Posted - 26/03/2001 : 09:24:11
Department of Chinese, Translation & Linguistics
&
Institute of Chinese Linguistics
Joint Seminar
The Emergence of Grammar from Action
By
Professor Brian MacWhinney
Carnegie Mellon University
Time: 4:30 - 6:00 pm
Date: Monday, 26 March 2001
Venue: CTL Conference Room B7533, CityU
Abstract: Grammar provides us with ways of expressing the process
of perspective-taking, which allows us to understand the actions of
others. We can communicate our alternative active perspectives on
four levels:
objects, spatio-temporal reference frames, causal action chains, and
social relations. Language uses a system of deictic codes to shift
between various sensory and motor experiences with objects.
Spatio-temporal reference frames allow us to generalize the
ego-centered perspective to object-centered and
environment-centered reference frames. Causal action chains allow
us to understand the actions of objects in terms of movements and
changes of our own bodies. Social relations allow us to shift between
the perspectives of different social actors.
We can comprehend utterances in either a depictive or enactive
mode. The more thoroughly we engage enactive processing, the deeper
the level of processing of the sentence. However, enactive processing
requires the devotion of resources to deictic, attentional shifting.
Grammar negotiates these demands by favoring some structures over
others. These effects can be seen in areas as diverse as relative
clause processing, c-command constraints on coreference, and split
ergativity. Children's first attempts at learning word meaning and
argument structure reflect the workings of these enactive, egocentric
perspectives.
Recent work in single-cell recording, fMRI, PET, and neuroanatomy
all point toward the importance of neural mechanisms that link
perception to action as ways of supporting thinking as a cognitive
simulation.
About the Speaker: Professor Brian MacWhinney is professor of
psychology at Carneigie-Mellon University, currently visiting the
Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences of the University of Hong
Kong. He has worked extensively on the acquisition of morphophonology
and syntax in Hungarian and other languages, advocating a competition
model of language acquisition based on functionalist principles. He
has also contributed to the crosslinguistic study of language
processing, and the analysis of perspective in grammar. Professor
MacWhinney has been a founder and director of the Child Language Data
Exchange System (CHILDES), an archive of language development
datafrom more than 30 languages, and architect of the Talkbank Project.
He is the current President of the International Association for the
Study of Child Language. His recent research is concerned with the
language of children with focal lesions, neural networks and learning,
as well as grammar and embodiment.
Enquiries: 2788-8705
___________________ All are welcome! ____________________
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