HOW DO WE UNDERSTAND LANGUAGE?

The topic of language-understanding was of prime importance for Wegener, as the following quote from Part II of the Investigations shows:

All known human language is articulated. It is not a sum or aggregate of natural tones and sounds. All sounds truly related in a language are formed by a great number of individuals guided by a general norm. From living with other individuals, the accomplished speaker has learned the way in which to form these sounds and how to connect groups of them to form a definite meaning. However, we learn a language by becoming accustomed to associating a certain sound image with a certain meaning, and by comprehending the association of these sound images together to form a definite sense. But who has told us what meaning should be associated with those groups of sounds? No one; because no one can tell us unless he first understands the language himself [i.e. because nobody can be told who does not already speak the language himself]. It is quite clear that linguistic understanding is not dependent solely on the knowledge of the words and their meanings, nor on the knowledge of syntactical forms and their meanings. Otherwise, we would never understand language nor learn how to use it independently. It is thus important for the understanding of the existence and development of language to state clearly which factors and processes make it possible for us to understand language at all, and to investigate in what way these factors gain significance for the formation of language.

(US: 63171)

We have seen that the learning of language is based on strategies of problem-solving, that is conclusions drawn from what is said, how it is said, where it is said, and by whom it is said; we have also seen that the evolution of language—even its grammar—is driven by the same strategies arising from the communicative needs and the pressures of the linguistic interaction. It would be astonishing to find that language understanding, or more generally language use, was achieved on radically different grounds.

Language understanding thrives on, by now well known, resources: the three types of situation, attention to the speaker-hearer’s expectations, gesture, intonation, the proportional relation between exposition and predicate, and the relationship between form and function, their congruence or incongruence. These sources of inference are most heavily used in dialogue (US: 64172), in purposeful speech where we do things with words, especially influencing the will of the other (e.g. promise, threat, etc.) (cf. US: 66f.174f.). Words are not mere ‘containers of sound’ (US: 72178), they are instruments used in purposeful action. In adult dialogue we master the technique almost perfectly, we use the language, the tool, we learned as children, automatically and mechanically (US: 65173), to achieve specific ends. To achieve these ends most efficiently we tend to use forms that are congruent to their functions (cf. US: 74180), for example, we use the

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imperative to give an order and do not simply shout a word in an imperative tone. But the use of more and more complex syntactical structures requires in turn a more and more complex inference-help system, so to speak. Tone and stress are no longer enough. This is especially true of narratives or descriptions of action. How do we understand them? How do we understand reported discourse where the immediate situational grounding as

a source of inferences is absent? Before we approach this problem, we have to see how language comprehension is achieved in general.

Instructions

We noted earlier that Wegener proposed a theory of language that relies on the fact that utterances are instructions to the hearer to construct meaning. In Wegener’s view words do not express a substance, they are rather summonses that demand the hearer’s attention and challenge hisher observational powers. They do not so much carry meaning as make the hearer retrieve some facts associated with the sound in hisher memory. These facts are normally memories of the situation in which a word had been spoken before. Only the attentive correlation of the aural sound and the visual input and the associated memories gives rise to an Anschauungsbild, a mental image, which is the ‘substance’ of the word:

As a means of summoning the appropriate situation to consciousness, these words are the linguistic predicates of the situation. We can say that all predicates are ways of indicating or remembering a situation. At first they must be sensed as a demand to

This theory bears a striking similarity to a conception of meaning put forward by

Moore and Carling: ‘an understander does not receive information from an utterance, but rather uses the utterance to gain access to information which in some form and to some degree he already possesses. Meaning is thus not, as the container view would have us believe, in language, but rather language serves to tap the existing knowledge and experience of language users in such a way that understanding—to some degree— is possible’ (1982:12).

imagine the appropriate situation or to bring it to view; they must be sensed as an imperative of remembrance. Thus the means of speech for the substance (demonstrative pronoun) is the imperative, or the demand to see or hear something present; the means of speech for the predicate is the demand to remember a situation.

(Wegener US: 99200–1)

Once a word is habitually associated with such a mental representation it can be used as a reminder of the situation in which the utterance took place. Once this habit is established, the hearer directly infers the speaker’s intention from the speaker’s utterance. Series of such reminders (words) are sentences, where each ‘reminder’ assumes a specific role, a specific value related to the overall purpose of the utterance. That is, the mechanization of imperatives summoning up remembrances and the integration of words into sentences makes it possible for a sentence as a whole to become something like an instruction for the construction of meaning, executed more or less automatically. Conversely, series of

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words (i.e. sentences) can be reduced mechanically to words. To summarize from Wegener:

From this can be discerned that originally there was no phonetic means of speech to indicate a substance. Rather, all means of speech were predicates, that is, means of remembrance by which the familiar situations could be indicated. These situations were of a complicated type in which inanimate bodies, spatial relationships, people, and sensual qualities were all contained. Because of the function of these predicates for a definite purpose, they became indications of certain parts, attributes, or relations of this situation picture.

The simplest linguistic utterance begins as an imperative, the command to the listener to remember a situation, with each new word an imperative. Through habituation, fluency, and mechanization of the course of comprehension, these imperative sentences are sensed no longer as sentences, but only in their results as groups of thoughts. Through the conclusion of the listener about the purpose of the speaker, the words attached in a row are formed into a sentence in which the parts have their specific value for the whole. Such rows or sentences can be mechanized again into simple linguistic words.

(US: 100201–2)

But instructions would not help if, on the hearer’s side, we did not find some ‘devices’ that help himher carry out these instructions. Only instructions and the knowledge of patterns, models, or schemata together allow the construction of meaning.

Schemata

Take, for example, the sentence ‘veni, vidi, vici’ (I came, I saw, I conquered; cf. US: 105205). Although the syntactic form does not offer specific clues, we read this sentence as ‘First I came, next I saw, and then I conquered’, that is, we understand it as a chronological series of actions. In the sentence ‘I remained at home and I read’ (ibid.) [better: I stayed at home…], however, we regard both actions as occurring simultaneously. To achieve these various interpretations, the listener or reader relies on the following hints: (1) The meaning of the verbs themselves, a meaning with which the reader has to be

somewhat familiar, that is to say that she has to have experienced himherself the actions described (US: 105205–6).

(2) The temporal succession of the linguistic signs themselves (US: 106–206). (3) But most importantly she relies again on the distinction between exposition and

predicate. In the cases where a sequence of actions is described, the speaker again proceeds by

‘emendation’, correction, attention to the hearer’s expectations, etc., adapting his point of view of the action series to the expectations and experiences of the hearer.

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We frequently indicate an earlier action parenthetically first as a supplementation because it serves as exposition of the action of the predicate; for example [when] (sic) he took off the overcoat, he wore a beautiful jacket [er zog das Kleid aus, er trug einen schönen, dunklen Rock]. We proceed in this manner in all those cases where, by means of supplementary correction, temporal, causal, and concessive subordinate clauses have arisen.

These sentence connections can only become subordinate clauses (1) because the listener arranges known actions according to their relationships, (2) because he differentiates between action which is actually valuable for the message, i.e., the predicate of the message, and that which is only a preparatory expositional action. The exposition is not the purpose of the message, but only a serving aid for the predicate, thus subordinate to it.

(US: 106206)

Tenses have naturally evolved to make the construction of meaning easier, as well as words indicating temporal relations, such as thereupon, then, now, again, meanwhile, etc. (cf. US: 113212). If these words help the hearer to construct the action-sequence correctly by filling in gaps of knowledge, there are other words that the speaker has to use when an action unexpectedly changes course, such as but, however, etc. (cf. p. 178 below).

Apart from seeing the temporal relationship between actions, the listener also has to construct the specific relationship between subject and verb, verb and object. Wegener gives an example that would have delighted Aitchison (1987) and Moore and Carling (1982): to have a house, a book, a headache, a sharp wit, etc. (114212); to make mistakes, a table, leaps, etc. (114213).

As to the first examples, Jean Aitchison writes: ‘human word comprehension requires active matching skills, in which pre-existing information has to be combined with information extracted from the context’ (155; cf. chapter 7, p. 138).

As to the second series of examples (Moore and Carling use the examples: to put on the television, to put on the gas, to put on some music, etc.; 1982, 184ff.), Moore and Carling write, after having noted that linguists tend to study words in isolation, overlooking their basic variability or adaptability:

In assuming that words and expressions have a set of meanings, fully specifiable independently of their occurrence in combination with other units in particular contexts, the container view overlooks one of language’s most fundamental characteristics: the capacity of language users, with a relatively limited vocabulary, to reflect a potentially limitless variety of human experience. The ways in which they do this constitute the true innovative and creative use of language.

(Moore and Carling 1982:186)

Wegener himself writes that such combinations can only be understood by linking the linguistic meaning to our personal experience of the world. The same holds true for the

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understanding of simple actions ‘executed’ by the subject, such as A eats, writes, lives, hits, etc. (cf. US: 114213). Language in itself and for itself only gives very meagre hints as to what these combinations or actions mean. The interpretation must be based on conclusions drawn from the context. At the beginning these conclusions might be hard work, ‘are drawn slowly, until habituation mechanizes them; and then the listener and the speaker believe that the supplementations gained by inference are expressed in the words of speech themselves, because the mechanized series of conclusions no longer cross the threshold of consciousness’ (ibid.: 114–15213). This is not only a theory of the ‘social construction of reality’, but of the social construction of language itself! Construction is the life language. Language does not live and grow according to internal and fixed laws, but because every utterance has to be understood by the listener, because the listener has to construct meaning, a construction for which the speaker provides only the bricks and mortar. The main tools used in this construction are the hearer’s (1) expectations—especially of the

(2) purpose of the action and the (3) goal of the action, and last but not least (4) a certain plan or script—Wegener calls it ‘schema’,

and the speaker’s attention to these expectations of the hearer (cf. for a modern version of this theory: Schank and Abelson 1977).

If somebody says ‘He is digging’ we only understand the description of the action if we understand the purpose of the activities involved in the action, e.g. stabbing into the earth, lifting the shovel, etc. The purpose gives a unity to these activities, turns them into an action.

We first recognize and understand actions through the purpose of the activity, so that the activity becomes the purpose of the action. The purpose is thereby the bond by which we condense a series of movements to an entirety.

(US: 120218; emphasis in original)

Some activities are just instrumental in relation to the overall purpose. These activities are normally ‘mechanized actions’ (ibid.: 121219). Another advantage of thinking about the purpose, when observing or hearing about an action, is that it gives the activity a direction towards its completion, a goal (ibid.: 124f.221f.) Take the following example:

Thus one relates war was declared, the first battle was bloody…It is not said whether belligerence actually followed the declaration of war; this sequel is assumed as self-evident because the goal of a declaration of war is simply the waging of war. Unless mention is made to the contrary, from the purpose involved one infers that hostilities have been realized. One could almost say with grammatical terminology that the present has been advanced to the perfect…. This expectation originates from the frequent experience that an activity usually continues in a certain fashion.

(ibid.: 127224–5, 120225)

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However, consider the following case:

In the example given above war was declared…, we can continue but it never came to war…, or it came nevertheless…. That is, we say that the listener’s expectation of the actual outbreak of war does not necessarily follow in this case. The speaker should therefore have considerations for the listener’s expectation of a connection between his sentences.

(ibid.: 129225)

In the cases described we understand sequences of actions because we know by experience that certain actions ‘causally’ have this or that consequence, and causality seems indeed to be the schema by which we connect most actions (cf. 139f.226f.). Our primary effort in understanding a narrative of actions or events is to construct a satisfying order of events. To do this we must locate or provide two features—temporality and causality. When we recognize something as a story, we regard it as having a temporal sequence based on cause and effect. However weak this schema is (ibid.: 131227), broken more often than not, we have to know it so as to make sense of actions and the description of actions. ‘Thus that expectation pattern [schema] is only conjectural, and it does not have the character of strict adherence to solid law’ (ibid.: 131227).

Without schemata we would not understand utterances, because language only provides us with some points of reference by which we can proceed to begin the construction of meaning, a little like in a drawing: we first put down some points of reference (cf. ibid.: 138234), then make a schematic drawing, then fill in the details. Wegener uses the example-sentence: ‘He ploughs the field’. To understand this sentence, we proceed in the following way, and Wegener uses a geometrical comparison, in the manner of Kant:

To give a simile, it is the same as with a geometrical problem: we are not given a complete triangle, but rather three points on a plane [we are given the words he, plough and field] and the demand to construct a triangle [and the instruction to make sense]. Therefore, we ourselves must then find the connecting lines according to our knowledge of a triangle.

(US: 138f.234)

This knowledge has the form of a ‘schema’ which we superimpose on the points so as to get the triangle (meaning).

Wegener describes more complex schemata, sometimes called models in his chapter on how we describe actions. The problem here is at what level to describe actions. We can say ‘he strode out’ but also ‘he raised his right foot, stretched it forward, placed it on the ground, etc.’ (cf. US: 156250). In certain contexts (a physiology lesson, training after an accident, etc.) a detailed description might be necessary, but there seem to be certain upper and lower limits that should be respected. From reading Wegener one can postulate that there are basically three levels: movements, activities, and actions. Wegener postulates that:

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All mechanized movements, which we assume are also automatic for the listener, will no longer be analysed in their component parts, except for the purpose of making conscious what we do unconsciously and automatically….

Thus, only those actions or activities experienced consciously can be understood by the listener.

(US: 158251, 159252; emphasis in original)

As in the understanding of actions-sequences, we describe actions according to certain patterns, models or schemata (cf. Bewegungsmuster, US: 164). We have, one could say with Johnson-Laird

Kant wrote in his Critique of Pure Reason: ‘In truth, it is not images of objects, but schemata,

which lie at the foundation of our pure sensuous conceptions. No image could ever be adequate to our conception of triangles in general. For the generalness of the conception it never could attain to, as this includes under itself all triangles, whether right-angled, acute angled, etc., whilst the image would always be limited to a single part of this sphere. The schema of the triangle can exist nowhere else than in thought, and it indicates a rule of the synthesis of the imagination in regard to pure figures in space’ (quoted by Johnson-Laird 1983:189–190).

(1983), certain ‘mental models’, for example of relations in space, of certain houses, rooms, etc., derived from automatic models of movement, e.g. based on the use of the left and right hand (Raummuster, US: 165258) (cf. Johnson-Laird 1983, 250ff.). We also have mental models of the normal ‘intensities’ of actions, quantitatively and qualitatively,

e.g. a strong cough does not bow trees as does a strong storm, etc. (cf. for similar examples, US: 165258).

These mental models or images of movements, activities and relations form the relative stable molecules for the description and understanding of actions.

Thus, as I have called them above, the molecules of activity are the components of action which are always unchangeable, and are always formed according to the same pattern. On the other hand, the larger complexes of these molecules are varied in their composition, but in such

a way that the sequence and the transfers from one molecule to another are again constructed to definite patterns.

(US: 166f.259; emphasis in original)

The patterns for combining molecules of action are again those described above, governed by the presupposition that every action has a goal, a purpose, a cause, and an effect. Such molecules, as the schema for eating or drinking, allow us to understand the description of a Homeric feast, for example, an event which differs markedly from a modern dinner party. The construction of these pictures is a ‘free act of the listener’ (US: 175255).

But what happens if the listener lacks a model or schema for the construction of understanding? She resorts to related patterns and in analogy to known patterns, in comparison with known ones, builds new ones. To describe a certain shape we say ‘oval’,

a simile with an egg; to describe a distance, we say a ‘rifle-shot away’, which is a

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metaphor for a short time (cf. US: 178269); to describe the colour of a building we say its ‘grass-green, brick-red’, etc. (ibid.).

When writing this chapter, I opened the Observer (28 February 1988) and read the following title of an article on (apparently bad) videos for gardeners: ‘Veni, video, but no vici’. In this case, the example we mentioned already is regarded as a stock-phrase, or as Bréal would say locution, that every gardener understands, whether she speaks Latin or not, and the title was modelled on it. The construction of meaning was left to the reader who had to rely on the context and the illustration.

This construction of new models according to old ones is, as Wegener says, of prime importance for the study of the development of word-meaning or as it was then called in Germany: semasiology (US: 179270). In his semantics Bréal has explored exactly these processes: metaphor and analogy, facts that Wegener could only hint at in his book. But

he has devoted one very important chapter to the analysis of metaphor, and shown ‘how a figurative designation gradually becomes congruent with its actual function’ (ibid: 178– 90270f.).

HOW DO WE UNDERSTAND LANGUAGE?