具体描述
内容简介
This is the long-awaited third edition of Chomsky s outstanding collection of essays on Language and mind. The first six chapters, originally published in the 1960s, made a groundbreaking contribution to linguistic theory. This new edition complements them with an additional chapter and a new preface, bringing Chomsky s influential approach into the twenty-first century.
Chapters 1-6 present Chomskys early work on the nature and acquisition of language as a genetically-endowed, biological system (Universal Grammar), the rules and principles of which we acquire as internalized knowledge (I-language). Over the past fifty years, this framework has sparked an explosion of inquiry into a wide range of languages, and has yielded some major theoretical questions. The final chapter revisits the key issues, reviewing the "biolinguistic" approach that has guided Chomsky s work from its origins to the present day, and raising some novel and exciting challenges for the study of language and mind. 目录
Preface to the third edition
Preface to the second edition
Preface to the first edition
1 Linguistic contributions to the study of mind: past
2 Linguistic contributions to the study of mind: present
3 Linguistic contributions to the study of mind: future
4 Form and meaning in natural languages
5 The formal nature of language
6 Linguistics and philosophy
7 Biolinguistics and the human capacity
Index 精彩书摘
One difficulty in the psychological sciences lies in the familiarity of the phenomena with which they deal. A certain intellectual effort is required to see how such phenomena can pose serious problems or call for intricate explanatory theories. One is inclined to take them for granted as necessary or somehow "natural."
The effects of this familiarity of phenomena have often been discussed. Wolfgang K6hler, for example, has suggested that psychologists do not open up "entirely new territories" in the manner of the natural sciences, "simply because man was acquainted with practically all territories of mental life a long time before the founding of scientific psychology.., because at the very beginning of their work there were no entirely unknown mental facts left which they could have discovered."1 The most elementary discoveries of classical physics have a certain shock value man has no intuition about elliptical orbits or the gravitational constant. But "mental facts" of even a much deeper sort cannot be "discovered" by the psychologist, because they are a matter of intuitive acquaintance and, once pointed out, are obvious.
There is also a more subtle effect. Phenomena can be so familiar that we really do not see them at all, a matter that has been much discussed by literary theorists and philosophers. For example, Viktor Shldovskij in the early 1920s developed the idea that the function of poetic art is that of "making strange" the object depicted. "People living at the seashore grow so accustomed to the murmur of the waves that they never hear it. By the same token, we scarcely ever hear the words which we utter... We look at each other, but we do not see each other any more. Our perception of the world has withered away; what has remained is mere recognition." Thus, the goal of the artist is to transfer what is depicted to the "sphere of new perception"; as an example, Shklovskij cites a story by Tolstoy in which social customs and institutions are "made strange" by the device of presenting them from the viewpoint of a narrator who happens to be a horse. 前言/序言
The first six chapters that follow are from the late 1960s, mostly based on talks for general university audiences, hence relatively informal. The final chapter is from 2004, based on a talk for a general audience. This recent essay reviews the "biolinguistic approach" that has guided this work from its origins half a century ago, some of the important developments of recent decades, and how the general approach looks today - to me at least.
The dominant approach to questions of language and mind in the 1950s was that of the behavioral sciences. As the term indicates, the object of inquiry was taken to be behavior, or, for linguistics, the products of behavior: perhaps a corpus obtained from informants by the elicitation techniques taught in field methods courses. Linguistic theory consisted of procedures of analysis, primar- ily segmentation and classification, designed to organize a body of linguistic material, guided by limited assumptions about structural properties and their arrangement. The prominent linguist Martin Joos hardly exaggerated in a 1955 exposition when he identified the "decisive direction" of contemporary struc- tural linguistics as the decision that language can be "described without any preexistent scheme of what a language must be." Prevailing approaches in the behavioral sciences generally were not very different. Of course, no one accepted the incoherent notion of a "blank slate." But it was common to sup- pose that beyond some initial delimitation of properties detected in the environ- ment (a "quality space," in the framework of the highly influential philosopher W. V. O. Quine), general learning mechanisms of some kind should suffice to account for what organisms, including humans, know and do. Genetic endow- ment in these domains would not be expected to reach much beyond something like that.
语言与心智:认知视域下的语言学探索(第3版) 本书深入剖析语言与心智之间错综复杂的关系,为读者打开一扇通往认知语言学核心领域的大门。作者以其深厚的学术功底和敏锐的洞察力,系统地梳理了语言学研究从符号学传统向认知转向的关键历程,并在此基础上,以崭新的视角和前沿的理论,解读了语言如何作为人类思维的载体、认知活动的工具以及心智结构的重要组成部分。全书内容充实,论证严谨,旨在为从事语言学、心理学、认知科学、教育学等相关领域的研究者和学习者提供一份全面而深刻的学术参考。 第一部分:理论基石与研究范式 本书的开篇,作者首先回溯了语言学研究的早期思潮,重点阐述了结构主义语言学和生成语法学在理解语言本质方面所做出的贡献,同时也指出了其局限性。通过对这些经典理论的梳理,读者能够清晰地看到语言学研究从单纯关注语言结构向关注语言与使用者心智联结的演变轨迹。 接着,本书重点介绍了认知语言学的核心理论框架。作者深入浅出地阐释了“概念隐喻”(Conceptual Metaphor)和“概念转喻”(Conceptual Metonymy)等关键概念,揭示了我们如何通过具身化的经验和空间隐喻来理解抽象概念。例如,关于“时间”的许多表述,如“时间流逝”、“时间紧迫”,都与我们对空间的理解密切相关。作者通过大量生动的语言实例,证明了这些认知机制在语言表达中的普遍性和基础性作用。 此外,本书还详细探讨了“范畴化”(Categorization)在语言中的核心地位。语言的本质在于对世界的范畴化,而这些范畴并非固定不变,而是受到我们认知能力和文化背景的影响。作者分析了语言如何反映并塑造我们的范畴化方式,以及不同语言在范畴划分上的差异如何体现了其使用者认知世界的独特视角。 “图式”(Schema)和“框架”(Frame)理论是认知语言学的另一重要组成部分。本书详细阐述了这些概念如何帮助我们理解语言单位的意义。我们并非孤立地理解词语,而是将其置于特定的图式或框架中进行解读。例如,“吃饭”这个动词,会激活一个包含“吃饭者”、“食物”、“餐具”、“场所”等元素的框架,我们能据此推断出更多的信息。 第二部分:语言结构与认知机制 在理论基石之上,本书深入到语言结构的具体层面,探讨认知机制如何在语音、词汇、语法等各个层面上发挥作用。 在语音层面,作者引入了“语音意象”(Phonosemantics)的概念,探讨了声音本身是否具有意义,以及语音的韵律、语调等如何与情感、态度等认知信息相关联。本书也探讨了语音感知与生产的认知过程,以及语音变异与社会文化因素的互动。 在词汇层面,本书详细介绍了词汇的“语义网络”(Semantic Network)和“词汇知识”(Lexical Knowledge)是如何在大脑中组织和存储的。作者强调了词语意义的“原型”(Prototype)和“边界模糊性”(Fuzziness),说明了词义并非僵化的定义,而是具有一定的伸缩性和灵活性。接着,本书深入探讨了词语的“联想”(Association)和“语境激活”(Contextual Activation)在理解和生成语言中的作用,以及大脑如何快速有效地检索和运用庞大的词汇知识库。 在语法层面,本书着重阐述了“动因句法”(Construction Grammar)的观点,认为语法结构本身也承载着丰富的语义和认知信息。语法并非抽象的规则系统,而是与意义紧密结合的“结构-意义配对”。作者通过分析各种语法结构,如被动语态、疑问句、祈祷句等,揭示了它们背后所蕴含的认知功能和交际目的。例如,被动语态的运用,可能反映了说话者对施事者的弱化或对受事者的关注。 本书还重点关注了“语篇”(Discourse)的认知加工。我们并非孤立地理解句子,而是将它们连接起来形成连贯的语篇。作者探讨了语篇的衔接(Cohesion)和连贯(Coherence)是如何通过词汇、语法以及篇章结构等手段实现的,以及我们的大脑如何构建语篇的心理表征,理解语篇中的指代、推理和隐含信息。 第三部分:语言与心智的互动 本书的第三部分将目光投向了语言与心智之间更深层次的互动,探讨了语言在认知发展、思维方式以及人类的社会文化实践中扮演的关键角色。 语言与思维的关系:作者对“语言相对论”(Linguistic Relativity)进行了深入的探讨,即语言的结构和词汇如何影响甚至决定我们的思维方式。本书既肯定了语言对思维的塑造作用,又避免了绝对化的论断,强调了语言与思维之间是相互作用、相互影响的关系。通过对比不同语言的表达方式,读者可以更直观地理解语言的差异如何体现了不同的认知取向。 语言与情感:语言不仅仅是信息传递的工具,更是情感表达和交流的载体。本书分析了语言中的情感色彩、语气、语态等如何传递说话者的情绪和态度。作者还探讨了情绪如何影响语言的理解和生成,以及语言如何作为一种心理调节的工具。 语言与记忆:语言与记忆之间存在着密不可分的联系。本书详细阐述了语言如何帮助我们编码、存储和检索信息,以及语言在长期记忆和工作记忆中的作用。作者探讨了词汇的学习和记忆机制,以及叙事性语言在构建个人经历和集体记忆中的作用。 语言与社会文化:语言深深植根于社会文化之中,它不仅是文化传承的载体,更是社会身份和社会互动的工具。本书分析了语言的社会变异,如方言、社会方言等,以及语言在群体认同、权力关系和意识形态构建中的作用。同时,本书也探讨了语言的学习和习得如何受到社会文化环境的影响。 第四部分:语言与心智的实际应用 本书的最后一部分将理论研究与实际应用相结合,探讨了认知语言学在教育、心理治疗、人工智能等领域的应用价值。 语言教育:作者探讨了认知语言学理论如何指导语言教学,例如,如何通过创设情境、强调语用、引导学生主动建构意义等方式,提高语言学习的效率和效果。本书也关注了二语习得中的认知机制,以及如何利用语言的具身性特点来促进学习。 心理健康与语言:语言在心理健康领域扮演着重要角色。本书探讨了语言障碍的认知基础,以及如何通过语言治疗来帮助患者恢复沟通能力。同时,作者也关注了语言如何影响我们的情绪和心理状态,以及如何利用语言来促进积极的心理健康。 人工智能与语言:随着人工智能技术的飞速发展,语言处理已成为其中的核心难题之一。本书探讨了认知语言学理论如何为构建更智能、更自然的语言模型提供理论支持,例如,如何让机器理解语言的隐喻、语境和情感色彩,从而实现更高级的自然语言理解和生成。 结语 《语言与心智:认知视域下的语言学探索(第3版)》以其宏大的视野、深刻的洞察和前沿的理论,为读者呈现了一幅语言与心智互动关系的精美画卷。本书不仅是语言学研究的力作,更是认知科学、心理学、教育学等相关领域研究者和学习者的必读之作。它不仅能够帮助读者深入理解语言的本质,更能够启迪读者思考人类认知能力的奥秘,以及语言在塑造我们个体经验和社会现实中所扮演的不可替代的角色。阅读本书,将是一次深刻的认知之旅,一次对人类心智与语言之间神秘联系的全新探索。