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Title:
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Deixis, Anaphore, Accords, Classification: Morphogenese et Fonctionnement
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Author:
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Pablo Kirtchuk
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Email:
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click here to access email
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Degree Awarded:
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Université Paris Sorbonne - Paris IV
, Phonetics and Linguistics
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Degree Date:
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1993
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Linguistic Subfield(s):
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Pragmatics
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Subject Language(s):
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Pilagá
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Director(s):
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Bernard Pottier
Claude Hagège
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Abstract:
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In my Ph.D work I point to deixis as being the primary function of language. This is based on a cross-linguistic analysis of data, both in diachrony and in synchrony, in ontogeny and phylogeny, and considering the different levels of linguistic analysis: phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics. The conclusion is that nouns are pro-pronouns, and not the other (traditional) way round; that pragmatics precede syntax and that the Saussurean dogma according to which parole is an em anation of langue should be inversed: langue, namely each and every human tongue, but also the property of language as such, emerge from the communicative needs and from communicative factors which end up acquiring specific biological forms. Communication in context, which linguistics call deixis, emerges prior to communication out of context, which needs much more sophisticated brain capacities of calculation and stockage. This, however, is not only an evolutionary or diachronic statement: deixis is the central function of language in any synchronic state of any language at any age of the speaker-hearer. The relationship between Saussurean linguistics and mine is akin to the relationship between Newtonian physics and quantum physics. Only in very specific and local conditions there might be a point in the Saussurean view. If, however, we generalize and look at language globally, as part of human evolution both in phylogenesis and in ontogenesis, thus including more than actual languages of adult people, and as a part of human nature as a whole, which includes more elements than calculation capacity and memory, then it is our approach that is adequate. Iconicity, namely the correlation in language berween form and meaning, is a majo r device in this framework. I divide it into phono-iconicity, morpho-iconicity, morphophono-iconicity, syntacto-iconicity, phonolexico-iconicity and pragmato-iconicity, with cross-linguistic examples to each category.
I also point to several properties of language which distinguish it from other so-called 'languages' (e.g. of computers): fixity, taboo, multiple-encoding (thus doing away with the so-called 'redundancy' in language).
Finally, I furnish the first description of the Pilaga language, from the Guaykuru family, spoken in North-eastern Argentina.
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