters that in the Einsteinian E_i’s represented spatial position, time, mass, etc., still occur in the N_i’s; and they there still represent Einsteinian space, time, and mass. But the physical referents of these Einsteinian concepts are by no means identical with those of the Newtonian concepts that bear the same name. (Newtonian mass is conserved; Einsteinian is convertible with energy. Only at low relative velocities may the two be measured in the same way, and even then they must not be conceived to be the same.) Unless we change the definitions of the variables in the N_i’s, the statements we have derived are not Newtonian. If we do change them, we cannot properly be said to have derived Newton’s Laws, at least not in any sense of “derive” now generally recognised. Our argument has, of course, explained why Newton’s Laws ever seemed to work. In doing so it has justified, say, an automobile driver in acting as though he lived in a Newtonian universe. An argument of the same type is used to justify teaching earth-centred astronomy to surveyors. But the argument has still not done what it purported to do. It has not, that is, shown Newton’s Laws to be a limiting case of Einstein’s. For in the passage to the limit it is not only the forms of the laws that have changed. Simultaneously we have had to alter the fundamental structural elements of which the universe to which they apply is composed.

This need to change the meaning of established and familiar concepts is central to the revolutionary impact of Einstein’s theory. Though subtler than the changes from geocentrism to heliocentrism, from phlogiston to oxygen, or from corpuscles to waves, the resulting conceptual transformation is no less decisively destructive of a previously established paradigm. We may even come to see it as a prototype for revolutionary reorientations in the sciences. Just because it did not involve the introduction of additional objects or concepts, the transition from Newtonian to Einsteinian mechanics illustrates with particular clarity the scientific revolution as a displacement of the conceptual network through which scientists view the world.

These remarks should suffice to show what might, in another philosophical climate, have been taken for granted. At least for scientists, most of the apparent differences between a discarded scientific theory and its successor are real. Though an out-of-date theory can always be viewed as a special case of its up-to-date successor, it must be transformed for the purpose. And the transformation is one that can be undertaken only with the advantages of hindsight, the explicit guidance of the more recent theory. Furthermore, even if that transformation were a legitimate device to employ in interpreting the older theory, the result of its application would be a theory so restricted that it could only restate what was already known. Because of its economy, that restatement would have utility, but it could not suffice for the guidance of research.

Let us, therefore, now take it for granted that the differences between successive paradigms are both necessary and irreconcilable. Can we then say more explicitly what sorts of differences these are? The most apparent type has already been illustrated repeatedly. Successive paradigms tell us different things about the population of the universe and about that population’s behaviour. They differ, that is, about such questions as the existence of subatomic particles, the materiality of light, and the conservation of heat or of energy. These are the substantive differences between successive paradigms, and they require no further illustration. But paradigms differ in more than substance, for they are directed not only to nature but also back upon the science that produced them. They are the source of the methods, problem-field, and standards of solution accepted by any mature scientific community at any given time. As a result, the reception of a new paradigm often necessitates a redefinition of the corresponding science. Some old problems may be relegated to another science or declared entirely “unscientific.” Others that were previously non-existent or trivial may, with a new paradigm, become the very archetypes of significant scientific achievement. And as the problems change, so, often, does the standard that distinguishes a real scientific solution from a mere metaphysical speculation, word game, or mathematical play. The normal-scientific tradition that emerges from a scientific revolution is not only incompatible but often actually incommensurable with that which has gone before.

The impact of Newton’s work upon the normal seventeenth century tradition of scientific practice provides a striking example of these subtler effects of paradigm shift. Before Newton was born the “new science” of the century had at last succeeded in rejecting Aristotelian and scholastic explanations expressed in terms of the essences of material bodies. To say that a stone fell because its “nature” drove it toward the center of the universe had been made to look a mere tautological word-play, something it had not previously been. Henceforth the entire flux of sensory appearances, including colour, taste, and even weight, was to be explained in terms of the size, shape, position, and motion of the elementary corpuscles of base matter. The attribution of other qualities to the elementary atoms was a resort to the occult and therefore out of bounds for science. Molière caught the new spirit precisely when he ridiculed the doctor who explained opium’s efficacy as a soporific by attributing to it a dormitive potency. During the last half of the seventeenth century many scientists preferred to say that the round shape of the opium particles enabled them to sooth the nerves about which they moved.

In an earlier period explanations in terms of occult qualities had been an integral part of productive scientific work. Nevertheless, the seventeenth century’s new commitment to mechanico-corpuscular explanation proved immensely fruitful for a number of sciences, ridding them of problems that had defied generally accepted solution and suggesting others to replace them. In dynamics, for example, Newton’s three laws of motion are less a product of novel experiments than of the attempt to reinterpret well-known observations in terms of the motions and interactions of primary neutral corpuscles. Consider just one concrete illustration. Since neutral corpuscles could act on each other only by contact, the mechanico-corpuscular view of nature directed scientific attention to a brand-new subject of study, the alteration of particulate motions by collisions. Descartes announced the problem and provided its first putative solution. Huygens, Wren, and Wallis carried it still further, partly by experimenting with colliding pendulum bobs, but mostly by applying previously well-known characteristics of motion to the new problem. And Newton embedded their results in his laws of motion. The equal “action” and “reaction” of the third law are the changes in quantity of motion experienced by the two parties to a collision. The same change of motion supplies the definition of dynamical force implicit in the second law. In this case, as in many others during the seventeenth century, the corpuscular paradigm bred both a new problem and a large part of that problem’s solution.

Yet, though much of Newton’s work was directed to problems and embodied standards derived from the mechanico-corpuscular world view, the effect of the paradigm that resulted from his work was a further and partially destructive change in the problems and standards legitimate for science. Gravity, interpreted as an innate attraction between every pair of particles of matter, was an occult quality in the same sense as the scholastics’ “tendency to fall” had been. Therefore, while the standards of corpuscularism remained in effect, the search for a mechanical explanation of gravity was one of the most challenging problems for those who accepted the Principia as paradigm. Newton devoted much attention to it and so did many of his eighteenth-century successors. The only apparent option was to reject Newton’s theory for its failure to explain gravity, and that alternative, too, was widely adopted. Yet neither of these views ultimately triumphed. Unable either to practice science without the Principia or to make that work conform to the corpuscular standards of the seventeenth century, scientists gradually accepted the view that gravity was indeed innate. By the mid-eighteenth century that interpretation had been almost universally accepted, and the result was a genuine reversion (which is not the same as a retrogression) to a scholastic standard. Innate attractions and repulsions joined size, shape, position, and motion as physically irreducible primary properties of matter.

The resulting change in the standards and problem-field of physical science was once again consequential. By the 1740’s, for example, electricians could speak of the attractive “virtue” of the electric fluid without thereby inviting the ridicule that had greeted Molière’s doctor a century before. As they did so, electrical phenomena increasingly displayed an order different from the one they had shown when viewed as the effects of a mechanical effluvium that could act only by contact. In particular, when electrical action-at-a-distance became a subject for study in its own right, the phenomenon we now call charging by induction could be recognised as one of its effects. Previously, when seen at all, it had been attributed to the direct action of electrical “atmospheres” or to the leakages inevitable in any electrical laboratory. The new view of inductive effects was, in turn, the key to Franklin’s analysis of the Leyden jar and thus to the emergence of a new and Newtonian paradigm for electricity. Nor were dynamics and electricity the only scientific fields affected by the legitimisation of the search for forces innate to matter. The large body of eighteenth-century literature on chemical affinities and replacement series also derives from this supramechanical aspect of Newtonianism. Chemists who believed in these differential attractions between the various chemical species set up previously unimagined experiments and searched for new sorts of reactions. Without the data and the chemical concepts developed in that process, the later work of Lavoisier and, more particularly, of Dalton would be incomprehensible. Changes in the standards governing permissible problems, concepts, and explanations can transform a science. In the next section I shall even suggest a sense in which they transform the world.

Other examples of these non-substantive differences between successive paradigms can be retrieved from the history of any science in almost any period of its development. For the moment let us be content with just two other and far briefer illustrations. Before the chemical revolution, one of the acknowledged tasks of chemistry was to account for the qualities of chemical substances and for the changes these qualities underwent during chemical reactions. With the aid of a small number of elementary “principles” – of which phlogiston was one – the chemist was to explain why some substances are acidic, others metalline, combustible, and so forth. Some success in this direction had been achieved. We have already noted that phlogiston explained why the metals were so much alike, and we could have developed a similar argument for the acids. Lavoisier’s reform, however, ultimately did away with chemical “principles,” and thus ended by depriving chemistry of some actual and much potential explanatory power. To compensate for this loss, a change in standards was required. During much of the nineteenth century failure to explain the qualities of compounds was no indictment of a chemical theory.

Or again, Clerk Maxwell shared with other nineteenth-century proponents of the wave theory of light the conviction that light waves must be propagated through a material ether. Designing a mechanical medium to support such waves was a standard problem for many of his ablest contemporaries. His own theory, however, the electromagnetic theory of light, gave no account at all of a medium able to support light waves, and it clearly made such an account harder to provide than it had seemed before. Initially, Maxwell’s theory was widely rejected for those reasons. But, like Newton’s theory, Maxwell’s proved difficult to dispense with, and as it achieved the status of a paradigm the community’s attitude toward it changed. In the early decades of the twentieth century Maxwell’s insistence upon the existence of a mechanical ether looked more and more like lip service, which it emphatically had not been, and the attempts to design such an ethereal medium were abandoned. Scientists no longer thought it unscientific to speak of an electrical “displacement” without specifying what was being displaced. The result, again, was a new set of problems and standards, one which, in the event, had much to do with the emergence of relativity theory.

These characteristic shifts in the scientific community’s conception of its legitimate problems and standards would have less significance to this essay’s thesis if one could suppose that they always occurred from some methodologically lower to some higher type. In that case their effects, too, would seem cumulative. No wonder that some historians have argued that the history of science records a continuing increase in the maturity and refinement of man’s conception of the nature of science. Yet the case for cumulative development of science’s problems and standards is even harder to make than the case for cumulation of theories. The attempt to explain gravity, though fruitfully abandoned by most eighteenth-century scientists, was not directed to an intrinsically illegitimate problem; the objections to innate forces were neither inherently unscientific nor metaphysical in some pejorative sense. There are no external standards to permit a judgment of that sort. What occurred was neither a decline nor a raising of standards, but simply a change demanded by the adoption of a new paradigm. Furthermore, that change has since been reversed and could be again. In the twentieth century Einstein succeeded in explaining gravitational attractions, and that explanation has returned science to a set of canons and problems that are, in this particular respect, more like those of Newton’s predecessors than of his successors. Or again, the development of quantum mechanics has reversed the methodological prohibition that originated in the chemical revolution. Chemists now attempt, and with great success, to explain the colour, state of aggregation, and other qualities of the substances used and produced in their laboratories. A similar reversal may even be underway in electromagnetic theory. Space, in contemporary physics, is not the inert and homogenous substratum employed in both Newton’s and Maxwell’s theories; some of its new properties are not unlike those once attributed to the ether; we may some day come to know what an electric displacement is.

By shifting emphasis from the cognitive to the normative functions of paradigms, the preceding examples enlarge our understanding of the ways in which paradigms give form to the scientific life. Previously, we had principally examined the paradigm’s role as a vehicle for scientific theory. In that role it functions by telling the scientist about the entities that nature does and does not contain and about the ways in which those entities behave. That information provides a map whose details are elucidated by mature scientific research. And since nature is too complex and varied to be explored at random, that map is as essential as observation and experiment to science’s continuing development. Through the theories they embody, paradigms prove to be constitutive of the research activity. They are also, however, constitutive of science in other respects, and that is now the point. In particular, our most recent examples show that paradigms provide scientists not only with a map but also with some of the directions essential for map-making. In learning a paradigm the scientist acquires theory, methods, and standards together, usually in an inextricable mixture. Therefore, when paradigms change, there are usually significant shifts in the criteria determining the legitimacy both of problems and of proposed solutions.

That observation returns us to the point from which this section began, for it provides our first explicit indication of why the choice between competing paradigms regularly raises questions that cannot be resolved by the criteria of normal science. To the extent, as significant as it is incomplete, that two scientific schools disagree about what is a problem and what a solution, they will inevitably talk through each other when debating the relative merits of their respective paradigms. In the partially circular arguments that regularly result, each paradigm will be shown to satisfy more or less the criteria that it dictates for itself and to fall short of a few of those dictated by its opponent. There are other reasons, too, for the incompleteness of logical contact that consistently characterises paradigm debates. For example, since no paradigm ever solves all the problems it defines and since no two paradigms leave all the same problems unsolved, paradigm debates always involve the question: Which problems is it more significant to have solved? Like the issue of competing standards, that question of values can be answered only in terms of criteria that lie outside of normal science altogether, and it is that recourse to external criteria that most obviously makes paradigm debates revolutionary. Something even more fundamental than standards and values is, however, also at stake. I have so far argued only that paradigms are constitutive of science. Now I wish to display a sense in which they are constitutive of nature as well.

Seminar 2 (2 hours)

Theme: ‘Language and Thought’ as One of the Cardinal Problems in Linguistics. Anthropological Approach to the Study of Language.

I. Theoretical Questions.

1. The essence of the problem of Language and Thought. Propositional and syntactic structures.

2. Universal Grammar.

3. The Principle of linguistic relativity (Sapir-Whorf hypothesis).

4. Anthropological Approach to the Study of Language.

III. Practical assignments.

1. Write and learn the terms and key terms of the seminar 2.

2. Analyse 10 sentences and explain the propositional and syntactic structures.

3. Read the abstract from the Universal Grammar.

4. Make a scheme: Anthropological paradigm in language study.

Individual work:

1. Prepare report “Language and brain”

2. Prepare report “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: the Modern evidences for and again”

3. Prepare report “Modern Version of Universal Grammar”

4. Prepare report “Modern Development of Language: Anthropological aspect”

Key words: brain, mind, representation, proposition, logical subject, logical predicate, subject, predicate, Universal Grammar, Sapire-Worf hypothesis.

IV. Literature to use:

1. Луньова Т.В. Актуальні питання теорії англійської мови. [Навчальний посібник для студентів 5 курсу спеціальності “Педагогіка і методика середньої освіти. Мова і література (англійська, німецька)”, “ Педагогіка і методика середньої освіти. Українська мова і література та англійська мова”] / Т.В. Луньова. ‒ Полтава, 2008. ‒ 104 с.

2. Николаева Т.М. Теории происхождения языка и его эволюции – новое направление в современном языкознании // Вопросы языкознания. – 1996. – №2. – С. 79-89.

3. Сепир Э. Избранные труды по языкознанию и культурологии. – М.: Наука, 1993.

4. Циммерлинг А.В. Американская лингвистика сегодняшнего дня глазами отечественных языковедов // Вопросы языкознания. – 2000. - № 2. – С. 118-133.

 

Seminar 3(2 hours)

I. Theoretical Questions.

1. The notion of sign.

2. Types of signs.

3. The structure of linguistic sign.

4. Language as a semiotic system.

5. Semiosis, its structure.

6. Connotations, their types.

III. Practical assignments.

1. Find in the text (home reading abstract) 10 examples of language signs which bear different connotations.

2. Find in the text (home reading abstract) several examples of iconicity.

Individual work:

Prepare report “Semiotics of language and semiotics of culture”.

Key words: semiotics, linguosemiotics, sign, semiosis, language sign, semiotic triangle, donotation, connotation, iconicity.

IV. Literature to use:

1. Лингвистический энциклопедический словарь. / Гл. ред. В.Н.Ярцева. – М.: Сов. энциклоп., 1990.

2. Луньова Т.В. Актуальні питання теорії англійської мови. [Навчальний посібник для студентів 5 курсу спеціальності “Педагогіка і методика середньої освіти. Мова і література (англійська, німецька)”, “ Педагогіка і методика середньої освіти. Українська мова і література та англійська мова”] / Т.В. Луньова. ‒ Полтава, 2008. ‒ 104 с.

3. Штерн І.Б. Вибрані топіки та лексикон сучасної лінгвістики. Енцикл. словник для фахівців з теоретич. гуманіт. дисциплін та гуманіт. інф-ки. – К.: АртЕк, 1998.

 

Indexes

Icons

Symbols

Indexes ‒ The signifier is not arbitrary but is connected to the signified in some way either physically or causally.

Icons ‒ “I smell smoke!” The smell of smoke could be said to signify fire. It is not arbitrary but directly connected to the thing it signifies.

Symbols ‒ A photograph. Photographs are produced though the reflection of light off the subject.

Codes:

No signifying code(system of signs) can be divorced from a set of social practices.

Basic features:

• All codes have a paradigmatic(they are members of a category) and syntagmatic(the chaining together of the paradigmatic) dimension.

• All codes covey meaning.

• Codes depend upon agreement between their users.

Representational:

Codes that are used to create texts; something that stands for something else independent of its encoder.

Presentational:

Limited to face to face communication and concerns communication through orientation, gestures, eye movement, proximity, facial expressions, and other examples of “body language”.

Indexes

Icons

Symbols

Indexes ‒ The signifier is not arbitrary but is connected to the signified in some way either physically or causally.

Icons ‒ “I smell smoke!” The smell of smoke could be said to signify fire. It is not arbitrary but directly connected to the thing it signifies.

Symbols ‒ A photograph. Photographs are produced though the reflection of light off the subject.

Codes:

No signifying code(system of signs) can be divorced from a set of social practices.

Basic features:

• All codes have a paradigmatic(they are members of a category) and syntagmatic(the chaining together of the paradigmatic) dimension.

• All codes covey meaning.

• Codes depend upon agreement between their users.

Representational:

Codes that are used to create texts; something that stands for something else independent of its encoder.

Presentational:

Limited to face to face communication and concerns communication through orientation, gestures, eye movement, proximity, facial expressions, and other examples of “body language”.

The three forms are listed here in decreasing order of conventionality. Symbolic signs such as language are (at least) highly conventional; iconic signs always involve some degree of conventionality; indexical signs 'direct the attention to their objects by blind compulsion' (Peirce 1931-58, 2.306). Indexical and iconic signifiers can be seen as more constrained by referential signifieds whereas in the more conventional symbolic signs the signified can be seen as being defined to a greater extent by the signifier. Within each form signs also vary in their degree of conventionality. Other criteria might be applied to rank the three forms differently. For instance, Hodge and Kress suggest that indexicality is based on an act of judgement or inference whereas iconicity is closer to 'direct perception' making the highest 'modality' that of iconic signs. Note that the terms 'motivation' (from Saussure) and 'constraint' are sometimes used to describe the extent to which the signified determines the signifier. The more a signifier is constrained by the signified, the more 'motivated' the sign is: iconic signs are highly motivated; symbolic signs are unmotivated. The less motivated the sign, the more learning of an agreed convention is required. Nevertheless, most semioticians emphasize the role of convention in relation to signs. As we shall see, even photographs and films are built on conventions which we must learn to 'read'. Such conventions are an important social dimension of semiotics.

Peirce and Saussure used the term 'symbol' differently from each other. Whilst nowadays most theorists would refer to language as a symbolic sign system, Saussure avoided referring to linguistic signs as 'symbols', since the ordinary everyday use of this term refers to examples such as a pair of scales (signifying justice), and he insisted that such signs are 'never wholly arbitrary. They are not empty configurations'. They 'show at least a vestige of natural connection' between the signifier and the signified - a link which he later refers to as 'rational' (Saussure 1983, 68, 73; Saussure 1974, 68, 73). Whilst Saussure focused on the arbitrary nature of the linguistic sign, a more obvious example of arbitrary symbolism is mathematics. Mathematics does not need to refer to an external world at all: its signifieds are indisputably concepts and mathematics is a system of relations (Langer 1951, 28).

For Peirce, a symbol is 'a sign which refers to the object that it denotes by virtue of a law, usually an association of general ideas, which operates to cause the symbol to be interpreted as referring to that object' (Peirce 1931-58, 2.249). We interpret symbols according to 'a rule' or 'a habitual connection' (ibid., 2.292, 2.297, 1.369). 'The symbol is connected with its object by virtue of the idea of the symbol-using animal, without which no such connection would exist' (ibid., 2.299). It 'is constituted a sign merely or mainly by the fact that it is used and understood as such' (ibid., 2.307). It 'would lose the character which renders it a sign if there were no interpretant' (ibid., 2.304). A symbol is 'a conventional sign, or one depending upon habit (acquired or inborn)'(ibid., 2.297). 'All words, sentences, books and other conventional signs are symbols' (ibid., 2.292). Peirce thus characterizes linguistic signs in terms of their conventionality in a similar way to Saussure. In a rare direct reference to the arbitrariness of symbols (which he then called 'tokens'), he noted that they 'are, for the most part, conventional or arbitrary' (ibid., 3.360). A symbol is a sign 'whose special significance or fitness to represent just what it does represent lies in nothing but the very fact of there being a habit, disposition, or other effective general rule that it will be so interpreted. Take, for example, the word " man ". These three letters are not in the least like a man; nor is the sound with which they are associated' (ibid., 4.447). He adds elsewhere that 'a symbol... fulfills its function regardless of any similarity or analogy with its object and equally regardless of any factual connection therewith' but solely because it will be interpreted as a sign (ibid., 5.73; original emphasis).

Turning to icons, Peirce declared that an iconic sign represents its object 'mainly by its similarity' (Peirce 1931-58, 2.276). A sign is an icon 'insofar as it is like that thing and used as a sign of it' (ibid., 2.247). Indeed, he originally termed such modes, 'likenesses' (e.g. ibid., 1.558). He added that 'every picture (however conventional its method)' is an icon (ibid., 2.279). Icons have qualities which 'resemble' those of the objects they represent, and they 'excite analogous sensations in the mind' (ibid., 2.299; see also 3.362). Unlike the index, 'the icon has no dynamical connection with the object it represents'(ibid.). Just because a signifier resembles that which it depicts does not necessarily make it purely iconic. The philosopher Susanne Langer argues that 'the picture is essentially a symbol, not a duplicate, of what it represents' (Langer 1951, 67). Pictures resemble what they represent only in some respects. What we tend to recognize in an image are analogous relations of parts to a whole (ibid., 67-70). For Peirce, icons included 'every diagram, even although there be no sensuous resemblance between it and its object, but only an analogy between the relations of the parts of each' (Peirce 1931-58, 2.279). 'Many diagrams resemble their objects not at all in looks; it is only in respect to the relations of their parts that their likeness consists' (ibid., 2.282). Even the most 'realistic' image is not a replica or even a copy of what is depicted. We rarely mistake a representation for what it represents.

Semioticians generally maintain that there are no 'pure' icons - there is always an element of cultural convention involved. Peirce stated that although 'any material image' (such as a painting) may be perceived as looking like what it represents, it is 'largely conventional in its mode of representation' (Peirce 1931-58, 2.276). 'We say that the portrait of a person we have not seen is convincing. So far as, on the ground merely of what I see in it, I am led to form an idea of the person it represents, it is an icon. But, in fact, it is not a pure icon, because I am greatly influenced by knowing that it is an effect, through the artist, caused by the original's appearance... Besides, I know that portraits have but the slightest resemblance to their originals, except in certain conventional respects, and after a conventional scale of values, etc.' (ibid., 2.92).

Guy Cook asks whether the iconic sign on the door of a public lavatory for men actually looks more like a man than like a woman. 'For a sign to be truly iconic, it would have to be transparent to someone who had never seen it before - and it seems unlikely that this is as much the case as is sometimes supposed. We see the resemblance when we already know the meaning' (Cook 1992, 70). Thus, even a 'realistic' picture is symbolic as well as iconic.

Iconic and indexical signs are more likely to be read as 'natural' than symbolic signs when making the connection between signifier and signified has become habitual. Iconic signifiers can be highly evocative. Kent Grayson observes: 'Because we can see the object in the sign, we are often left with a sense that the icon has brought us closer to the truth than if we had instead seen an index or a symbol'(Grayson 1998, 36). He adds that 'instead of drawing our attention to the gaps that always exist in representation, iconic experiences encourage us subconsciously to fill in these gaps and then to believe that there were no gaps in the first place... This is the paradox of representation: it may deceive most when we think it works best' (ibid., 41).

The linguist John Lyons notes that iconicity is 'always dependent upon properties of the medium in which the form is manifest' (Lyons 1977, 105). He offers the example of the onomatopoeic English word cuckoo, noting that it is only iconic in the phonic medium (speech) and not in the graphic medium (writing). Whilst the phonic medium can represent characteristic sounds (albeit in a relatively conventionalized way), the graphic medium can represent characteristic shapes (as in the case of Egyptian hieroglyphs) (Lyons 1977, 103). We will return shortly to the importance of the materiality of the sign.

Indexicality is perhaps the most unfamiliar concept. Peirce offers various criteria for what constitutes an index. An index 'indicates' something: for example, 'a sundial or clock indicates the time of day' (Peirce 1931-58, 2.285). He refers to a 'genuine relation' between the 'sign' and the object which does not depend purely on 'the interpreting mind' (ibid., 2.92, 298). The object is 'necessarily existent' (ibid., 2.310). The index is connected to its object 'as a matter of fact' (ibid., 4.447). There is 'a real connection' (ibid., 5.75). There may be a 'direct physical connection' (ibid., 1.372, 2.281, 2.299). An indexical sign is like 'a fragment torn away from the object' (ibid., 2.231). Unlike an icon (the object of which may be fictional) an index stands 'unequivocally for this or that existing thing' (ibid., 4.531). Whilst 'it necessarily has some quality in common' with it, the signifier is 'really affected' by the signified; there is an 'actual modification' involved (ibid., 2.248). The relationship is not based on 'mere resemblance' (ibid.): 'indices... have no significant resemblance to their objects' (ibid., 2.306). 'Similarity or analogy' are not what define the index (ibid., 2.305). 'Anything which focusses the attention is an index. Anything which startles us is an index' (ibid., 2.285; see also 3.434). Indexical signs 'direct the attention to their objects by blind compulsion' (ibid., 2.306; see also 2.191, 2.428). 'Psychologically, the action of indices depends upon association by contiguity, and not upon association by resemblance or upon intellectual operations' (ibid.).

Whilst a photograph is also perceived as resembling that which it depicts, Peirce noted that a photograph is not only iconic but also indexical: 'photographs, especially instantaneous photographs, are very instructive, because we know that in certain respects they are exactly like the objects they represent. But this resemblance is due to the photographs having been produced under such circumstances that they were physically forced to correspond point by point to nature. In that aspect, then, they belong to the... class of signs... by physical connection [the indexical class]' (Peirce 1931-58, 2.281; see also 5.554). So in this sense, since the photographic image is an index of the effect of light on photographic emulsion, all unedited photographic and filmic images are indexical (although we should remember that conventional practices are always involved in composition, focusing, developing and so on). Such images do of course 'resemble' what they depict, and it has been suggested the 'real force' of the photographic and filmic image 'lies in its iconic signification' (Deacon et al. 1999, 188). However, whilst digital imaging techniques are increasingly eroding the indexicality of photographic images, it is arguable that it is the indexicality still routinely attributed to the medium which is primarily responsible for interpreters treating them as 'objective' records of 'reality'. Peirce observed that 'a photograph... owing to its optical connection with its object, is evidence that that appearance corresponds to a reality' (Peirce 1931-58, 4.447). In many contexts photographs are indeed regarded as 'evidence', not least in legal contexts. As for the moving image, video-cameras are of course widely used 'in evidence'. Documentary film and location footage in television news programmes depend upon the indexical nature of the sign. In such genres indexicality seems to warrant the status of the material as evidence. Photographic and filmic images may also be symbolic: in an empirical study of television news, Davis and Walton found that A relatively small proportion of the total number of shots is iconic or directly representative of the people, places and events which are subjects of the news text. A far greater proportion of shots has an oblique relationship to the text; they 'stand for' the subject matter indexically or symbolically (Davis & Walton 1983b, 45).

It is easy to slip into referring to Peirce's three forms as 'types of signs', but they are not necessarily mutually exclusive: a sign can be an icon, a symbol and an index, or any combination. Peirce was fully aware of this: for instance, he insisted that 'it would be difficult if not impossible to instance an absolutely pure index, or to find any sign absolutely devoid of the indexical quality' (Peirce 1931-58, 2.306). A map is indexical in pointing to the locations of things, iconic in its representation of the directional relations and distances between landmarks and symbolic in using conventional symbols the significance of which must be learnt. The film theorist Peter Wollen argues that 'the great merit of Peirce's analysis of signs is that he did not see the different aspects as mutually exclusive. Unlike Saussure he did not show any particular prejudice in favour of one or the other. Indeed, he wanted a logic and a rhetoric which would be based on all three aspects' (Wollen 1969, 141). Film and television use all three forms: icon (sound and image), symbol (speech and writing), and index (as the effect of what is filmed); at first sight iconic signs seem the dominant form, but some filmic signs are fairly arbitrary, such as 'dissolves' which signify that a scene from someone's memory is to follow.

Hawkes notes, following Jakobson, that the three modes 'co-exist in the form of a hierarchy in which one of them will inevitably have dominance over the other two', with dominance determined by context (Hawkes 1977, 129). Whether a sign is symbolic, iconic or indexical depends primarily on the way in which the sign is used, so textbook examples chosen to illustrate the various modes can be misleading. The same signifier may be used iconically in one context and symbolically in another: a photograph of a woman may stand for some broad category such as 'women' or may more specifically represent only the particular woman who is depicted. Signs cannot be classified in terms of the three modes without reference to the purposes of their users within particular contexts. A sign may consequently be treated as symbolic by one person, as iconic by another and as indexical by a third. As Kent Grayson puts it, 'When we speak of an icon, an index or a symbol, we are not referring to objective qualities of the sign itself, but to a viewer's experience of the sign'(Grayson 1998, 35). Signs may also shift in mode over time. As Jonathan Culler notes, 'In one sense a Rolls-Royce is an index of wealth in that one must be wealthy in order to purchase one, but it has been made a conventional sign of wealth by social usage' (Culler 1975, 17).