Sub sections:
Body and Grammar: how neuro-physiology shapes language
Semester II 2004
Dr Nicholas Reid
nreid@metz.une.edu.au
(Education Room 108, 9 August, 12 noon)
Abstract
Implicit in Chomsky's Cartesian conception of the mind is the view that language is universal, innate, an autonomous capacity, and linked with reason. This paper begins by examining some of the linguistic evidence for a very different view of the mind - that it is inherently embodied. I begin by looking at some of the ways in which concepts that arise in human languages are shaped by our perceptual and motor sensory systems, focussing in particular on posture, the handling of objects, and spatial reckoning. Drawing on data from unrelated Australian and American languages (especially Ngan'gi and Klamath), this paper explores the idea that certain types of linguistic verb categorisation fall out naturally from our neuro-physiology. The evidence supports an evolutionary view of reason - that our sensorimotor systems, which allow us to move, perceive things, and manipulate things, have influenced how we think. Such a view reopens interest in the Whorfian hypothesis and invites questions about how much semantic variability is out there, and to what extent such variability might reflect universal conceptual structure.