Diversity in linguistic representations
Résumé
Language diversity is a subject which has long been side-stepped in scholarly work on language, the verbal faculty. At best, any discussions have been purposely restricted to considerations of superficial syntactic variation. In recent years, however, cognitive science has shown renewed interest in this subject, in connection with the diversity of the meaning representations constructed in individual languages.
The diversity of the ways in which languages represent reality is a core issue for linguistics, demanding a theoretical basis for linking variation and invariance. Analogous situations exist in other scientific disciplines, e.g., biology where the phenotype/genotype articulation is crucial. The issue is equally important to cognitive science : the overall view of how language, thought, and cognition are related intimately depends on how variation and invariance are apprehended.
It should by now be clear that the search for interlinguistic invariance and the search for invariants underlying semantic variation within a single language (both synchronically and diachronically) are equally reliant on an understanding of gradualness. They therefore require identical treatment at the level of theory and modelization, particularly in the form of tools which can go beyond binary oppositions and all-or-nothing conceptualizations, whence the usefulness of topologically dynamic types of modelization.
Allowing for gradualness means recognizing that all languages are by nature such that the relationship between form and meaning is subject to constant readjustments and that there is no ultimate state of equilibrium. Some states are nevertheless more stable than others. These states can be modelized by approximation in a static, discrete way using classic algebraic tools. The stability of apparently fixed patterns can, however, only be explained on the basis of an underlying mobility.
The diversity of the ways in which languages represent reality is a core issue for linguistics, demanding a theoretical basis for linking variation and invariance. Analogous situations exist in other scientific disciplines, e.g., biology where the phenotype/genotype articulation is crucial. The issue is equally important to cognitive science : the overall view of how language, thought, and cognition are related intimately depends on how variation and invariance are apprehended.
It should by now be clear that the search for interlinguistic invariance and the search for invariants underlying semantic variation within a single language (both synchronically and diachronically) are equally reliant on an understanding of gradualness. They therefore require identical treatment at the level of theory and modelization, particularly in the form of tools which can go beyond binary oppositions and all-or-nothing conceptualizations, whence the usefulness of topologically dynamic types of modelization.
Allowing for gradualness means recognizing that all languages are by nature such that the relationship between form and meaning is subject to constant readjustments and that there is no ultimate state of equilibrium. Some states are nevertheless more stable than others. These states can be modelized by approximation in a static, discrete way using classic algebraic tools. The stability of apparently fixed patterns can, however, only be explained on the basis of an underlying mobility.
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