RICHARD HUDSON
SOME BASIC ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT LINGUISTIC
AND NON-LINGUISTIC KNOWLEDGE
One of the most interesting questions which relate to the use of 'frames' in
understanding human cognition is whether 'linguistic' knowledge is itself structured in this way. If we may assume that at least some parts of our encyclopedic
knowledge are best represented by means of frame-type structures (including
scripts, scenes, and so on), then what does this suggest about knowledge of
language? On the one hand, we might say that this proves that language is unique,
because linguistic knowledge does not involve frames; so the relevance of frames
to the study of language lies just in the fact that they provide a way of formalizing
the non-linguistic knowledge which needs to be referred to by the pragmatics. On
the other hand, we might equally well draw a very different set of conclusions. For
those of us who are struck by the similarities between linguistic and non-linguistic
structures, it might seem reasonable to ask, as a research project, whether, or to
what extent, it is possible to describe linguistic structures in terms of frames. Until
we have tried to describe language in this way, we cannot be at all sure that
language is as unique as has often been assumed; and if we find characteristics of
language which remain stubbornly different from everything outside language,
then we may be fairly confident that in these respects language is indeed unique.
In this brief note I shall assume that the onus is on those who believe that
linguistic and non-linguistic knowledge are different to produce evidence for their
view, rather than on those of us who believe that they are at least in large measure
similar. There is in any case surely no need to provide research evidence for the
claim that there are some similarities after all, one of the main relations to which
linguists refer is linear order, and another is that of subclassilication, neither of
which is at all restricted to language. Against this background assumption, I shall
try to show that two other assumptions follow
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naturally, namely (1) that the meaning of a linguistic expression is a cognitive
structure with no special properties to distinguish it from other cognitive structures
- i.e. there is no special object that we could call a 'linguistic semantic structure';
and (2) that linguistic structures themselves have the properties of frames. These
assumptions underlie the theory called 'Word grammar' described in Hudson
[1984].
(1) Imagine some Being designing the human mind, and wondering how to
relate the bit of the mind responsible for linguistic expressions to the bit responsible for understanding non-linguistic experiences. Arrangements have already
been made for dealing with strings of phonemes and words (language), and also for
dealing with restaurants, birthday parties, moon rocks, and so on (non-language).
Surely it would be obvious to this Being that the easiest way to make humans use
language would be to allow them to exploit the non-linguistic structures directly, as
meanings of linguistic expressions. Any extra layer of structure, in which the
entities analyzed were 'meanings', but in which their analysis was not that of
ordinary non-linguistic cognition, would simply get in the way. This being so, we
need very strong and compelling evidence indeed for the existence of such a layer.
To my mind, the existing discussions in the literature fall short of this requirement,
as they appear to work on the assumption that the onus of proof lies on the other
side.
Apart from such general, aprioristic, considerations as these, there is considerable evidence in favour of the view that linguistic structures are linked directly
to general cognitive structures. Perhaps the clearest and easiest evidence comes
from the area of 'semantic valency', where we are concerned with the 'argument
structure' of a word: donate and give both involve at least three arguments (a giver,
a gift, and a recipient), rain involves (arguably) no arguments at all, fond involves
two (a feeler and a phenomenon towards which the feeling is directed), and father
involves two (the person referred to plus at least one child). One of the main
problems which arises in working on this area is that linguists find it difficult to
arrive at a 'specifically linguistic' classification, which they could call the set of
'semantic cases' of the language. How many such categories should we distinguish,
and which specific categories should we assign to specific constructions? How
should the categories be defined - syntactically, or in relation to the world? Are the
categories universal or specific to particular languages?
Theoretical and descriptive linguists have devoted a good deal of attention to
these questions, and a number of interesting analytical frameworks have been
proposed. However, the whole discussion seems to be made more difficult than it
need be by the assumption which is often at least implicit, that the argument
structure of a word is a specifically linguistic object. It is surprisingly rare to find
an analysis in which it is recognized that the 'semantic' argument structure of a
word is bound to be in a one-to-one relation to the argument structure of the
concept to which it is related. For example, the arguments of write must be the
same as whatever elements are mentioned in our cognitive frame for the concept of
writing (a writer, an instrument, a surface, a message, a code and perhaps a few
more). It is inconceivable (to me, at any rate) that
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there could be a word which referred to a concept X, and whose nonsyntactic
argument structure was distinct from the structure of X. (Of course, we must
distinguish between these semantic/cognitive arguments, and the syntactic valency
of the word concerned – for example, some of the arguments of write need not be
expressed overtly by means of a syntactic expression, but this has nothing to do
with the semantic structure. Thus, the fact that no instrument is referred to
explicitly in John wrote a letter does not mean that he may have written the letter
without using an instrument). Once this basic connection between the argumentstructure of a word and the structure of its corresponding conceptual frame
becomes clear, the linguist's analytical problems appear in a different light - his
problems are the same as those of the cognitive psychologist working on
conceptual structures, and the latter may in fact be better equipped to solve the
problems than he is. (A very similar view has been advocated by Charniak [1981]).
Other areas of linguistics in which evidence for the direct relevance of cognitive
frames can be found include compounds and vague words like do. It could be
argued that when nouns are combined into a compound (as in English tooth-brush
and wire brush), the semantic structure is controlled just by one general principle:
that the first noun should define a filler for some slot in the frame for the concept
denoted by the second noun. Thus we may assume that the frame for "brush”
contains a slot for the thing to be brushed (e.g. teeth), and another slot for the
substance out of which the bristles are made (e.g. wire). No specifically 'linguistic'
structure need be referred to at all by the rule for interpreting noun-noun
compounds. As for vague words like do, we need to distinguish cases like do the
beds, do the potatoes and do the exercise. If we recognize a different sense in the
entry for do corresponding to each of these uses, we face problems, because there
is at least a very large number of distinct uses, each involving a different kind of
action, and it may even be that the list is open-ended (e.g. do a photo can be
contextualized). On the other hand, if we recognize only one sense, we are left with
the problem of distinguishing between the truth conditions for e.g. do the beds and
do the potatoes, since the actions needed to satisfy the conditions are obviously
different in the two cases. The frames for concepts are relevant here if we assume
that the frames for 'bed' and 'potato' include some kind of specification of the
action performed by humans when acting on the object concerned. The 'semantic'
structure of do can then be given in the lexicon as (roughly) 'whatever action is
defined in slot X of the frame for the concept denoted by the object'. Such an entry
can only be formulated if the linguist can refer directly to cognitive structure, and
an intervening 'linguistic' structure would be of no help, and might even be a
positive hindrance.
(2) If we assume that our Being had designed the general conceptual workings
of the human mind before starting on language (which is surely a reasonable
assumption), it is hard to see any reason why the Being should develop a
completely new set of structures for dealing with linguistic expressions. On the
contrary, it would be most natural if the Being exploited the existing structures as
far as was possible, and only introduced the minimum number of new
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types of structure. Now, if we believe that non-linguistic knowledge is structured
in terms of frames, we should look for such structures in language; and we find
them. The most obvious example of a frame-like structure is the word, which
combines a number of properties (a meaning, a set of syntactic properties such as
a class-membership and some syntactic valency, and an internal structure in terms
of morphemes or phonemes, and perhaps some other properties too). We might
even apply the distinction between 'frames' and 'scripts' to words, and say that
words are scripts because they have an internal temporal structure (e.g. when
saying in you first say the /i/ and then the /n/). Like other scripts, they are located
in an 'isa' hierarchy, since each word is related to some general class of words
(defined by names like 'preposition', 'auxiliary verb', and so on); and like other
scripts, they only define the normal patterns, from which deviations of various
kinds are possible. Thus, in normally ends in [n], but it may end in [m] if followed
by a [b] (e.g. in bed); it is normally a preposition, but it may be used as a noun
(e.g. He scored an 'in'). To the extent that there are differences between wordscripts and other kinds of scripts, they seem to involve the details of the slot
structures rather than the very general principles controlling their structures and
their relations to other structures. (Similar points could probably be made about
various other kinds of linguistic elements, such as phonemes, but I think they are
most clear in the case of the word, which I consider to be the most important
linguistic element of all).
What I have tried to do is to show that it would be surprising if linguistic
structures were not closely related to cognitive structures of the kind often described in terms of frames, and that this applies not only in the sense that linguistic
structures exploit frames (as their meanings), but that they themselves are frames.
In the days when we had very little idea what the structure of 'thought' was, it was
reasonable to maximize the uniqueness of language, because we did know quite a
bit about the structure of language, and there was no need to lower our standards
to the vague speculations to which those working on 'thought' in general were
prone. Now that there are more interesting models for thought (notably those
associated with the word 'frame'), the situation is quite different, and it should be
generally recognized by linguists as well as others that we should assume that
linguistic structures are the same as non-linguistic structures until we find
convincing evidence to the contrary.
REFERENCE
S
Charniak, E. [1981], The case-slot identity theory, in «Cognitive Science» 5, pp. 285-92.
Hudson, R.A. [1984], Word Grammar, Oxford, Blackwell.
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