QUESTION:

Dear Prof. von Glasersfeld,

 

first of all I would like to express my deepest admiration for your

intellectual work and to thank you for giving people the fantastic

possibility to communicate with you.

I am a student of German (linguistics) and also of cultural studies and

psychology in Münster, Germany. You may already have guessed that -

through lectures by Prof. Schmidt, I came across the theory of

constructivism, which fascinated me from the beginning - especially its

implications for language. Questions of constructivist view on language

were only touched upon in the lectures, but I made my conclusions.

As a speaker of two languages (German and Polish), with native-speaker

competence in both, I always thought that meaning is something very

language-specific, anything universal, anything that can simply be

transferred from one system to another (which is being claimed by some

linguists, e.g. Pinker). Translation, of course, is possible to a certain

degree, if we don't expect the subtleties to be rendered. I am also

convinced that knowing more than one language widens our horizons in the

sense that we get to know a really different view of the world, at least

some concepts that we didn't know before, because they didn't exist in our

language. And even concepts, which are supposed to exist in both

languages, appear to be slightly different (I remember your discussion of

"to hit" with possible renderings in German - this is an everyday

experience, when you "live" in two or more languages).

Recently, planning my MA-thesis, which will be about a genuine linguistic

topic (idiomaticity) I decided to explore more deeply, what constructivism

has to say about meaning. I didn't find a view on meaning that would

satisfy me in linguistic theories - neither in structural, nor pragmatic,

let alone generative linguistics. Cognitive linguistics - maybe I didn't

get deep enough into it, but I had the feeling that they ignore the

findings of 50 years of cognitive science (in the tradition of

constructivism). The notion of mental concept as representation - I'm not

sure, if it isn't another reference theory. But at least cognitive

semanticists like George Lakoff place the meaning inside the mind of the

individual - not in the material sign. However, my problem with cognitive

semantics is the simplification and speculative dimension of the "mental

representation" concept. I don't think that it takes into consideration

the neurobiological findings which had influence on Radical

Constructivism, and which should be essential to anyone thinking about

meaning and cognition.

Looking for literature about language and constructivism, of course, I

"ran into" your publications, dear Prof. von Glasersfeld. Among others, I

read the beautiful "Wie wir uns erfinden", your conversations with Heinz

von Foerster. It is delightful and amusing. Thank you very much for that!

The theses on meaning you put forward were exactly what I was looking for

(I was familiar with Radical Constructivism before, so I roughly knew what

I could expect).

In my MA-thesis I would like to discuss the notion of idiomaticity. In

tradtitional semantics there is this opinion, that idioms are non-

compositional. They are considered to be anomalous, semantically and

sometimes syntactically, and therefore stored and processed holistically.

In one of your articles ("Zeichen - Kommunikation - Sprache", in Wissen,

Sprache und Wirklichkeit, p. 62) you are referring to Hockett and saying

with him that signs are being combined, according to some rules, to form

new, complex meanings. This reminds me of the compositionality principle,

which is said to have been formulated by Gottlob Frege. Some authors say

that the compositionality principle is implicitly or explicitly

preconditioned in traditional grammars and also in semantics. The speaker

of a language must be able to rely on the stable meanings of the speech

elements, and their possible relations, otherwise an understanding would

be impossible. This is the normal case of language use. But prototypical

idioms like "kick the bucket"are supposed to be different: semantically

opaque, unmotivated and having a special meaning that is not derivable

from its parts. However, there are also idioms that are less opaque and

can be more or less easily motivated by the speaker (sometimes, of course,

it results in "folk etymolgy").

In my view, semantics is too orthodox on this point. It denies the literal

level of interpretation which evokes the picture, considering only the

holistic meaning an idiom has ("kick the bucket" for "to die"). In this

way idioms are being treated like single words. It is being denied, that

all idioms have been motivated by the time of their emergence. As time

passes, idioms can become opaque, because the living conditions of the

speakers using the lexicalized expression change (e.g. the circumstances

of killing pigs are no longer part of "common knowledge", so "kick the

bucket" and "to die" cannot be connected on basis of knowledge). What

remains is a rather unmotivated sign. But this is only partly true.

Speakers try to remotivate idioms (perhaps because they don't like using

word combinations that don't make sense for them - I could report on a

great example of remotivation which I came across in Polish recently).

Idiomatic expressions, interpreted literally, evoke mental pictures, and

this is in my opinion, why semantics avoids this literal level of idiom

meaning. A constructivist view, on the contrary, should be able to explain

that such an internal picture can be generated by the speaker, hearer or

reader, and that it can be part of the meaning of an expression. The both

levels of meaning somehow interact, this is the idiomaticity. Of course,

in everyday communication, probably the more communicative (pragmatic,

holistic) meaning of idiomatic expressions will be more important, but

there are cases, where the literal level is being activated on purpose

("idiom-breaking" in newspaper texts, for example).

What I would like to know, is whether the views on idioms I presented here

are in accordance with the constructivist viewpoint. I would be very

happy, if you, dear Prof. Glasersfeld, could comment on this.

Thank you very much and all the best to you

 

Martina Jagielski

 

ANSWER:

 

Dear Ms. Jagielski,

 

That a student, who may be almost seventy years younger

than I am, is interested in finding out more about my work

gives me more pleasure than anything else, and I thank you

from the bottom of my heart. The satisfaction is even greater,

because you seem intent upon enlarging the area covered by

my writings.

I am also particularly pleased by what you say about your

experiences with the meanings in the two native languages you

have. Most monolinguals think that I have made all that up,

when they hear it from me or read it.

I do not remember ever having dealt with idioms directly; but in two

articles I fairly recently wrote on metaphor you may find observations

which may be relevant.* I do believe that most idioms arise from an

analogy between situations (or things), which someone sees and

expresses, and which leads the listener (or reader) to make new

connection that seems so apt that it repeated.

I, for instance, had no idea that "kicking the bucket" could be

connected to killing pigs. It made sense to me because I saw a

bucket being kicked, turning over, and spilling whatever it

contained.

Anyway, I fully agree with what you say. What is called

"cognitive science" in the United States is, in my view, little

more than another form of behaviorism. Most of the people

who generated it never thought about epistemology or

repressed what questions about it arose in them. They never

make clear that "representations" cannot be images of a "real"

world but are always and inevitable re-presentations of the

particular subject's sensory or conceptual experiences.

The "compositionality principle" may have been mentioned by a

lot of authors, but I never came across one that tried to analyze

specific meanings that were generated by the composition of words. And

as the relational meanings of prepositions and conjunctions were never

considered as a part of Syntax, practically nothing was ever done

about them. One of my first papers was about that topic and if you are

interested I could send you a copy..

Thank you once more for your letter!

 

Best wishes,

Ernst von Glasersfeld

 

* The first was published in "Eine Rose ist eine Rose..." Hrsg.

Hans-Rudi Fischer, Carl Auer Verlag, 2005; the second has

not yet been published, but I could send you a copy by e-mail.

 

 

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