The Problem of Meaning: Behavioral and Cognitive Perspectives

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THE PROBLEM OF MEANING Behavioral and Cognitive Perspectives

ADVANCES IN PSYCHOLOGY 122 Editors:

G. E. STELMACH R A. VROON

ELSEVIER Amsterdam

- Lausanne

- New

York - Oxford

- Shannon

- Tokyo

THE PROBLEM OF MEANING Behavioral and Cognitive Perspectives

Edited by Charlotte MANDELL and Allyssa McCABE Department of Psychology University of Massachusetts Lowell Lowell, MA, USA

1,$ 1997

ELSEVIER Amsterdam

- Lausanne

- New

York - Oxford

- Shannon

- Tokyo

NORTH-HOLLAND ELSEVIER SCIENCE B.V. Sara Burgerhartstraat 25 P.O. Box 211, 1000 AE Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Library

o f Congress Cataloging-in-Publication

Data

The problem of meaning : b e h a v i o r a l and c o g n i t i v e p e r s p e c t i v e s / e d i t e d by C h a r l o t t e Mandel] and A 1 ] y s s a McCabe. p. cm. - - (Advances in p s y c h o l o g y ; 122) Includes bibliographical r e f e r e n c e s and i n d e x e s . ISBN 0 - 4 4 4 - 8 2 4 7 9 - 0 1. Meaning ( P s y c h o l o g y ) 2. Meaning ( P h i l o s o p h y ) I . Mande11, Char]otte. I I . McCabe, A ] ] y s s a . III. S e r i e s : Advances in p s y c h o l o g y (Amsterdam, N e t h e r l a n d s ) ; 122. BF463.M4P76 1992 153--dc21 97-25320 CIP

ISBN: 0 444 82479 0 9 1997Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, Elsevier Science B.V., Copyright & Permissions Department, P.O. Box 521, 1000 AM Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Special regulations for readers in the U.S.A. - This publication has been registered with the Copyright Clearance Center Inc. (CCC), 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923. Information can be obtained from the CCC about conditions under which photocopies of parts of this publication may be made in the U.S.A. All other copyright questions, including photocopying outside of the U.S.A., should be referred to the copyright owner, Elsevier Science B.V., unless otherwise specified. No responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the material herein. This book is printed on acid-flee paper. Printed in The Netherlands

Dedication We would like to dedicate this book to those individuals who taught us. Charlotte MandeU would like to t h a n k her undergraduate teachers Sheila Chase and Eric Heinemann and her mentor, Tony Nevin. Allyssa McCabe would like to t h a n k James Deese, her mentor.

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vii Table

List of C o n t r i b u t o r s

of Contents

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ix

Introduction:

The Many Meanings of Meaning A l l y s s a M c C a b e & Charlotte M a n d e l l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1

Historical and Philosophical Foundations of the Problem of Meaning L a u r e n c e D. S m i t h

....................................................

15

Stimulus Equivalence and Meaning: The Influence of Verbal Behavior Charlotte C. M a n d e l l

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81

Metaphor, Meaning and Relational Frame Theory Steven C. Hayes & A d a m M. G r u n d t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

117

A Comparative Perspective On the Etiology of Meaning and Assaying Behaviors for Meaning D u a n e M. R u m b a u g h & E. S u e S a v a g e - R u m b a u g h

.......................

147

Sign Language Acquisition and the Development of Meaning in a Lowland Gorilla J o h n D. B o n v i l l i a n & F r a n c i n e G. P. Patterson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

181

Input and the Acquisition of Vocabulary: Examining the Parental Lexicon J e a n Berko Gleason & R i c h a r d E l y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

221

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Table o f Contents

Making Meaning in Parent-Child Interaction: A Pragmatic Approach A l i s o n L. I m b e n s - B a i l e y & Catherine E. S n o w . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

261

Cultural Constructions of Meaning: Cross-Cultural Comparisons of Mother-Child Conversations About the Past Masahiko Minami

...................................................

297

Narrative Threads Of Metaphor Allyssa McCabe

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347

Attributing Meaning to Deliberately False Utterances: The Case of Irony S h e l l y D e w s & Ellen Winner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

377

The Problem of Meaning in Generative Grammar M a s s i m o P i a t t e l l i - P a l m a r i n i & Carlo Cecchetto

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415

Author Index

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471

Subject Index

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481

ix

List of C o n t r i b u t o r s JOHN D. BONVILLIAN Department of Psychology University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA 22903 CARLO CECCHETTO DIPSCO - Dipartimento di Scienze Cognitive H. San Raffaele Via Olgettina 58 1-20132 Milano Italy SHELLY DEWS PureSpeech 100 Cambridge Park Drive Cambridge, MA 02140 RICHARD ELY Department of Psychology 64 Cummington Street Boston University Boston, MA 02215 JEAN BERKO GLEASON Department of Psychology 64 Cummington Street Boston University Boston, MA 02215 ADAM GRUNDT Department of Psychology College of Arts and Science University of Nevada Reno, NV 89557-0062 STEVEN C. HAYES Foundation Professor of Psychology and Chair Department of Psychology College of Arts and Science University of Nevada Reno, NV 89557-0062

x

List of Contributors

ALISON IMBENS-BAILEY Infant Child Communication Programs Arizona State TTniversity P.O. Box 871908 Tempe, AZ 85287-1908 CHARLOTTE MANDELL Department of Psychology University of Massachusetts Lowell Lowell, MA 01854 ALLYSSA MCCABE Department of Psychology University of Massachusetts Lowell Lowell, MA 01854 MASAHIKO MINAMI Department of Psychology University of Massachusetts Lowell Lowell, MA 01854 FRANCINE G. P. PATTERSON President, The Gorilla Foundation P.O. Box 620-640 Woodside, CA 94062 MASSIMO PIATELLI-PALMARINI DIPSCO - Dipartimento di Scienze Cognitive H. San Raffaele Via Olgettina 58 1-20132 Milano Italy DUANE RUMBAUGH Departments of Psychology and Biology and the Language Research Center Georgia State University Atlanta, GA 30303 SUE SAVAGE-RUMBAUGH Departments of Psychology and Biology and the Language Research Center Georgia State University Atlanta, GA 30303

List of Contributors

LAURENCE SMITH Department of Psychology University of Maine Orono, ME 04469-5742 CATHERINE SNOW Larsen 3rd Floor Harvard Graduate School of Education Appian Way Cambridge, MA 02138 ELLEN WINNER Department of Psychology Boston College Chestnut Hill, MA 02167

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The Problem of Meaning: Behavioral and Cognitive Perspectives C. Mandell and A. McCabe (Editors) 9 1997 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION:

The Many Meanings of Meaning

ALLYSSA McCABE and CHARLOTTE MANDELL

University of Massachusetts, Lowell

Ever since Ebbinghaus tried to rid stimuli of "the contamination of meaning" only to find that his subjects surreptitiously imposed their own meaning on his ostensibly pure nonsense syllables, the concept of meaning has proven problematic for our discipline. As is evident from this volume, attempts to unravel the problem of meaning have a long history and are both numerous and varied (See, for example, Smith, this volume). presents a challenge.

The very act of defining meaning itself

The term meaning can be looked at from a global perspec-

tive (i.e., making sense of the events around one) or from a more limited perspective (i.e., making sense of a word, utterance, sentence, or passage). Even when we limit discussion to the meaning of words there are complications; as Deese (1978, pp.l-2) points out, there is lexical meaning (i.e., "the conventional and arbitrary relation between a word and its referent"), referential meaning (i.e., "the conceptreferent relation"), and psychological meaning (i.e., "a person's subjective perception and affective reactions to segments of language"). Meaning can be literal or nonliteral.

The ability to interpret or assign meanings can be examined in

relation to ontogeny, genetic potential, maturational level, and individual social and learning history. Meaning can be explored from both relative and absolute perspectives, emphasizing or de-emphasizing the role of context.

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McCabe and Mandell

OBSTACLES AND S U R P R I S E S Given the cacophony around the meanings of meaning, it is a wonder that this volume ever came to be. Added to the difficulty of pinning down our central subject is the fact that many historically antagonistic disciplines and theoretical camps are represented in this single volume. Many psychologists have expressed concern over the fragmentation of psychology (see, for example, Lee, 1994; Staats, 1991; Sabourin, 1992). It is a sad comment on our discipline that it has been many years since some of us read work from other camps.

In compiling this

volume, we have had to overcome differences in vocabulary, in aesthetics and conventions, in methodology and shared history. We have had to spell out many of our basic assumptions in language comprehensible to our more distant colleagues. In short, we have had to preach to the unconverted. Spelling out assumptions has been a clarif~ng and elucidating process. As Kleinginna and Kleinginna (1988) point out, certain assumptions are inviolable in any theoretical approach.

For the Chomskyan, the notion that there are

internal biological governing mechanisms for language acquisition is absolutely critical. For the behaviorist, to account for any behavior by means of such internal mechanisms is anathema. In this regard, the social interactionists may have laid the groundwork that will ~llow conversation to proceed. For example, the social interactionists are willing to acknowledge some potentially universal aspects of language acquisition that may or may not be biologically based (i.e., see discussion of the acquisition of color terms in Gleason & Ely, this volume). However, for social interactionists,

talk about internal biological mechanisms requires

employing explicitly biological research techniques (Snow, 1996). Clearly, social interactionists' work on parental and cultural influence on developing language has relevance for behaviorists' views (Horne & Lowe, 1996). Conversely, for child language researchers such as McCabe to discover that behaviorists such as Mandell were talking about rule-governed, as distinct from contingency-governed, behaviors suggested an intriguing possible way out of

The Many Meanings of Meaning certain impasses in understanding language acquisition.

3

There has been a

lengthy debate about whether children use information in parental input to correct their grammatical overregularization.

Some argue that children's rule-

governed grammatical overregularization (e.g., "I goed to the store") receives tittle correction from parents (Brown & Hanlon, 1970) and is impervious to such correction on the rare occasions when it is offered (McNeill, 1966). Others (e.g., Bohannon & Stanowicz, 1988; Demetras, Post, & Snow, 1986) argue that children do in fact receive feedback from parents about grammatical mistakes, but that it is indirect (i.e., parents ask clarifying questions after mistakes, but go on to develop the subject of conversation after grammatically well-formed questions). In this struggle between the social interactionists and the Chomskyans, no one noticed that certain behaviorists were establishing that rule-governed verbal behavior is notoriously impervious to contingencies, a fact that may explain the difficulty social interactionists have occasionally had in demonstrating the impact of parents' corrective input or even its existence. In fact, the reports of nonexistent parental feedback (e.g., Morgan & Travis, 1989), may be due to a cessation of parental efforts in the face of children's resistance to correction. Such intriguing potential connections are not without glitches.

When

behaviorists talk about rule-governed behavior, they are talking about verbal instructions (other or self-generated) governing behavior, not the kind of unconscious overregularization of very young children. (No one would argue that a threeyear-old is going around saying, "I need to add -ed when I want to refer to past tense events.")

Behaviorists might want to debate whether rule-governed

behavior need always be exphcitly verbal to be within their purview. On the other hand, social interactionists might want to debate the extent to which they are committed to viewing children as actively generating rules (a tradition from the inception of the field of child language; see Dale, 1972, p. 36), versus the extent to which they might consider whether rules that characterize children's behavior are themselves derived through reinforcement contingencies. Surprisingly, this alter-

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McCabe and Mandell

native view has been argued from early on. On observing that changes in language use were not the abrupt "missing-yesterday, here-today" type presumably characteristic of the acquisition of a rule but instead were generally quite gradual, Brown (1973, p. 388) wrote "If our conception is correct it means that the learning of the intricate network of rules governing the 14 grammatical morphemes is more like habit formation and operant conditioning than anyone has supposed. " One of the other critical sticking points for rapprochement concerns the question of what drives the acquisition of language. For social interactionists, the emphasis is on the child's motivation to communicate with others, facilitated by the use of child-directed speech. (Gleason, 1997).

For behavior analysts, the

acquisition of verbal behavior is driven by reinforcement from the environment and from the social community (Skinner, 1957). For Chomsky the acquisition of language is driven by the language-acquisition device (LAD), which is universal, innate, biological and distinct from other aspects of cognition. Since neither of the authors of this introduction is a Chomskyan we will simply acknowledge that language acquisition could not occur without some sort of sophisticated brain. That said, the interest for us lies in the extent to which our different conceptions of the basic mechanisms underlying language acquisition can be resolved. While McCabe, a social interactionist, has no problem considering communication deeply reinforcing to children, Mandell, a behaviorist, balks at the use of the term communication with its implication of intent on the speaker's part, and the

transfer of some abstract knowledge from the speaker to the listener. Rather, she would say, following Skinner (1988, p. 85), that speakers "... respond to [the world] in ways which have been shaped and maintained by special contingencies of reinforcement. Listeners do not extract information or knowledge from words ...; they respond to verbal stimuli in ways which have been shaped and maintained by other contingencies of reinforcement.

Both contingencies are main-

tained by an evolved verbal environment or culture." For McCabe, such language

The Many Meanings of Meaning is unnecessarily cumbersome and contrived.

5

She is more comfortable with

language that retains the nuances of common parlance (e.g., communication,

language) in the interests of brevity and dissemination. For the social interactionists these differences may be construed as largely aesthetic. For the behaviorists, however, they represent deep and fundamental

differences of views. (See

Kleinginna Kleinginna, 1988). That said, we find ourselves doing much the same things, with many of the same values.

Most important, we are looking at the

influence of the environment in determining child language. Along with this, we find ourselves avoiding what we see as a naive reification of mental structures; As Shanon (1988, p. 70) puts it, "many so-called semantic representations are the products of cognitive activity [e.g., talking about meaning] not the basis for it."

BENEFITS

One of the many benefits of bringing diverse camps together is gaining a sense of historical momentum both prior to the work that typically serves as a cornerstone for our own research and the work that has been developing in other areas. Another benefit is a sense that amidst all the theoretical fragmentation of our discipline, certain commonalities exist. The role of context was perhaps the most obvious common thread in virtually all the chapters. Hayes and Grundt and Mandell argue that contextual cues determine which stimuli are to be grouped within derived stimulus classes (including equivalence classes) and what the nature of the relationships among these stimuli will be. For Rumbaugh and Savage-Rumbaugh, speech embedded in a rich social context that is meaningful for Bonobos is critical to their acquisition of language. For Bonvillian and Patterson, consistent contextually appropriate use of the signs taught to Koko was an important step in crediting her with mastery the meanings of the signs; however, those authors also note that Koko consistently used her own invented signs in a contextually appropriate way. Gleason and Ely find that parental input is highly specific even within controlled

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McCabe and Mandell

nonverbal contexts. Thus the context of each child's acquisition of language is unique.

Imbens-Bailey and Snow document how complex this rich social

/pragmatic context is for typical and atypical human children; that is, the context of an anecdote, whether past or present, determines when it is told, how it is told, and by whom.

Minami documents the extent to which the context of culture

determines the style of sense-making demonstrated in narrative. the narrative context of a metaphor determines its meaning.

For McCabe,

Dews and Winner

argue that our ability to understand and way of going about understanding irony and metaphor depends on the context in which such figurative language occurs. PiatteUi-Palmarini and Cecchetto argue that the meaning of a term depends at least in part on the syntax of the sentence in which it occurs and make note of the fact that

even Chomsky has

shifted from a meaning-as-reference to a

contextualist, meaning-as-use account.

THE CONTRIBUTORS AND CONTRIBUTIONS There are at least two ways of characterizing the contributions to this volume. One is by theoretical camp. Behaviorist contributions from Hayes and Grundt and Mandell are included, as is a chapter from Chomskyans PiatteUiPalmarini and Cecchetto and a chapter by a cognitive developmentalist pair, Dews and Winner.

The chapter by Rumbaugh and Savage-Rumbaugh bridges

behavioral and cognitive perspectives, as well as evolutionary and social ones, while the Bonvillian and Patterson contribution bridges cognitive developmental and social interactionist accounts. Other social interactionists include ImbensBailey and Snow, Gleason and Ely, Minami, and McCabe. Smith's comprehensive review places all these perspectives into a broad historical context. Another way of characterizing the contributions to this volume is by means of topic. Metaphor and other nonliteral language devices are a primary concern of Hayes and Grundt, Dews and Winner, and McCabe, and are touched on by both Minami and Smith. Narrative is a focus of Imbens-Bailey and Snow, Minami,

The Many Meanings of Meaning

7

and McCabe. The meaning of single words or symbols is the focus of Mandell, Bonvillian and Patterson, and Gleason and Ely, and to an extent a concern of Rumbaugh and Savage-Rumbaughs' work and that of Piattelli-Palmarini and Cecchetto. The influence of the social and cultural environment on making sense of and meaning in the world is the concern of Imbens-Bailey and Snow, Minami, and Rumbaugh and Savage-Rumbaugh. Developmental issues concern Gleason and Ely, Rumbaugh and Savage-Rumbaugh, Bonvillian and Patterson, ImbensBarley and Snow, Minami, and Dews and Winner.

Synopses of Contributions What follows are brief abstracts of the contributions to this volume. In the first chapter, Smith provides a comprehensive history of the problem of meaning. He discusses the philosophical roots for both cognitive and behavioral approaches to meaning, beginning with the ancient Greeks and including the British Empiricists, the Rationalists, J.B. Watson, B.F. Skinner, Wundt, Titchener, and linguists such as Chomsky and Fodor. Mandell then presents a chapter from a behavior-analytic perspective. Stimulus equivalence is said to exist when physically unrelated stimuli can be substituted for each other without explicit training to do so or, in other words, stimuli come to "mean" each other. Her chapter examines the special status of verbal stimuli in establishing a context for and facilitating the development of such equivalences. In the third chapter, Hayes and Grundt take a related behavioral approach. Their chapter covers the intersection of relational frame theory, metaphor, and meaning. They describe how relational frame theory provides a framework for the analysis of metaphor, and how, in turn, metaphor provides a means for the elaboration of verbal meaning. The fourth chapter tackles the thorny question of whether linguistic meaning is uniquely human.

Bonobos spontaneously learn a human language

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McCabe and Mandell

when raised in captivity as long as they are exposed to speech embedded in a rich social cot/text that is meaningful to them and one that emphasizes the importance of comprehending (not merely producing) language.

It also seems to be

important that this speech be accompanied by the presentation of geometric symbols. The fact that Bonobos need no explicit training to acquire this skill suggests the existence of a language component in their natural communication. Rumbaugh and Savage-Rumbaugh describe such a component, along with the nature of methods that might be used to determine whether or not "meaning" is evident in the behaviors of wild bonobos. In the fifth chapter, Bonvillian and Patterson examine the early sign language acquisition of a lowland gorilla, Koko.

Koko's early sign-language

development is compared with that of young children of deaf parents. The content of the children's and gorilla's early sign lexicons is seen to be quite similar, although the children acquire their vocabulary items at a faster rate.

Both the

children and Koko demonstrated referential language (i.e., the use of signs or words to name or label new instances of concepts); Koko achieved this language milestone at 21 months, the children typically by 13 months. Diary records of Koko's early sign use are probed for information about the meanings of her early signs and gestures. Finally, Koko's sensorimotor cognitive development is discussed with regard to her mental representation and problem-solving abilities and how these abilities interrelate with her early language development. Next, Gleason and Ely provide a sociocognitive perspective on the acquisition of vocabulary by young children. Two facets of the lexicon are under consideration: First, they examine the core vocabulary--the most common words in the language, words that are provided by all parents and learned by all children. Next, they move to two delimited domains, the lexicon of basic color words and that of money.

The authors use data sets from the Child Language Data

Exchange System (CHILDES) to evaluate the relation between parent's input and children's acquisition of the core vocabulary and both color and monetary

The Many Meanings of Meaning

9

terms. Although children universally possess cognitive propensities that predict the order of acquisition of vocabulary, adults' language to children reflects and emphasizes a similar hierarchy. Imbens-Bailey and Snow present a pragmatic approach to the way parents and children make meaning in conversational interactions.

The authors tackle

the prototypical problem of meaning--getting information about a nonshared experience across to a listener (e.g., telling an anecdote or recounting a film to someone who has not seen it), and examine the antecedents of an ability to do this. The authors draw on Ninio and Snow's (1996) account of the emergence of the ability to produce extended discourse that conveys new information comprehensibly. In the first phase, children's utterances are tightly linked to events in the world or to interactive formats, as they learn to map communicative intents onto utterances. The second phase is m a r k e d b y the emergence of the capacity to respond informatively to utterances in nonformatted settings; now children add the ability to truly convey new information to the old routines of turn-taking. In this phase, parents and children converse about nonshared events. In the third phase, such discourse about nonshared events becomes quite extended.

The

chapter documents the parental interaction that supports and sustains children in each of these three phases. The problem of the acquisition of meaning must be considered from a crosscultural perspective, which the chapter by Minami accomplishes.

Different

cultures apply distinct standards to a variety of issues. For example, people in Japan and the United States might differ greatly in their interpretation of what it means to acquire the meaning of particular words or to make sense of an experience through narrating it.

Conversations between mothers and children

from these two different cultures are analyzed:

How are mothers in the two

cultures teaching their children the meaning of a word? What do mothers in the two cultures emphasize repeatedly in conversations about past events? In Japan, for example, value is placed on speakers' implicitness and children are encour-

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McCabe and Mandell

aged to practice and depend upon empathic listening, whereas in North America, value is placed on speakers' explicitness and children are encouraged to spell out even that which they know their listeners know. Metaphor is a rhetorical device by which humans compare two dissimilar concepts and, as such, has been problematic for many theories of meaning. McCabe reviews past research that supports the idea that metaphors in published fiction create similarity between diverse concepts rather than depend upon it.

The chapter examines the various rhetorical strategies authors employ to

create meaningful connections that are simultaneously original and accessible, understandable to ordinary readers.

The chapter also underscores the need to

study metaphors as they function in narrative, the primary means by which humans make sense of experience, by which they represent themselves, and by which cultural traditions govern both those critical psychological functions. Next, Dews and Winner review their research on the acquisition of irony in children, and its relationship to the acquisition of metaphor. The authors argue that metaphor comprehension emerges prior to irony comprehension, for to understand irony the child must have a "theory of mind." That is, the child must be able to make inferences about the speaker's beliefs about the listener's beliefs. This ability is not present until sometime between four and six years, and it is for this reason that irony is not understood by children younger than this. The authors discuss the social functions of irony, and both children's and adults' awareness of these functions. They conclude with a review of their work on adult processing of irony, and argue that it is not possible to understand irony without processing at least some components of the literal meaning. The fact that some aspects of the literal meaning of irony are processed helps us to understand why irony is used in place of literal language. For if irony were understood directly, with no processing of the literal meaning then it would not have a "dual" meaning, and it would not differ in function from ordinary literal discourse. In the final chapter, Chomskyans PiatteUi-Palmarini and Cecchetto review

The Many Meanings of Meaning

11

the substantial work on theoretical semantics that has paralleled and attempted to dovetail with Chomsky's syntax-based grammar. While Chomsky himself has never primarily been concerned with semantics, there has been a lively debate on the problem of meaning in the generative tradition, and the authors present that debate in this chapter. The authors consider the relation between Chomskyan linguistics and lexical semantics first, then address issues of compositional semantics.

The decompositionalist theory of semantic markers, Theta theory,

and meaning postulates are addressed, as is the relationship between syntax and semantics in Montague, the classical argument for the autonomy of syntax, and quantificational expressions in government and binding theory.

Chomsky's

eschewal of meaning-as-reference (externalist) in favor of meaning-as-use (internalist) accounts of semantics is a major concern. In closing, our sense is that we would all do well to be cognizant, rather than simply dismissive, of other approaches. The spirit of emerging eclecticism in psychology may prove far more beneficial than its historical reliance upon warring factions.

REFERENCES

Bohannon, J. N., & Stanowicz, L. (1988). The issue of negative evidence: Adult responses to children's language errors. Developmental Psychology, 24, 684689. Brown, R. (1973). A first language: The early stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Brown, R., & Hanlon, C. (1970). Derivational complexity and order of acquisition in child speech. In R. Brown, (Ed.), Psycholinguistics (pp. 155-207). New York: Free Press. Dale, P. S. (1972). Language Development (2nd ed.). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Deese, J. (1978). Subjective meaning and culture: An assessment through word

McCabe and MandeU

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association. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Demetras, M.J., Post, K.N., & Snow, C.E. (1986). Feedback to first language learners: The role of repetitions and clarification questions. Journal of Child

Language, 13, 275-292. Gleason, J. B. (1997). The Development ofLanguage (4th ed.). MA: Allyn & Bacon. Horne, P. J., & Lowe, C. F. (1996). On the origins of naming and other symbolic behavior. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 65, 185-241, 341153. Kleinginna, P.R., & Kleinginna, A.M. (1988). Current trends toward convergence of the behavioristic, functional, and cognitive perspectives in experimental psychology. The Psychological Record, 38, 369-392. Lee, V. L. (1994). Organisms, things done, and the fragmentation of psych-ology.

Behavior and Philosophy, 22, 7-48. McNeiU, D. (1966). Developmental psycholinguistics. In F. Smith & G. Miller (Eds.), The genesis of language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Morgan, J.L., & Travis, L.L. (1989). Limits on negative information in language input. Journal of Child Language, 16, 531-552. Ninio, A., & Snow, C.E. (1996).

Developmental pragmatics.

Boulder, CO:

Westview. Sabourin, M.

(Ed.). (1992). Unity or diversity of psychology [special issue].

International Journal of Psychology, 27(5). Shanon, B. (1988). Semantic representation of meaning: A critique. Psychological

Bulletin, 104, 70-83. Skinner, B. F. (1957). Verbal Behavior. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prenctice-HaU, Inc. Skinner, B. F. (1988). The behavior of the listener. In S. E. Hayes (Ed.), Rule-

Governed Behavior: Cognition, Contingencies and Instructional Control (pp. 8596). New York: Plenum. Snow, C. E. (1996). Towards a rational empiricism: Why interactionism isn't behaviorism any more than biology is genetics. In M.L. Rice (Ed.), Toward a

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genetics of language (pp. 377-396). NJ: Erlbaum. Staats, A. W. (1991). Unified positivism and unification psychology. American

Psychologist, 46, 899-912.

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The Problem of Meanin~ Behavioral and Cognitive Perspectives C. Mandell and A. McCabe (Editors) 9 1997 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

15

CHA TER 1

Historical and Philosophical Foundations of the Problem of Meaning LAURENCE D. SMITH

University of Maine Orono

The problem of how language relates to reality and to the minds that strive to grasp that reality has long exercised the freest thinkers in the Western tradition. Everyone marvels at the power of language, especially perhaps as it is deployed in science. That power is usually assumed to arise from some nebulous ability of language to capture the world, facilitate human commerce with it, to render the meanings of the world (in its social and physical dimensions) comprehensible to us. Somewhere in the semantic triangle formed of mind, world, and language, we suppose, lie the relationships that constitute meaning (Overton, 1994). Yet these relationships have time and again resisted the best efforts of Western thinkers to characterize them explicitly and in satisfactory fullness. This state of affairs is not for lack of effort. Serious reflection on the nature of language and meaning began some 2500 years ago---and with surprising scope and insight--among the philosopher of pre-Socratic Greece. In our own time, the issue of meaning has been declared the problem of the 20th century (Kitchener, 1994), and has been assaulted with unprecedented vigor by scholars in a widening array of disciplines wielding increasingly refined investigatory tools. Yet, for all these creative efforts and the harvest of genuine insights they have produced, the trajectory of discussion on the problem of meaning does not yet appear to be one

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of convergence. Competing schools of thought on the problem of meaning abound, and at least one prominent philosopher in our own time has proclaimed, on principled philosophical grounds, the impossibility of a theory of meaning (Hacking, 1983; see Botha, 1992; Katz, 1990), while less mainstream philosophers (e.g., Derrida, 1976) who claim to have deconstructed the very notion of meaning show disconcerting signs of themselves becoming the mainstream.

WHY M E A N I N G M A T T E R S

If the problem of meaning has proven daunting, it nonetheless holds an abiding fascination. The widespread feeling that meaning matters--and matters deeply--is well entrenched in our culture, and in ways that far transcend the disciplinary concerns of philosophers, linguists, and psychologists who study the problem.

As Ogden and Richards (1923/1956) noted in their classic study of

meaning, many cultures assume that the power of words gives their users power over the things named.

When Adam was granted the power of naming the

animals of Eden, he was thereby granted human dominion over nature.

The

knowing of names by potential malefactors that is so feared in preliterate cultures and gives rise to the use of secret names, nicknames, and euphemisms finds its modern counterpart in the "taking of names" during the McCarthy era, or for that matter in present-day concerns about having one's name captured and merchandized on unseen but ubiquitous computerized telemarketing lists. But the moral and political dimensions of language extend well beyond the power of names. When Leibniz envisioned the possibility of a universal "alphabet of human thoughts" he adumbrated the beguiling possibility of constructing a perfect language in which words and grammatical forms would mirror precisely both the structure of thought and the structure of the world. The ethical implications of such a language in terms of promoting human welfare and international cooperation still echo in the 20th-century efforts to construct a universal semantic space (Osgood & Tzeng, 1990) and to build some lingua franca such as Esperanto

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or Basic English (Ogden, 1968) through which shared meanings would flow effortlessly between people in the interests of intercultural harmony. The utopian pull of shared meanings is perhaps nowhere clearer than in the subcommunity of scientists~long upheld as a model of international cooperation~where agreement on definitions and terminological conventions carries a moral force befitting the self-defined activity of collective truth-seeking; it is a moral force whose severity is known to anyone who has suffered the injunction "define your terms!" in the realization that refusal to respond (or even idiosyncrasy of response) can carry the penalty of expulsion from the community (literally ex-communication). But if the ethical implications of shared meaning carry inward to human subcommunities, so too they extend outward to the wider community of the shared biosphere. Although the rationales given historically for studying communication between humans and nonhuman animals have typically arisen from narrower theoretical concerns, the possibility of sharing meaning with nations of species other than our own takes on added significance during an era in which our Darwinian understanding of genetic kinship is enhanced by the more recent awareness of the kinship of common fate in endangered ecosystems. In broadest purview, the Leibnizian dream of social salvation through the connection of right conduct with the right use of language for purposes of meaning-transmission thus looms large in the hopes and affairs of humankind. The belief that meaning matters is also culturally entrenched in themes of personal salvation.

As Kretzmann (1967) observes, the history of semantics

includes a "tradition that considers the study of meaning to have a crucial bearing on human happiness or sanity" (p. 403). The widely influential writings of the later Ludwig Wittgenstein carried the lesson that the personal and metaphysical perplexities of philosophers could be dissolved through careful attention to the ways in which language is used and misused.

Personal salvation through

semantic therapy became a more widely applicable theme of the school of General Semantics during the 1940s. In the somewhat fanciful formulation of the school's

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founder, Alfred Korzybski (1941), insanity in the modern world could be traced to certain umhealthy confusions of words with realities. Such confusions stemmed in part from the imprecision of Aristotelian logic as embedded in common parlance and in part from confusions between everyday reality and the increasing levels of abstraction embodied in modern scientific knowledge.

As General Semantics

grew into a popular movement, its practitioners offered therapy by means of reprogramming the "semantic reactions" ingrained in the central nervous system. Korzybski's followers included S. I. Hayakawa, whose Symbol, Status, and

Personality (1963) further treated semantic ambiguity as a significant barrier to personal fulfillment.

Even the recent work of philosophers such as the neo-

Wittgensteinian Rom Harr~ (e.g., Miihlh~iusler & HarrY, 1990) has linked personal well-being to linguistic usage by analyzing the ways in which personal identity is socially constructed through the use of ordinary language. Among psychologists, the concern with meaning as it relates to personal salvation has expressed itself in the efforts of phenomenological-existential therapists to assist their clients in seeking and achieving meaning in their lives. Even therapists of the more prosaic cognitive-behavioral bent have given their twist to the Whorfian theme that language determines reality by investigating the ways in which the language of self-attribution figures in the maintenance of mental health and pathology (Buchanan & Seligman, 1995). Just as the study of meaning has the potential to sharpen language as an instrument for understanding the world at large, so too it holds the promise of contributing to the refinement of language as an instrument of self-comprehension and self-fulfillment. All told, when it comes to the problem of meaning, the stakes are clearly high.

DIMENSIONS OF THE PROBLEM

One difficulty facing the student of meaning is that the problem of meaning is heavily freighted with dimensions beyond the purely semantic, each raising its own set of perplexities. In addition to the ethical dimensions just discussed, the

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problem of meaning ramifies into deep-seated metaphysical issues (Botha, 1992; Katz, 1990). For example, to regard language as somehow capturing the world raises points of ontology: How is the world divided up in such a way that human categories can meaningfully map onto it? If language (actual or ideal) captures the world, can the analysis of language inform us of the world's deep structure? Also raised are issues of epistemology:

Is language the principal medium of

human knowledge? If so, how does it enable humans to know the world, and with what degree of reliability? If language is crucial to knowing, how do we escape its confines to ascertain when and how it properly mediates knowledge? If the problem of meaning is freighted with philosophical dimensions, it also carries dimensions from its connections to the sciences.

As an activity

conducted by living organisms, language has obvious biological dimensions. As an achievement of individual speakers, it has clear cognitive dimensions. As a practice grounded in language communities, it also has important social dimensions. In view of this multifaceted character of meaning, it is not surprising that the study of meaning has been carried out in a broad array of disciplines.

A

partial inventory (with relevant subdisciplines) would include philosophy (logic, formal semantics), psychology (cognitive, behavioral, developmental, comparative), linguistics (semantics, syntactics, pragmatics, lexicology, onomastics), semiotics, philology, etymology, anthropology, literary criticism, rhetoric, and such recently developed fields as psycholinguistics, cognitive science (including artificial intelligence), and narratology. From these varied approaches have come a welter of concepts related to the notion of meaning and used at one time or another to explicate it. Among the salient concepts from the history of endeavors to understand meaning are sense, reference, connotation, denotation, intension, extension, definition, ostension, truth conditions, logical atoms, symbols, signs, signals, representations, propositional attitudes, intentions, semantic markers, tacts, mands, affordances, and Dasein. Such an inventory of relevant concepts begins to suggest the sheer scope of the problem of meaning.

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More globally, the complexity and difficulty of the problem of meaning are also suggested by the families of metaphors used to characterize the ways in which language relates to the world. Thus, one hears talk of language "attaching" to the world or "capturing" it, as well as more technical metaphors such as "networks" of meaning, "webs" of belief, and semantic "spaces." To the student of meaning such metaphors reveal something of the underlying suppositions of those who use them. These presuppositions, and the deep differences between them, in turn suggest one reason for the remarkable proliferation of theories of meaning that have emerged from past work: namely, that each theory embodies a distinctive set of deep-seated assumptions about both the essence of language (its ontology, one might say) and the essence of the organisms who use it (human nature). Such assumptions bear fundamentally on the crucial question of the locus of meaning. At bottom, are meanings to be found in the extralinguistic entities that language supposedly picks out of the world's flux? Or do meanings reside essentially in the minds of those who communicate through language? If not, do they reside in the language-users' environment, either as causal relations between utterances and stimulus contexts or else in the practices of the language community?

Or, alternatively, are meanings simply fictions (mentalistic or

otherwise) to be found nowhere in nature? A related issue involves the appropriate units of analysis for the study of meaning.

Are the vehicles of meaning

inherently linguistic units? If so, are they molecular units (morphemes, words) or molar units (sentences, theories, texts)? Or are the vehicles of meaning inherently extralinguistic?

If so, are they essentially physical phenomena (signs, objects,

affordances) or social phenomena (human transactions, communities of discourse)? In theories of meaning, a great deal depends on how such questions are resolved, and these resolutions in turn depend on the ontological commitments of the theorists.

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SOME A P P R O A C H E S TO M E A N I N G

Even in 1923, when Ogden and Richards surveyed the field of meaning, the ontologies of language and human nature were sufficiently diverse as to have produced sixteen discernible "meanings of m e a n i n g ' m t h a t is, sixteen distinct theories of meaning that could be culled from the literature of the time. Although more recent reviews of the literature on meaning (e.g., Allan, 1986: Botha, 1992; Kitchener, 1994) give scant grounds for viewing the current scene as any less diverse, one can nonetheless distinguish four basic approaches to the theory of meaning in the Western tradition.

1. The referential approach is, on the face of it, the most straightforward and intuitive.

It seeks to specify the meaning of an expression by identifying

what it refers to in the extralinguistic world.

It thus takes naming as the

fundamental case of the meaning relation, and tends to invoke ostensive definitions or causal theories of meaning as typical mechanisms by which meaning is achieved. For all its intuitive appeal, however, the referential approach runs up against several well-known difficulties, failing to account readily for the meanings of abstract or mythical entities (justice, unicorn) or syncategorimatical terms such as prepositions (from, about). It also struggles to handle cases in which expressions with different meanings or senses (the Evening Star, the Morning Star) prove to have the same referent (Venus). Prominent referential theorists include the early Russell (1905, 1921), the early Wittgenstein (1921/1961), John B. Watson (1919/1924), and, more recently, Saul Kripke (1980).

2.

The mentalist approach seeks to identify meanings with mental

contents, usually in the form of images, concepts, or propositional contents. Meanings are thus carried in the minds of individuals, typically being said to serve as the basis for a private language of thought. To the extent that meanings are transmitted, they are conveyed when the utterances of a speaker with certain images or concepts in mind give rise to similar images or concepts in the mind of the listener. Because mentalist theories of meaning tend toward solipsism (what

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Bazerman, 1988, calls "the bind of the closed system"), communication emerges as something of a miracle unless fortified with assumptions about pre-existing conceptual structures shared by speakers and listeners. Such fortification may be in the form of innate computational semantic structures or, in more recent versions, some metaphorical structuring of shared meanings. Still, it may be said that whereas the referential approach is commonly suspected of having too much focus on the contact of language with the extralinguistic realm, the mentalist approach risks positing too little contact at all.

Not surprisingly, it is often

criticized for paying insufficient attention to the social and environmental dimensions of language.

Mentalists include Locke (1690/1959), Fodor (1987),

Jackendoff (1982), and Lakoff (1987). 3.

The contextualist approach strives to overcome such limitations by

seeking meaning neither in individual minds nor in the attachment of words to specific entities in the world, but rather in complex relations between the language user and the language user's context. Much depends, of course, on what is meant by "relations" and "context" in this formulation. When the relations are construed as empirical laws of learning and the context as a stimulus situation, the result is some form of behaviorist theory of meaning. If the relevant relations are construed as conventions, such as the rules of a language game, and the relevant context as a speech community, the result is a Wittgensteinian or social constructionist theory of meaning. Both versions represent the general view that meaning is language in use, and both bear resemblance to the several neopragmatist theories of language.

Such approaches are variously criticized for

their failure to plausibly spell out the required relations and context, or for their failure to account for the generative flexibility of language, or even for their failure to have addressed the problem of meaning at all. Contextualists include Skinner (1957), the later Wittgenstein (1953), and Mead (1934). 4. In what might be called the dissolutionist approach, the attempt is made to show that meanings do not exist or that meaning-related phenomena are best

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handled at some level of discourse that makes no essential use of the concept of meaning. This approach is manifested in the works of some analytic philosophers (e.g., Quine, 1960), numerous postmodernist literary critics and poststructuralist philosophers (e.g., Derrida, 1976), some cognitive scientists (especially of the connectionist ilk; see Churchland, 1986), and certain adherents of the contextualist approach.

In its contextualist version, the dissolutionist approach

holds that since meanings are somehow diffused across complex organismenvironment relations, they are no longer entities worthy of grouping under the term "meaning." Meanings are simply not a natural kind (or even an unnatural kind), and the problem of meaning is dissolved into the supposedly more tractable relations of language, language user, and world that are routinely investigated through empirical science.

Beyond the obvious complaint that dissolving a

problem does not solve it, the dissolutionist approach is often criticized for being overly skeptical and defeatist, or for bringing too scientistic an approach to bear on the problem, or for having too narrow a vision of what counts as a scientific naturalism. Despite the fact that each of these approaches has been held in something like a canonical form by one or another thinker in the past, present-day exponents of theories of meaning tend to cross these approaches in forming their different theoretical amalgams.

As a consequence these approaches are perhaps best

thought of as recurring themata in the history of thought on meaning

zach with a

broad but characteristic configuration of ontological c o m m i t m e n t s m r a t h e r t h a n as distinct categories into which actual theories of meaning can be unambiguously classified.

THE PROBLEM OF MEANING IN ANCIENT THOUGHT The area of philosophy known as philosophy of language--a field that has contributed heavily to language studies in recent times--is routinely said to be a 20th-century development. But philosophical attention to problems of language

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and meaning can be traced well back into the past. The oldest surviving work on language in the Western tradition is oi~en said to be Plato's Cratylus, dating from the fourth century B.C. In that work and others, Plato extended the pre-Socratic debate over naturalism and conventionalism in language, that is, the debate over whether the relation between names and things is a relation of natural necessity (and hence capable of being correct or incorrect) or merely a matter of convention. Plato acknowledged that the existence of different languages means t h a t words have a conventional element, as when the word for horse is "hippos" in Greek and "equus" in Latin. But unwilling to follow the Sophists to the relativist conclusion that the correct use of words is purely a matter of convention (and hence that any language is as good as any other), Plato urged that correct names belong to their referents "by nature," and it is nature that makes for their correctness.

Thus, both "hippos" and "equus"

correctly refer to horse, but one can imagine a language in which horses and cows are grouped under a single term, or a language in which horses are indifferently referred to at various times by the words for tail or mane or hooves. Users of such a language would be naming incorrectly because they are laboring under badly framed concepts--with conceptual schemes that, in Plato's phrase, fail to carve the world at its joints. A correct name, for Plato, maps onto the concept of horse; as such, it simultaneously encompasses varied instances of the concept and properly names the ideal form of the horse. It is this relationship of the conceptname to the underlying form that belongs to the realm of natural necessity (Kretzmann, 1967; Williams, 1994). For Plato, words genuinely refer to entities, and take on genuine meaning, only when they correspond to abstract underlying forms of things. No natural language will do so all the time, he admitted, but the technical language of philosophers and scientists should strive to meet that condition, and all languages that manage to correctly name the same concepts will embody the same universal conceptual structure. Plato's empirically-minded successor Aristotle agreed t h a t the specific

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words used in a language are determined by convention, but he developed an alternative account of how the universal aspects of language arise and how language can thus serve as a shared instrument for negotiating a common world. According to Aristotle, just as written words serve as the symbols of spoken words, spoken words are the symbols of mental "affections," where affections are mental modifications caused by extramental events (roughly, perceptions or thoughts; see Charles, 1994).

Although the specific words used to symbolize

mental states differ from language to language (hence the conventional element of language), the affections so symbolized are common to all speakers because they are likenesses of the things existing in the shared extramental world.

Thus

Aristotle (1963) could write:

Spoken sounds are symbols of affections in the soul, and written marks symbols of spoken sounds. And just as written marks are not the same for all men, neither are spoken sounds. But what these are in the first place signs ofmaffections of the soulmare the same for all; and what these affections are likenesses ofmactual t h i n g s m a r e also the same. (p. 43)

In this classic empiricist version of the mentalist approach to meaning lies the forerunner of many later attempts by empiricist students of language to dispel the risk of solipsism by attributing the universal aspects of language to universal aspects of experience in a common world.

As a naturalistic--even causal--

approach, it rejects the appeal to abstract entities t h a t is typical of rationalist approaches from Plato to Chomsky. Although Aristotle, like Plato before him, made some limited attempts to explain how words combine into sentential units to convey meaning (the problem of syntactics), neither drew a distinction between sentences and underlying propositions.

The first clear notion of propositional meaning appeared in Stoic

philosophy as the concept of a lekton. In the Stoic view of meaning--commonly

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attributed to Chrysippus (ca. 280-206 B.C.)--meaning was said to comprise three components: the sign, the thing signified, and the lekton. Whereas the sign and its referent are corporeal entities, the lekton is incorporeal. It is the thing meant by a speaker in successfully expressing a thought, as well as the thing understood by one who comprehends the expression.

In its status as a mental state, the

lekton prefigures the modern notion of a propositional attitude, as first formulat-

ed by Bertrand Russell and currently in wide use by cognitivists such as Jerry Fodor (1978). Beyond its status as an intended meaning, the Stoic lekton also has the status of an abstract entity that transcends any particular psychological instantiation. As classicist Michael Frede (1994) has put it, "the Stoics think that what gets said has some status independently of its actually being said, that it is somehow there to be said, whether or not it actually is said" (p. 110).

Taken

collectively, the innate domain of lekta constitutes all the thoughts that could ever be meaningfully expressed and comprehendedma kind of semantic space of propositionsmand thus also represents the deep structure of human cognition. As an anticipation of the sentential semantics of the Chomskyan era, the Stoic philosophy of meaning has been called "the most intricate and probably most insightful theory of its kind in antiquity and for centuries afterward" (Kretzmann, 1967, p. 363). Not surprisingly, the Stoic doctrine of lekta was opposed by ancient philosophers of a more nominalist and empiricist bent.

Most famously, the

Epicureans, driven by their atomistic metaphysics, took the Stoic semantic triad of sign, referent, and thing meant, and rejected the notion of propositional meaning in favor of a purified ontology of signs and referents.

According to

Kretzmann (1967),

This rejection of the lekton is typical of the Epicureans' mistrust of any doctrine that went beyond the evidence of the senses. Plutarch describes

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them as "completely doing away with the category of lekta, leaving only words and objects and claiming that the intermediate things conveyed by the signs simply do not exist." (p. 364)

The rejection of meanings in favor of signs and the things denoted, of course, would remain a favorite strategy of materialists and empiricists to this day, notably deployed in our century in the work of Quine (1951), where meanings were characterized as "obscure intermediary entities [that] may well be abandoned" (p. 23). Like their successors in the nominalist tradition, the Epicureans appealed to an empiricist theory of psychology, along with a corresponding causal theory of reference, to explain how words become attached to objects and events. In this Epicurean psychology, repeated presentations of similar stimulus events leave a mental trace called a typos, which then becomes associated, upon further encounters with the stimulus class, with a word that refers to the class. This associative process, called prolepsis, underlies the perceptual recognition by which events are categorized and subsumed under a general term, but without recourse to any abstract apparatus of concepts (Everson, 1994a; Kretzmann, 1967).

The Epi-

cureans thus reduced the problem of meaning to perceived similarity in a way that parallels Quine's (1960) 20th-century substitution of "stimulus synonymy" for the less tractable problem of the semantic synonymy of concepts, construed mentalistically. Making these parallels explicit, Glidden (1994) has noted that

the Stoics advanced the conception of representational thinking as the basis for semantics, developing a psychological approach to thought and speech.

The Epicureans preferred a more mechanical and behaviourist

approach . . . . Quine [has] played Epicurus to Fodor's version of Chrysippus. (pp. 132, 145)

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For empiricists, both ancient and modern, skepticism about unobservables has thus led to a desire to by-pass the privacy of thought when considering issues of meaning in favor of restricted attention to the domain of physical speech behaviors and the physical things referred to. With the enduring fines of contention between empiricist and rationalist approaches to meaning so clearly drawn in ancient times, we should perhaps not be surprised that the two camps also differed even then in regard to other issues of meaning that still concern us. In regard to the question of whether animals share with humans the capacity for language, Aristotle (1947) had written in his Politics that

man is the only animal [who has] the gift of speech. And whereas mere voice is but an indication of pleasure or pain, and is therefore found in other animals (for their nature attains to the perception of pleasure and pain and the intimation of them to one another, and no further), the power of speech is intended to set forth the expedient and inexpedient, and therefore likewise the just and the unjust. (p. 556)

For Aristotle, animal vocalizations can signal hedonic states and even communicate them to conspecifics, but only human speech is capable of expressing abstract concepts such as justice. This is a distinction that was embraced and further developed by the Stoics. In Diogenes Laertius' rendering:

An animal's utterance (phone) is air that has been struck by an impulse, but that of man is articulated and issues from thought (dianoia) . . . . Utterance (phone) and speech (lexis) are different, because vocal sound is also an utterance, but only articulated sound is speech (logos). (quoted in Everson, 1994b, p. 8)

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For speech to "issue from thought" requires that the experiences giving rise to speech be formulated as lekta--that is, that they be reflected upon and rendered into propositional contents by a rational mind.

And since lekta provide the

structure of an internal language of thought, Sextus Empiricus could report that, for the Stoics, "it is not uttered speech but internal speech by which man differs from non-rational animals; for crows and parrots and jays utter articulate sounds" (quoted in Everson, 1994b, p. 8). For the Stoics, utterances can have genuinely linguistic content, and thus meaning, only when the mental states underlying language have propositional content--content of the sort that no animal can possess. For their part, the Epicureans stressed the similarities between animal cries and human speech. Even Aristotle had admitted that the expressions of human speech sometimes merely signal the affections that give rise to them, as when words expressing pain are directly elicited by the experience of pain. In the Epicurean application of this insight to the genesis of language, the utterances of humans and animals alike begin as forced movements of the vocal apparatus as a causal consequence of stimulation from the environment. But once emitted, these vocalizations can be shaped by their subsequent utility as shared signs of environing events, as when a particular call of a crow signals the flock of impending danger. These two stages of language development, along with the kinship of animal utterances to the gestural signs that precede language in humans, are captured in Lucretius' Epicurean dictum on the origins of language:

It was nature that compelled the utterance of the various noises of the tongue, and usefulness that forged them into the names of things. It was rather in the way that children's inarticulacy itself seems to impel them to use gestures, when it causes them to point out with a finger what things are present. (quoted in Everson, 1994a, p. 98)

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Having likened the infant's gestures to the communicative sounds of animals, Lucretius went on to describe the various speech forms of birds and dogs. Although eventually concluding that animals lack the important human ability to reflect on and set social conventions for language use, Lucretius and the Epicureans established a longstanding pattern among empiricists of juxtaposing developmental and comparative perspectives on language, and finding in them grounds for raising questions about the uniqueness of human language that their rationalist counterparts were prone to postulate. As the foregoing discussion makes clear, the ancient Greeks had already formulated many of the issues that structure Western thought about language and meaning to this day.

These include the question of naturalism versus

conventionalism, the possibility of an ideal language, competing empiricist and rationalist accounts of the seemingly universal aspects of language, and debate over the need for something like propositional attitudes or mental contents to mediate the relation between language and the world. We have seen too that the ancient world witnessed debate over whether language is unique to humans --with the lines of controversy being drawn, much as today, in terms of whether one may properly speak of animals having cognitions that bear meaningsmas well as the introduction, at least in primitive form, of comparisons across species and stages of human language development.

LANGUAGE AND MEANING FROM THE MIDDLE AGES T H R O U G H THE ENLIGHTENMENT With the fall of the Roman Empire, the heyday of Stoicism and Epicureanism came to an end, along with the larger world of antiquity. The loss of ancient Greek learning during the Dark Ages, combined with the conditions of severe poverty and the disintegration of political institutions, meant that scholarship was confined to isolated monasteries and convents. Among the very few surviving works of ancient Greece were Aristotle's works on grammar and

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consequence, issues of logical form and syntax took precedence over issues of semantics.

In the theologically inspired rendering of the later medieval gram-

marians, Aristotle's grammatical classes were sometimes said to map onto a world logically organized by God, a view that licensed the study of ontology through the study of linguistic form (Allan, 1986, pp. 136-137). Other logicians of the late Middle Ages viewed the study of g r a m m a r as revealing of the structure of h u m a n reason or as subserving a novel science of language (Chomsky, 1966; Kretzmann, 1967). With the advent of the Renaissance, a rise in mercantilism led to encounters with non-Romance languages, which resisted analysis in terms of medieval Latin-based grammar, and thus eventually gave rise to the search for universal grammars during the 17th century. Even so empiricist a philosopher as Francis Bacon proposed a "philosophical grammar" based on the thorough study of existing natural languages and the extraction of the best features from each. A language that combined these features would constitute the "noblest kind of grammar" and provide a "remarkable model of speech itself for expressing the mind's meanings aright" (quoted in Kretzmann, 1967, p. 376). More characteristic of Bacon's empiricist approach was his (1620/1960) critique of the misuses of language, most notably in his attack on the Idols of the Market Place--those misleading uses of words that either name things having no real existence or else illegitimately group together phenomena having no genuine commonalities. Bacon's empiricist successor Thomas Hobbes (1655/1839) took the study of language to be preliminary to all systematic philosophy. Modeling his view of the h u m a n body after the machines that were increasingly being built in the 17th century, Hobbes argued that reasoning is nothing but computation, carried out as motions in the brain and experienced as "silent thoughts, without the use of words" (vol. 1, p. 3). Building on this early notion of what would later be called "mentalese," Hobbes suggested the possibility of a thinker creating idiosyncratic

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"marks" to stand for private thoughts as an aid to manipulating and remembering them. But Hobbes recognized that science and philosophy, as public activities, required going beyond such a private language to the realm of shared discourse. Here he drew on the Aristotelian doctrine that words can both signify conceptions in the mind and name things in the extramental world; yet not all words that stand as signs of conceptions will function as names of actually existing things, as when the word "impossible" signifies an idea but names no extramental state of affairs (Vol. 1, p. 17).

Hobbes's semantic writings are

notable for two further reasons. First, he drew attention to the arena of pragmatics, noting that the meaning of utterances depends not only on words and their syntactic arrangements but also on such circumstances as "the drift, and occasion, and contexture of the speech" (Vol. 4, p. 23). Second, he gave voice to the empiricist aversion to metaphor as a carrier of meaning, following the tradition of Aristotle in viewing metaphors as rhetorical devices that could mislead, and in fact denigrating them as ignes fatui (foolish fires) that distort thought and undermine social relations (Leary, 1990). The first extended treatment of semantic issues in modern philosophy was given by John Locke in his vastly influential Essay Concerning Human Under-

standing (1690/1959). Locke therein classified the science of semiotics as one of the three great branches of science (along with physics and ethics), devoting the entirety of Book III to the subject. In Locke's classic formulation of the ideational approach to meaning, words were said to serve as the signs of ideas in the speaker's mind.

The use, then, of words, is to be sensible marks of ideas; and the ideas they stand for are their proper and immediate signification . . . . Words, in their primary signification stand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of him that

uses them. (p. 9)

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Although an individual's ideas are "within his own breast, invisible and hidden from others," they can be transmitted through words, which serve as the "external sensible signs" of ideas (p. 8).

When a man speaks to another, it is that he may be understood: and the end of speech, is that those sounds, as marks, may make known his ideas to the hearer. (p. 9)

Communication is thus achieved when "a man's words excite the same ideas in the hearer which he makes them stand for in speaking" (p. 13). But in this mindto-mind flow of meaning (the "talking heads" theory of language, in the phrase of Andresen, 1992), the ultimate privacy of ideas leaves the process of communication inherently subjective and imperfect. That different people may signify very different ideas by the same word was acknowledged by Locke, who noted that the child speaking of "gold" in the peacock's tail signifies a different idea from the metal-worker who thinks of gold's maUeability when using the word (p. 12). As a ground for shared meanings, Locke could only appeal to abstraction of similarity from particular experiences in much the manner of the Epicureans' process of

prolepsis; the grouping of things under names is, for Locke, "the work of the understanding, taking occasion, from the similitude it observes among them" (p. 23). Locke's appeal to perceived similarity raised the possibility of words referring to extramental things, but in the end his solipsistic empiricism required that any observed similarity would remain in the minds of the beholders. According to Locke (1690/1959), all language users make the unfounded supposition that their words "stand also for the reality of things" (p. 11), and he himself fell prey at times to this fallacy (stating, e.g., that "signification must agree with the truth of things as well as with men's ideas"; p. 161). But he counted the taking of words for things among the chief abuses of language (pp. 132-133) and warned that "it is a

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perverting the use of words, and brings unavoidable obscurity and confusion into their signification, whenever we make them stand for anything but those ideas we have in our own minds" (p. 11). Unable to ground the meanings of words either in some reliable uniformity of the ideas signified or in their reference to extramental objects, Locke lacked the philosophical resources to account for the intersubjective and seemingly referential character of language.

As a result, much of Book III was devoted to a

piecemeal analysis of the sources of miscommunication, along with prosaic lessons about the corrective benefits of verbal definitions, clarification through examples, and careful attention to the consistency of usage. Among the abuses of language especially to be avoided was figurative speech. Following Hobbes, Locke (1690/1959) declared metaphors to be '~perfect cheats" that are used 'Tor nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment" (p. 146) Unlike many of his post-Darwinian successors in the empiricist tradition, Locke (1690/1959) believed language to be unique to humans. The possession of organs for the articulation of words is, by itself, "not enough to produce language; for parrots, and several other birds, will be taught to make articulate sounds distinct enough, which yet by no means are capable of language" (p. 3). Genuine language requires "a constant connexion between the sound and the idea," and the absence of ideas in animals makes their vocalizations nothing more than "insignificant noise" (p. 12). The issue of the parrot had been raised earlier, of course, by the Stoics, but it was revived most famously by Locke's 17th-century rationalist predecessor Ren~ Descartes. In his formulation of mind-body dualism, Descartes (1637/1968) had characterized the bodies of both animals and humans as complex machines, but held that humans--and humans alone--also had minds and the powers of reasoning.

Moreover, the faculty of reason was so closely linked in Descartes's

view to the capacity for language that he made linguistic powers the very criterion

Historical and Philosophical Foundations of the existence of mind.

35

Forced to distinguish b e t w e e n a real monkey and a

cleverly designed machine with the outward form of a monkey, one would be unable to tell the difference.

But a u t o m a t a in the form of h u m a n s would be

readily distinguishable from real h u m a n s because such machines

could never use speech or other signs as we do when placing our thoughts on record for the benefit of others. For we can easily u n d e r s t a n d a machine's being constituted so t h a t it can u t t e r words, and even emit some responses to action on it of a corporeal kind . . . . But it never happens t h a t it arranges its speech in various ways, in order to reply appropriately to everything t h a t may be said in its presence, as even the lowest m a n can do. (p. 116)

For Descartes, the difference b e t w e e n animals and h u m a n s is no mere m a t t e r of degree. Among h u m a n s

there is none so depraved and stupid, without even excepting idiots, t h a t they cannot a r r a n g e different words together, forming of t h e m a s t a t e m e n t by which they make known their thoughts; while, on the other hand, there is no other animal, however perfect and fortunately circumstanced it may be, which can do the same.

It is not the w a n t of organs t h a t brings this to

pass, for it is evident t h a t magpies and parrots are able to u t t e r words just like ourselves, and yet they cannot speak as we do, t h a t is, so as to give evidence t h a t they t h i n k of w h a t they say. (pp. 116-117)

The plain lesson for Descartes was t h a t "we ought not to confound speech with n a t u r a l movements which . . . may be imitated by machines as well as be manifested by animals; nor m u s t we think, as did some of the ancients, t h a t brutes talk, although we do not u n d e r s t a n d their language" (p. 117).

For t h a t

m a t t e r , Descartes added in a letter of 1646, even w h e n animals are trained

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through reward to utter words, they do so not out of thought but only from the "stir of expectation of something to eat" (quoted in Chomsky, 1966, p. 80). Descartes's close identification of mental processes with linguistic processes, along with his stress on the enormous flexibility of language for expressing the unlimited range of thoughts formulable by reason, places him in a lineage descending from the Stoics of the ancient world to the Chomskyans of the 20th century. His rationalist belief in the existence of innate ideas, moreover, provided the possibility that shared meanings could be grounded in universal concepts, whereas Locke could only point to likeness of shared environments as the source of presumably similar ideas among people. The contrasting remarks of Locke and Descartes on language differences is telling in this regard. Whereas Descartes held that speakers of, say, French and German have the same concepts despite flaming them in different words (see Vendler, 1972, p. 180), Locke (1690/1959) dwelled at length on the distinctive concepts that could be formed in some natural languages but not others (pp. 48-49), arguing also that such concepts as g/ory and ambition are framed only after the corresponding words are acquired and can

serve to guide their formation (p. 53). To this day, the doctrines of linguistic relativity and indeterminacy of translation that empiricist students of language find so appealing are rejected by 20th-century rationalists who invoke an innate basis for shared meaning in universal semantic structures (Fodor, 1981; Pinker, 1994). Although Descartes's writings on the topics of language and meaning were not extensive, his views of language and its intimate connection with the human mind were to have a strong and immediate impact. The Port-Royal Grammar, published in 1660 by Arnauld and Lancelot, was explicitly conceived as the linguistic and psychological branch of Cartesian philosophy.

Adopting Des-

cartes's rationalist method of proceeding from the simple and general to the complex and particular, the Port-Royal grammarians sought the general principles underlying all languages in the form of a universal grammar.

Further

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embracing Descartes's mind-body dualism, they distinguished between the physical side of language (its surface structure) and the mental side of language (its deep structure).

Because the meanings of expressions resided in the deep

structure of thought--that limitless reasoning Cartesian mind--the universal grammar was tantamount to a science of human thought. As with Descartes, the flexibility of the mind was said to be mirrored in the flexibility of language. Anticipating Humboldt's 19th-century dictum that language makes infinite use of finite means, Arnauld and Lancelot characterized language as

that marvelous invention by which we construct from twenty-five or thirty sounds an infinity of expressions, which, having no resemblance in themselves to what takes place in our minds, still enable us to let others know the secret of what we conceive and of all the various mental activities that we carry out. (quoted in Chomsky, 1968, p. 18)

As an intellectual movement, the project of universal grammar swept over France in the following century, influencing such Enlightenment thinkers as Condillac and Destutt de Tracy and dominating to the extent that university chairs of philosophy were replaced with chairs of universal grammar. The movement even spread to England, where it was taken up by such neo-Platonists as James Harris, before running its course by the turn of the 19th century. Despite the inroads of Cartesianism in England, empiricist philosophy of language in 18th-century England remained focused largely on the legacy of Locke. Of particular interest was Locke's labored and unsatisfactory treatment of how abstract terms come to stand for complex ideas.

Among his successors,

Berkeley (1710/1957) championed the extreme view that abstract ideas never in fact occur in experience, while Hume (1739/1911) extended this skeptical treatment to the meanings of such abstract concepts as causality and the self, arguing that they too lacked any genuine referents in experience. These developments in

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empiricism culminated after the turn of the 19th century in the view of Bentham (1841/1962) that abstract terms are nothing but "linguistic fictions," whose meaning could be given only in paraphrases having reference to concrete experiences that would make a difference in people's lives--a theory that anticipated the later development of pragmatic accounts of meaning.

THE P R O B L E M OF MEANING IN THE N I N E T E E N T H CENTURY

Broadly speaking, the 19th century was characterized by a fascination with history and historical development as thinkers in a wide range of disciplines came to reject the long-dominant assumptions, deriving from Plato, that the world is essentially populated with static forms and unchanging natural kinds. This preoccupation with change was reflected in the emergence of modern evolutionary theory in biology as well as in the historical linguistics that dominated the study of language until the advent of structural linguistics late in the century. At the same time, the 19th century saw the establishment of the social sciences as formal disciplines.

Notable among the new disciplines was the

scientific psychology that arose in the German-speaking world, a field that was quickly seen as occupying an important place in the efforts to understand language and meaning. Indeed, it was largely the failures of historical linguistics that led students of language to seek accounts of meaning in the newly developing biological and psychological sciences. Shortly before the turn of the 19th century, William Jones had made the startling discovery that certain basic words in Sanskrit bore strong resemblance to their counterparts in Greek, Latin, and the Germanic languages. This discovery of the relatedness of the Indo-European languages inspired historical linguists to undertake detailed investigations of phonological and etymological changes in the hope of tracing linguistic evolution back to some Ursprache or parent language (Robins, 1967).

Hopes ran high for the discovery of laws of

conceptual evolution that would disclose the mentality of early humans and the

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subsequent emergence of reason and modern conceptual structures. In its more ambitious formulations, this approach was said to be capable of providing "reconstructions of the perceptual and conceptual worlds of all peoples and times, more reliable than those arrived at by archaeology" (Esper, 1968, p. 4). Connecting historical linguistics with evolutionary biology, August Schleicher was one of several linguists who viewed language as a living organism and adopted the language of biological taxonomy to describe its historical ramification into various genera, species, and subspecies (Blumenthal, 1970). But on the whole, historical linguistics remained tied to its roots in the Romantic movement, with its glorification of cultural differences among peoples, and in German idealism, with its proto-Whorfian notion that language constitutes reality rather than reflecting it. Thus, the comparative linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt could claim to have found in the diversification of languages the varied systems of sound and meaningmthe so-called "inner speech forms"--that gave rise to the distinct worldviews of various language communities (Kretzmann, 1967). The antiscientific tenor of Romanticism and German idealism, along with the increasingly speculative character of etymological studies, led to a revolt in the 1870s among the younger linguists known as the Junggrammatiker (neogrammarians). Eager to reject speculation in favor of the empirical methods of modern science, the neogrammarians sought to locate the laws of linguistic change in phonology rather than the ill-defined realm of meaning. At the same time, some began to look to the emerging social sciences for an understanding of the psychology of meaning. Hermann Paul, for example, drew on the influential psychology of Johann Herbart in formulating a theory of how semantic memory is organized in the unconscious mind (Blumenthal, 1970). According to Paul, words are stored in hierarchical clusters, efficiently indexed both by semantic content and grammatical function so that they can be readily accessed in the course of speech production (Esper, 1968; Percival, 1980).

The movement of the neo-

grammarians away from the extreme historicism of their predecessors culmin-

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ated in the synchronic linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure, who trained with the neogrammarians in the later decades of the century before going on to found the structuralist approach that dominated linguistics until the Chomskyan revolution of the mid-20th century. As the example of Paul's theory of semantic memory illustrates, linguists were prepared to join forces with psychologists in the effort to understand linguistic meaning.

This interest was reciprocated from the earliest stages of

psychology's history as an independent discipline. Only a year after founding the first psychological laboratory in Leipzig (1879), Wilhelm Wundt published the first of several major works on the psychology of language. Following the German raionalist tradition of regarding the judgment or proposition as the fundamental psychological act, Wundt undertook an analysis of how inner meanings are expressed in sentences. Sentence production, for Wundt, begins with the apperception of a general impression or idea (Gesamtvorstellung) which is then retained in consciousness as a totality while the attention passes successively over the components to associate them with grammatical functions. Production is thus achieved by analysis of a thought into syntactical categories that are nonetheless bound together as a whole intention.

Because of limitations of short-term

memory, the grammatical structure is hierarchically organized into phrase structures, beginning with subject and predicate and extending down to the fmal physical expression that carries the inner thought. Tree diagrams representing this cognitive structuring of meaning into sound appeared in Wundt's writings as early as 1880 (Blumenthal, 1970, chap. 2; 1985). Although Wundt balked at applying the experimental method to language phenomena, his successors developed a flourishing experimental psycholinguistics (Sprachpsychologie) during the late decades of the 19th century.

Wundt's

French student Victor Henri, for example, worked with Alfred Binet on memory for sentences, showing that what was remembered after an interval of time was typically a syntactically simplified version of the original sentence that retained

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41

Research on sentence comprehension con-

ducted by Wundt's successors in the Wtirzburg School suggested that propositional meanings are grasped suddenly and holistically rather than through sequential analysis of word meanings, a phenomenon for which Karl Btihler coined the widely used phrase "aha-experience" (Blumenthal, 1970, 1985). Such studies supported the Kantian primacy of the sentence as the carrier of meaning, and stood in sharp contrast to the atomistic word-centered approach of the British empiricists. The propositional meanings--or "imageless thoughts"--studied by the Wtirzburgers also stood in opposition to the empiricists' belief that meanings could be identified with mental images derived originally from sensations. If the cognitive psychology of language arrived with the emergence of German experimental psychology, Darwinian evolutionary theory spurred the study of language in other directions. Darwin's dramatic demonstration of lawful change at the phylogenetic level implied that lawful regularities could also be found in development at the ontogenetic level. The impetus to child psychology was clear. Darwin's (1877) own study of the development of his infant son was followed by Preyer's landmark Mind of the Child (1882/1889), which, along with many subsequent works, devoted extended treatments to language acquisition (Jaeger, 1982). Evolutionary theory also gave renewed impetus to interest in comparative studies of language and expressive behavior. In The Descent of Man (1871), Darwin himself spoke of human language as an instinctual ability specific to humans (Pinker, 1994), yet one that showed continuity with the expressive behavior of other species (Gruber, 1974; Rieber & Vetter, 1980). The expressive functions that served as the primitive roots of language, in turn, were shown by Darwin (1872) to be "serviceable associated habits" arising from the adaptive needs of organisms operating in their environments.

Both the continuity of

species and the adaptive role played by language and expressive behavior were themes destined to have impact on psychological theories of linguistic meaning in the 20th century.

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Much of this later influence was mediated through the influence of Darwinism on American pragmatist philosophy. In its various manifestations, the pragmatic theory of meaning removed meaning from the private realm of language users' minds and located it instead in the realm of adaptive action and publicly shared discourse. Originating in C. S. Peirce's (1878) "How to Make Our Ideas Clear," the notion that the meaning of concepts and propositions lay in their practical effects on subsequent conduct was extended in different ways by William James and John Dewey. James's rendering of the pragmatic account of meaning linked pragmatism to the functionalist psychology of the individual. For James (1907), language functions for an individual by guiding conduct into the future; propositions have meaning only to the extent that they serve this guiding role and are true to the extent that acting on them leads to effective interaction with the environment. All intellectual activity, language included, is grounded in biological 9 utility, and meanings serve only the particular ends of adaptation. As James (1890/1983) put it, the "whole function of conceiving, of fLxing, and holding fast to meanings, has no significance apart from the fact that the conceiver is a creature with partial purposes and private ends" (p. 456). But however private the ends, the means, in James's view, were overt activity, for "thinking is first and last and always for the sake o f . . . doing" (p. 960). The Jamesian stress on action left his functionalism but a short step from the behaviorism of the following century.

It remained for John B. Watson, trained in the functionalism of the

Chicago School, to argue that, whatever private events may precede the final action, it is the behavior itself that effects adjustments to the environment. Accordingly, Watson (1913) declared behaviorism to be "the only consistent and logical functionalism," and proceeded to interpret language and thought strictly in terms of bodily activity. In Dewey's treatment of meaning, language was again regarded as a Darwinian instrument for effective action, but meanings took on an essentially sociological status as communal properties. Anticipating the influential mean-

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ing-as-use doctrine of the later Wittgenstein (1953), Dewey (1925) held that

the sound, gesture, or written mark which is involved in language is a particular existence. But as such it is not a word, and it does not become a word by declaring a mental existence; it becomes a word by gaining meaning; and it gains meaning when its use establishes a genuine community of action . . . . Person and thing must alike serve as means in a common, shared consequence.

This community of partaking is meaning. (pp. 184-

185)

The diffusion of meaning throughout a web of social discourse was a theme subsequently developed in the dispositional behaviorism of Charles Morris and the social behaviorism of George Herbert Mead. Reversing the Jamesian priority of the individual, Mead (1934) would go so far as to argue that the mind and self are constructed out of social interaction in a community of shared meanings. If the impact of Darwinism on Anglo-American philosophy led to the view of meanings as contextualized to social environments, a more radically holistic and contextual approach to meaning was also being developed from a very different direction in 19th-century German philosophy.

Immanuel Kant, whose

views powerfully influenced German philosophy in the 19th century, had argued that all experience is filtered through innate cognitive structures, with the result that h u m a n knowledge is cut off from whatever things-in-themselves reside in the extramental world. As Kant's successors in the German idealist tradition soon realized, the fact that all knowledge is mediated by preexisting mental structures meant that language, too, is cut off from contact with an extralinguistic world. As free-floating symbol systems, languages may have an internal coherence, but they can no longer be bearers of truth or meaning in any sense of corresponding to reality. The disconnected quality of language on this view, as well as its relation to later views of meaning, has been described by Blackburn (1995):

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Nineteenth-century idealism severs any connection between language and the world, at least if the world is conceived of as distinct from thought. Language and thought become entirely self-contained in a kind of solipsistic unity (as they arguably do in the deconstructionist view that nothing lies outside the text, since any attempt to correlate a text with anything else merely produces more text).

On such views the main apparent

casualty is truth, which stops being a correspondence between language and the world, but becomes either the unity and completeness of the whole structure of judgements (the coherence theory of truth), or the use words have in directing effective action (the pragmatic theory of truth). (p. 457)

Deprived of its referential force, language could exhibit meaning only internally in the form of a culture's linguistic constructions.

Such elaborations of meaning

could take place through the generation of new meanings from old by means of metaphorical transfer or through the interpretation and renovation of a culture's abiding myths and narrative forms. Despite its deep tensions with the mainstream epistemological tradition of Western thought, the neo-Kantian idealism of the German tradition would prove fertile in offering alternative avenues of attack on the problem of meaning. After centuries of philosophical disparagement, the crucial role of metaphor in language and the structuring of thought was finally recognized by the likes of Friedrich Nietzsche and Fritz Mauthner (Leary, 1990), setting the stage for such 20th-century developments as Biihler's (1934) declaration that metaphor is fundamental to all concept formation (Ennis, 1982). Similarly, the renewed attention to the narratives and scripts embedded in a culture would be revived for the study of meaning-making by such figures as Ernst Cassirer and Claude Levi-Strauss, finding its way even into the experimental psychology of memory with Bartlett's (1932) application of the Kantian notion of the schema to the narrative structure of verbal memory (see Bruner, 1990; Gardner, 1985).

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By the turn of the century, trends were well established for the emergence of 20th-century approaches to the problem of meaning.

In addition to struc-

turalist linguistics, there was precedent for a sophisticated cognitive psychology of language as well as for the study of meaning through metaphor and cultllrally transmitted narratives. With the advent of evolutionary biology came the basis for treating meaning as a biological phenomenon, whether in the form of animal expression, the mediation of individual adaptive behavior, or the coordination of collective activity toward adaptive ends.

TWENTIETH-CENTURY A P P R O A C H E S

Near the turn of the 20th century, revolutionary advances in symbolic logic began to stimulate a resurgence of interest in problems of language among AngloAmerican philosophers.

In the analytic philosophy that resulted from this

"linguistic turn," problems of meaning were addressed anew with the rigorous tools of formal logic. According to the logical atomism of Russell and the early Wittgenstein, for example, a sufficiently powerful logic would parse language in such a way that its lexical components would map directly onto the corresponding elements of the extralinguistic world (the "picture theory" of meaning). But from the beginning, questions were raised about whether meaning could be fully reduced to referential mappings.

Among the signal contributions to analytic

philosophy was the distinction drawn by Frege between sense and reference (Dummett, 1973).

Extending John Stuart Mill's earlier distinction between

connotation and denotation, Frege argued that the study of meaning must account not only for the reference of an expression but also for its sense---that is, its cognitive value, or the concept that is grasped when the expression is understood. According to Frege, senses (intensions) are what permit the assigning of referents to expressions (their denotations or extensions), and, crucially, they also function as the meanings of nonreferring expressions (such as unicorn) and sentences describing nonexistent states of affairs. For Frege, concepts without extensions

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could still have objective meanings, and sentences lacking referential mappings could still have objective propositional content. This separation of meaning from reference---a separation adumbrated in the Stoic doctrine of the lekton and still contested by analytic philosophers --would have far-reaching implications for the study of meaning in the 20th century.

It marks one major philosophical divide between typical cognitive

approaches to the problem, with their focus on conceptual sources of meaning and appeals to universals and linguistic intuitions, and typical behavioral approaches, with their stress on reference and naming, their skepticism about universals and intensional meaning, and their appeal to behavioral criteria of linguistic performance (Katz, 1975). alliances

formed

between

This divide is equally reflected in the

psychologists

who

study

meaning

and

their

counterparts in philosophy. That Russell (1921, 1927) found Watson's treatment of language congenial or that the radical extensionalism and nominalism of Quine (1960) could be supported with the radical behaviorism of Skinner should come as no surprise.

Meaning in the Behaviorist Tradition In its original Watsonian formulation, the behaviorist theory of meaning was a version of associationism cast into material form as a conditioned reflex. The notion that words could come to stand for objects through a process of stimulus substitution had been voiced centuries earlier by Locke (1690/1959):

There comes, by constant use, to be such a connexion between certain sounds and the ideas they stand for, that the names heard, almost as readily excite certain ideas as if the objects themselves, which are apt to produce them, did actually affect the senses. (p. 11)

By the time Watson was writing, Lockean associationism had already been

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explicitly incorporated into Russian reflexology by Ivan Sechenov, later to be developed into a broad theory of symbolic behavior by Bechterev and assimilated into Pavlov's notion of a "second signal system" found in humans (Wells, 1956). But it was Sechenov, as the discoverer of behavioral inhibition, who provided the key principle that the reflexes of thought and language need not be expressed in overt behavior in order to be assimilated to the rubric of physiological causation. Sechenov's discovery helped to disarm the objection that the mechanical rigidity of reflex-like phenomena was incompatible with the apparent autonomy of thought and language from immediate control by the environment. Thinking as inhibited reflex would become the scientifically acceptable counterpart of the private Lockean idea, and the conditioned association of word to object would serve as the purely material analog of the traditional semantic relation. For Watson, the conditioning of associations between words and objects was a straightforward matter, but one of considerable significance for the biological economy of organismic adjustment. The process of forming word habits, said Watson (1924/1930), is "entirely analogous to that of the establishment of simple conditioned motor reflexes" (p. 230).

As a child grows up, then, it establishes a conditioned word response for every object and situation in its external environment . . . .

The fact that

every object and situation in the external environment is named is of vast importance . . . .

The words function in the matter of calling out responses

exactly as did the objects for which the words serve as substitutes. [There is an] equivalence for reaction between objects and words. (p. 233)

The advantages of this word-for-object substitution are enhanced by the gradual reduction of the verbal response to covert status as development proceeds. Until the age of three or so, children talk incessantly as they carry out activities, but under the influence of social pressure they soon learn to inhibit their speech, first

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to audible whispers and then to the reduced status of covert laryngeal habits (p. 240). At this stage, the subvocal habits--which we commonly call "think ing~--constitute a highly efficient means of adjustment, far surpassing in time and bodily economy the overt behaviors t h a t would otherwise have to be carried out at greater cost and risk if they did not exist.

With each implicit verbal

response mapped onto an object, a h u m a n has what Watson (1924/1930) called a "replica of the world we live in" (p. 302). Such a person can "manipulate this word world in the privacy of his room or when he lies down on his bed in the dark" (p. 234); he can solve a problem, plan a business, or "call the biggest bully the worst name you can think of without even smiling" (p. 241).

But in every case, it

remains the ability of the words to evoke, under conducive circumstances, the overt responses appropriate to their referents t h a t maintains the value of language. Watson repeatedly addressed the criticism of behaviorism that it made no place for meaning, but consistently refused to allow that meaning could be other t h a n the relation of reference. For Watson (1924/1930), the term "meaning" was "an historical word borrowed from philosophy and introspective psychology," and was simply not needed in a scientific account of the world (p. 249).

We watch what the animal or h u m a n being is doing. He "means" what he does . . . .

His action shows his meaning. Hence, exhaust the conception of

action--i.e., experimentally determine all of the organized responses a given

object can call forth in a given individual, and you have exhausted all possible "meanings'of that object for that individual. (1919/1924, pp. 354-355)

Moreover, Watson's allowance of thinking in the form of subvocal speech was not to be construed as an entering wedge for meaning:

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It is often said that thinking somehow peculiarly reveals meaning. If we look upon thinking as a form of action comparable in all its essential respects to manual action, such speculations concerning meaning in thinking lose their mystery and hence their charm. (1919/1924, p. 355)

Nor, for Watson, does the existence of abstract words require an appeal to underlying concepts to account for their meaning.

In discussing how the word

"table" becomes conditioned to tables, Watson (1920) wrote that "any class or abstract word such as animal, justice, mercy, infinity has the same history" (p. 102). Thus, Watson's physicalism and nominalism were such that the age-old struggle to account for abstract meanings--a problem that had troubled Locke and his successors as well as the analytic philosophers of Watson's own time ---could be dismissed as needless. Whatever its philosophical evasions, Watson's treatment of language set a general pattern, in many respects, for the behaviorist accounts of meaning that would follow. In externalizing the phenomenon of meaning, Watson focused on the naming relation in a way that epitomized the referential approach to meaning.

His stress on environmental determinants of meaning also gave it some

flavor of contextualist approaches, while his notion of covert verbal behavior paved the way for later construals of meaning as verbally mediated responses. At the same time, the dissolutionist approach to meaning found expression in Watson's more molar view that meaning resides in an organism's actions, only to vanish when those actions are carefully traced to their causal determinants. In the ensuing behaviorist period of theorizing about language, such themes were developed in various directions (Powell & Still, 1979). Like Watson, Edwin B. Holt found meaning in the overall pattern of organismic adjustment, characterizing behavior as having "objective reference" to environing objects and viewing all mental contents as incipient motor responses (Smith, 1982).

For

Holt, the referential aspect of these responses constituted their objective meaning

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or denotation, whereas the visceral responses associated with them provided their subjective meaning or connotation (Latif, 1934). A. P. Weiss (1925) retained the Watsonian emphasis on the classical conditioning of verbal responses, but focused on their biosocial role as stimuli for the further verbal behavior that secures social cooperation.

Echoing the views of Dewey and Mead that the

essential role of language is to facilitate social action, Weiss argued that "the language responses practically unite all the members of a group into a single sensori-motor organization" (p. 302). The social context of language was further examined by Grace De Laguna (1927), who traced the emergence of grammar out of simple object-naming to the speaker's need to predicate new attributes to previously learned words for the purpose of communicating in novel social situations. In doing so, she adopted the instrumental conditioning of Thorndike in place of classically conditioned responses, a move seconded by J. R. Kantor. Kantor (1936), who introduced the term "psycholinguistics" into English, devoted his extensive writings on language to the theme that the psychological study of language involves, not the internal structure of language studied by linguists, but rather the concrete ways in which language behavior refers to the environment or serves as an "attxiliary" stimulus guiding the adjustments of the listener. Such a psychology of language, said Kantor, would require a functional analysis of controlling variables, not a structural analysis of linguistic output. Along with this functionalist approach to language, the more mechanistic side of the Watsonian tradition was being followed up by researchers of the Hullian school. Like Watson, Hull (1930) spoke of sequences of covert conditioned verbal responses as constituting a symbolic "replica" of the causal chains in the extralinguistic world.

Hull's analysis of these covert sequences into "pure

stimulus acts" and "fractional anticipatory goal responses" yielded the basic hypothetical constructs for various mediational theories of meaning that came to dominate the psychology of language through the 1950s.

Notable among the

mediational behaviorists were Charles Osgood and O. H. Mowrer. Osgood (e.g.,

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1952) construed the implicit symbolic responses discussed by Hull as the carriers of linguistic meaning; as dispositions to respond in certain ways to verbal stimuli, the meanings conditioned to a word could be measured through the technique of the semantic differential, yielding objective profiles of associative connotations of the sort conceived earlier by Holt. Mowrer (1954) followed De Laguna in the study of predication, showing how conditioned associations of responses symbolizing agents and actions could be invoked to account for simple subject-predicate constructions.

By the late 1950s, the elaborate hypothetical machinery of the

mediational behaviorists had become sufficiently abstracted from its roots in conditioning phenomena that many of its proponents found themselves easily embracing the information processing approach of the 1960s that constituted an early wave of the new cognitive psychology (Leahey, 1992). During the heyday of mediational behaviorism, the more functionalist approach of De Laguna and Kantor was revived in the form of B. F. Skinner's influential Verbal Behavior (1957). With an undergraduate degree in literature and languages, Skinner had all along been interested in language. After a failed bid at a career as a writer, he entered the field of psychology upon reading Bertrand Russell's favorable account of Watson's treatment of language, and Skinner's first bookmthe unpublished "Sketch for an Epistemology"--was largely devoted to issues of language and its role in human knowledge (Wiklander, 1996). A product of more than twenty years of reflection on language, Verbal Behavior would become the center of behaviorist work on the subject as the Hullian outlook fell from favor during the 1960s. In the opening chapter of Verbal Behavior, Skinner addressed the problem of meaning head-on.

Traditional formulations of meaning in terms of ideas,

images, propositions, intentions, and the contents of thought were considered and rejected one by one. Significantly, not even the notion of meaning as reference was deemed acceptable. The reference relation might, Skinner (1957) allowed, provide meanings for certain nouns, verbs, and adjectives, but it could not account for

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"words like atom or gene or minus one or the spirit of the times where corresponding nonverbal entities are not easily discovered" (p. 8). Reference-based theories of meaning would require some explanation of how words and things correspond to one another, but no such relationship was likely to be found in the actual behavior of a language user.

The semantic scheme, as usually conceived, has interesting properties. Mathematicians,

logicians,

and

information theorists

have

explored

possible modes of correspondence at length . . . . But it remains to be shown t h a t such constructions bear any close resemblances to the products of genuine linguistic activities. (p. 9)

When one does attend to actual verbal behavior, Skinner felt, there is no relation of correspondence to be found. But if reference fails along with the other usual candidates for meaning, it must be concluded that "the only solution is to reject the traditional formulation of verbal behavior in terms of meaning" (p. 10). Skinner's alternative, of course, was to analyze the causes of verbal behavior by seeking the functional relations that govern its occurrence. Cast in the framework of the three-term operant contingency, such a causal analysis would involve identifying the stimulus conditions in which the verbal response is emitted and the history of socially mediated reinforcement that maintains it. To those who, like Watson and Holt, held that meaning resides directly in the response itself, Skinner (1957) countered that

meaning is not a property of behavior as such but of the conditions under which behavior occurs. Technically, meanings are to be found among the independent variables in a functional account, rather t h a n as properties of the dependent variable. When someone says that he can see the meaning of a response, he means that he can infer some of the variables of which the

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response is usually a function. The issue is particularly important in the field of verbal behavior where the concept of meaning enjoys unusual prestige. (p. 14)

Similarly, Watson's view of meanings as classically conditioned associations of words with things was regarded by Skinner as an ill-considered attempt to ground meaning in reference.

Acknowledging that 'the substitution of one

stimulus for another in the conditioned reflex has suggested a biological basis for the notion of reference" (p. 86), he summarized the Watsonian claim that words call out the same responses as the objects they are conditioned to and that each h u m a n carries around a substitute world of verbal reactions.

But, Skinner

objected,

it is, of course, a rather useless world. [One ] cannot eat sandwich or pull a nail with claw hammer. This is a superficial analysis which is much too close to the traditional notion of words as "standing for" things. (p. 87)

For Skinner, the reduction of meaning to conditioned associations fails, for verbal behavior "must be formulated as a discriminated operant involving three terms, no two of which provide a parallel for the notion of a symbol" (p. 88). In developing his taxonomy of verbal operants (tacts, mands, autoclitics), Skinner refused throughout to allow that meanings could be characterized in terms of associations, referents, mental contents, world-replicas in the head, or covert mediating responses of a Hullian sort. Forgoing the theoretical apparatus of both cognitivism and classical behaviorism, the account in Verbal Behavior remained one of pure process, countenancing only behavior in its functional relations with the environment. There was no provision for reference, correspondence, or even truth, and verbal behavior could be evaluated only in terms of its effects on listeners in a given verbal environment (including the speakers

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themselves). Although Skinner (1957) allowed that one might use the language of operant analysis to frame alternative definitions of traditional semantic terms (meaning, reference, etc.), such efforts would misrepresent the traditional notions and gain no advantage for a scientific treatment ("we are interested in finding terms, not to take traditional places, but to deal with a traditional subject matter"; p. 115). In the Skinnerian approach, then, meaning itself would simply dissolve into a web of causal relations, not to be identified with any part thereof. At the same time, Skinner's rejection of mentalistic meanings, along with his focus on how verbal behavior is maintained through its effects on listeners, gave his approach much of the flavor of the meaning-is-use doctrine found in the later Wittgenstein (1953; see Day, 1969; Gasking, 1960), as well as the nonsemantic view of Strawson (1950) that referring is an activity carried out by people, not by words. As behaviorist accounts of meaning were being developed in the disciplinary context of psychology, they were also exerting important influences on such disciplines as philosophy, linguistics, and literary criticism.

In philosophy,

Bertrand Russell, seeking a causal theory of reference to supplement his logical atomism, turned to Watson's writings on language. Devoting lengthy passages of his works in the 1920s to s~ympathetic reviews of Watsonian behaviorism, Russell (1927) endorsed Watson's conditioned-response account of words as "the only satisfactory way to treat language" (p. 43).

Moreover, according to Russell,

behaviorism can have a remedial effect on philosophy:

The failure to consider language explicitly has been a cause of much that was bad in traditional philosophy. I myself think that "meaning" can only be understood if we treat language as a bodily habit. (p. 43)

Among the successes of the behaviorist account, in Russell's view, were its treatment of abstract or class words (pp. 53-54) and "other uses of words, such as

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the narrative and imaginative" (p. 57; see also Russell, 1921). Russell's successors in the empiricist philosophy of meaning would later include W. V. Quine, who drew on both Watson and Skinner in formulating his rejection of meanings as mental entities, noting that his account in Word and Object (1960) followed Skinner's "in essential respects" (p. 82; see Gibson, 1996). In linguistics, the preeminent American structuralist Leonard Bloomfield (1933) embraced the behaviorism of A. P. Weiss, leading Bloomfield to define the meaning of a linguistic form as "the situation in which the speaker utters it and the response which it calls forth in the hearer" (p. 139; see Esper, 1968).

The influence of

behaviorist views of language would be felt even in the realm of literary criticism, where Ogden and Richards's (1923/1956) endorsement of Watson's treatment of meaning was extended by Richards (1930) in the form of his highly influential reader-response theory of criticism. Given that Richards and Skinner were closely acquainted for many years at Harvard, the similarity between Skinner's treatment of the audience and Richards's focus on the effects of literature on readers may be more than coincidental (see Woodward, 1996).

Meaning in the cognitive tradition During the period of behaviorism's ascendancy in the study of language, cognitive approaches to the subject underwent something of an eclipse. By 1920, the cognitive psychology of Ianguage that had arisen in Leipzig and Wiirzburg during the 19th century had waned under the force of protracted internal controversies (Blumenthal, 1970; Esper, 1968), only to be further impeded by the social disruption of the interwar period and the ravages of World War II. Even those language scholars who managed to escape Europe found a cool reception in America. Karl Biihler, for example, who arrived in the United States in 1939 shortly after publishing his masterwork Sprachtheorie (1934), was virtually ignored by American psychologists and found himself relegated to a minor teaching position at a small college in Duluth, Minnesota. The fate of German

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Sprachpsychologie was further sealed by the growing intellectual isolationism of Americans and the gradual elimination of the once-routine practice of training psychologists to read German (Blumenthal, 1970).

By the postwar era, the

American psychology of language was being pursued largely under the limiting guise of "verbal learning and verbal behavior." Equally unsympathetic to the cognitive psychology of language were the American structuralist linguists, who during the period 1925-1955 followed Bloomfield's behaviorist strategy of recording statistical distributions of operationally defined linguistic units, with little regard for either the units' semantic content or their syntactic arrangements. The statistical approach to the descriptive taxonomy of language units reached its zenith with the carefully quantified work of Zipf (1949), which was briefly incorporated into information theory before falling from favor as a useful approach to understanding language. In important respects, the revival of the cognitive approach to language was precipitated by criticism from within the behaviorist camp. One of Watson's former students, Karl Lashley, published a classic paper (1951) on the problem of serial order in behavior, raising serious questions about the ability of conditioning principles to account for the patterning of responses, linguistic or otherwise.

Reviving Wundt's earlier concern with how a complete thought can be

maintained while its component meanings are arranged into speech, Lashley argued that some form of prior central control must organize the output before it can be emitted. Similar notions of top-down organization were being entertained by researchers in postwar cybernetics, and would soon fmd further expression in studies of the strategies used in concept formation (Bruner, Goodnow, & Austin, 1956) and the use of hierarchical organization of information to overcome the limits of short-term memory (Miller, 1956). When the inchoate field of psycholinguistics emerged from a series of interdisciplinary conferences in the early 1950s (Rieber & Vetter, 1980), it met a favorable reception from an influential group of researchers who, coming to view themselves as cognitive psychologists,

Historical and Philosophical Foundations

57

were prepared to view language as subject to top-down organization by means of abstract rules (Baars, 1986; Gardner, 1985). It was just such a view of language that Noam Chomsky provided in his

Syntactic Structures (1957), a work that

revolutionized linguistics by giving a

precise formulation of the rules by which language is organized. Having trained under Zellig Harris, a structural linguist who had begun the investigation of transformational grammars, Chomsky addressed the problem that had occupied Wundt of how propositional content--a speaker's thoughtmis transformed into surface strings, hand how the content is recovered by the listener.

Although

essentially a technical work in linguistics, Syntactic Structures was viewed by Chomsky as having deep implications for psychology, a position spelled out in his writings of the 1960s.

Reviving Descartes's identification of mentality with

linguistic competence, Chomsky (1968) wrote that "the long-range significance of the study of language lies in the fact that in this study it is possible to give relatively sharp and clear formulation of some of the central questions of psychology" (p. 59); in fact, according to Chomsky, the study of linguistic structure constitutes "a chapter of human psychology" (p. 59), and linguistics becomes a "particular branch of cognitive psychology" (p. 1). In arguing for the centrality of linguistics to psychology, Chomsky pointed to the ubiquity of quasi-syntactic organization in human behavior, citing with approval the claim by Lashley (1951) that even walking is syntactic in the sense of being governed by an internal structure.

Such talk was more than empty pronouncement, for Chomsky had

already in 1956 begun a collaboration with the psychologist George Miller that resulted in several publications on the implications of transformational grammar for psychological theorizing (e.g., Chomsky & Miller, 1963). As Chomsky's repute grew during the 1960s, the impact of the Chomskyan revolution on psychology spread in various directions. Posing a serious challenge to the widely held doctrine of phylogenetic continuity, Chomsky's explicitly Cartesian view of language as unique to humans aroused a renewed interest in

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the issue of language in lower organisms. The studies of language-like behavior in apes that sprang up at a number of sites used techniques far more sophisticated than those of earlier studies by Yerkes and the Kelloggs, capturing both scientific attention and the popular imagination (Sebeok & Umiker-Sebeok, 1980).

At the same time, Chomsky's nativist views on language acquisition

fueled new interest in developmental studies, many of which depicted language learning as a process, not of passive conditioning, but rather of the active hypothesis-testing under severely constrained rules (McNeill, 1966). For

all

its

impact

on

psychology

and

linguistics,

though,

the

transformational grammar presented in Syntactic Structures had little direct bearing on the problem of meaning, contributing mainly to the clarification of how certain cases of syntactic ambiguity can be resolved. In a brief final chapter of the book, Chomsky (1957) painted semantics in a pessimistic, even disparaging, light.

After denouncing the tendency of his structuralist forebears to identify

meaning with a speaker's responses to utterances, he characterized semantics as "dangerous ground" that (u~like syntax) was poorly understood, noting that 'meaning' tends to be used as a catch-all term to include every aspect of language that we know very little about" (pp. 103-104).

Still, the role played in

transformational grammar by paraphrase and underlying synonymy served to draw attention to the phenomenon of meaning in the form of the propositional contents residing in language's deep structure. If meaning was something of an "unwanted intruder" in Chomskyan linguistics (Nilsen & Nilsen, 1975, p. 18), Chomsky nevertheless acknowledged that a theory of syntax would ideally have "suggestive and significant interconnections with a parallel semantic theory" (1957, p. 103).

The outlines of such a

theory were soon worked out by two philosophers who were drawn from Princeton to Cambridge by their interest in Chomsky's work. In the semantic theory of Katz and Fodor (1963), the meaning of a lexical item could be decomposed into a set of features called markers (e.g., male and human for the word 'q3achelor') along with

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a feature called a distinguisher that reflected the word's idiosyncratic meaning (e.g., unmarried). Under this theory, similarity of meaning among lexical items became a function of the number of features they had in common, a sharing of semantic features t h a t could also be used to account for the semantically anomalous character of redundancies (My brother is a male) and contradictions

(My brother is not a male).

At the same time, Katz and Fodor deliberately

excluded from their theory any account of how speakers might use nonlinguistic context or background knowledge, such as that required for disambiguating sentences such as Our store sells horse shoes versus Our store sells alligator shoes. For Katz and Fodor, any account of how speakers understand such sentences would require the inclusion of a great deal of nonlinguistic information about the sociophysical context, and hence was said to fall outside the scope of linguistic theory (falling perhaps into the realm of discourse analysis).

Like Chomsky's

transformation grammar, the semantic theory of Katz and Fodor would remain a theory of linguistic competence, not one of language use. For his part, Chomsky adopted the Katz-Fodor theory, incorporating it into his Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965), and the basic approach, modified as the "extended standard theory" and the "revised extended standard theory," came to enjoy the status of received theory in linguistics for a number of years (Newmeyer, 1980). Among psychologists, the featural approach to semantics was refined to show how concepts in the mental lexicon could be arranged hierarchically according to subset relations among the features that define certain classes of concepts (Collins & Quillian, 1969).

But as a protracted effort to characterize Fregean

senses as sets of necessary and sufficient conditions, the Katz-Fodor theory and its derivatives could not be sustained--certainly not, it turned out, as theories having psychological reality. The attack on the featural semantics came during the 1970s from both philosophy and psychology. In his landmark paper '~rhe Meaning of 'Meaning" (1975), the philosopher Hilary P u t n a m argued that the senses of terms cannot

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plausibly be construed as properties of a concept that yield necessary and sufficient conditions for membership in the term's extension.

A tiger without

stripes, for example, is still a tiger, and a lemon that is not yellow or tart remains a lemon. Concepts do not possess discretely specifiable propertiesutheir extensions are fuzzy rather than discrete sets. In place of criterial features, Putnam proposed that the meanings of concepts are determined not by rules but by "stereotypes," that is, by sets of properties typically, but not invariably, associated with them. In reflecting on the received tradition in semantics, Putnam, wrote that

the amazing thing about the theory of meaning is how long the subject has been in the grip of philosophical misconceptions, and how strong these misconceptions are.

Meaning has been identified with a necessary and

sufficient condition by philosopher aider philosopher . . . . On the other side, it is amazing how weak the grip of the facts has been. (pp. 192-193)

When one does attend to the facts of natural-language meanings, Putnam said, the idealizations involved in all-or-none featural semantics become unworkable. It was also during the 1970s that psychologists and anthropologists, all along more professionally disposed toward the grip of the facts, rejected the philosophical notion that meanings are specifiable as discrete features in favor of the notion that the meanings of concepts are represented as prototypes. Drawing on Wittgenstein's (1953) concept of "family resemblance," Rosch and her colleagues (e.g., Rosch & Mervis, 1975) argued that conceptual categories are organized around exemplars or typical cases, much in the manner of Putnam's stereotypes. On this view, the internal structure of categories involves conceptinstances lying at various distances from the most typical member of the set, a thesis borne out in numerous experimental tests of the model. Investigating the interrelated family of concepts for containers, Labov (1978) showed that although

Historical and Philosophical Foundations

61

subjects could readily identify prototypical instances of cups, mugs, bowls, or vases from a large set of containers, their classification of such items also depended in highly context-sensitive ways on cues about the containers' material composition (e.g., glass or metal) and their uses for various contents (e.g., coffee or potatoes). During the 1970s, the apparent fluidity of meaning and its dependence on context was simultaneously being discovered in research on sentential and narrative meaning. Thus, Bransford and his colleagues performed experiments showing that the meaning extracted from sentences is not their deep structure in the Chomskyan sense, but rather some prototype-like core of meaning constructed by the subjects. In these studies, Bransford and Franks (1971) reported, "individual sentences lost their unique status in memory in favor of a more wholistic representation of semantic events" (p. 348). The discovery of semantic processing under the influence of such holistic representations soon led to a variety of theoretical formulations to describe the relevant phenomena. These included the

narration schema (Kintsch, 1976) in psychology--a revival of Bartlett's (1932) Kantian notion--and the script (Schank & Abelson, 1977) and frame (Minsky, 1975) in artificial intelligence research. The demonstrated dependence of meaning on the context of preexisting narrative structures and its relativity to fluid categories was anathema to Chomskyans, with their implicit assumption that semantics could be grounded on innate conceptual primitives, and it violated Katz and Fodor's (1963) stated intention of excluding extralinguistic knowledge of the sociophysical environment from the theory of meaning.

Katz, for his part, would soon give up the

psychological half of the psycholinguistic enterprise, retreating to a Platonic antipsychologism in which concepts were accorded no psychological reality (e.g., Katz, 1987).

Fodor, however, drifted into an extreme cognitivism that issued in an

avowed form of solipsism. Treating the mind as a purely formal computational system on the model of a Turing machine, Fodor (1975) developed a syntactical theory of mind in which cognitive activities were viewed as manipulations of

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abstract symbols or mental representations.

This activity is said to be carried

out in an innate language of thought ("mentalese") that already contains a full repertoire of concepts.

For Fodor, the acquisition of language is merely the

aligning of one's natural language with the preexisting structure of concepts in mentalese, thus accounting for the rapidity of language learning. On this radical cognitivist view, innate concepts provide the content of mental states, but these states, being purely computational, have no reference to an outer world--or at least no such reference that can properly be studied by cognitive psychology. As characterized by Gardner (1985), Fodor's position was that "the machine of our minds does not know what it is talking about, and does not care about a semantic relation" (p. 84). Since psychology can study only the formal operations of the mind, the resulting view was a "methodological solipsism" in regard to issues of meaning (Fodor, 1980); such skepticism about the relation of language to an independently existing world has continued to underlie semantic theorizing in the Chomskyan tradition (Jackendoff, 1983, 1994; see discussion in Santambrogio & Violi, 1988). Fodor's separation of the formal and the semantic and his anti-referential view of language were soon expanded by him (Fodor, 1983) into a modular theory of mindma sort of 20th-century phrenologymin which the mind was said to be composed of specialized processing units that communicate only imperfectly with one another.

In this theory, the language processor is relatively isolated from

other cognitive components, including whatever perceptual mechanisms might serve to ground the symbols of language in reference to an outer world.

The

modular approach to cognition, itself an elaboration of the Chomskyan notion of innate "mental organs," has been received sympathetically by Chomsky (1993), an ironic state of affairs given that the role of Chomskyan linguistics in instigating the cognitive revolution in psychology was premised on the Cartesian ideal of an essential identity of the cognitive with the linguistic.

To the extent that

meaning involves reference to an outer world (even if controversially so), it can be

Historical and Philosophical Foundations

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said that the problem of meaning has stymied the Cartesian vision of an encompassing science of cognition, and indeed occasioned a retreat from the whole Cartesian program. Even as the radical cognitivist viewpoint was being developed, the limitations of its semantic solipsism were beginning to be felt by researchers in artificial intelligence, whose "semantic engines" were designed to cope with realworld problems and hence could not afford the philosophical luxury of divorcing syntax from semantics or ignoring the problem of reference. Although intelligent machines could capture the computational aspects of mental states and perform logical problem-solving with relative ease, it soon became apparent that artificial intelligence, to be intelligence at all, had to be about something.

Efforts to

generate AI programs that could comprehend natural language or operate effectively on delimited real-world environments revealed the need to build in large amounts of background knowledge and contextual information, including knowledge in the form of frames, scripts, and story grammars.

Even for the

relatively simple case of lexical comprehension, Winograd (1990/1985) would argue, the determination of meaning is highly context-dependent:

There does not exist a "property" or "relation" correlated with [a] word that can be defined or discovered in isolation of the context in which the word is used . . . . [T]he category associated with a word won't stay put. The specific context in which the word is used (which may be social, psychological and textual) plays a complex and central role in determining whether a particular object will or will not be appropriately denoted by a phrase containing it. (p. 374)

In AI research, this sort of difficulty became generalized as the notorious "frame problem"---that is, the question of what concepts and situational information are required for the simulation of human intelligence and language comprehension,

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or, phrased differently, the question of how wide is the context of knowledge to which meanings are context-sensitive. Reflection on the frame problem has also led more recently to the remarkable suggestion that the project of artificial intelligence cannot succeed, at least in the arena of meaning, short of embracing some approximation to a full-blown hermeneutics of textual interpretation (Haugeland, 1979/1990; Winograd & Flores, 1986). During the 1970s, other researchers concerned with the semantics of natural language would focus on another way in which the meaning associated with a word "won't stay put"---namely the phenomenon of metaphor.

This

renaissance of interest in metaphors came against a background of resistance from formalists both in the philosophical tradition, where metaphors continued to be dismissed as nonsensical expressions devoid of meaning (Smith, 1990), and in the linguistics tradition, where they tended to be discredited as syntactically illformed expressions (Matthews, 1971). Although figurative language had been addressed earlier in the century by Karl Biihler, I. A. Richards, Roger Brown, among others (see Honeck, 1980), a major impetus to renewed interest in metaphor came from ordinary language philosophy in the form of Max Black's treatise Models and Metaphors (1962).

There Black challenged the view that

metaphor is merely a rhetorical device, arguing that the idiosyncratic juxtaposition of concepts that takes place in the creation of metaphors actually creates new meaning rather than just extending old meanings to new vehicles.

The vast

proliferation of studies on figurative language during the 1970s emerged from various directions--including developmental and cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics--but all served to underscore the possibility that metaphoric processes are central to the creation of meaning, and possibly even basic to all cognition. Moreover, the return of the tropes posed severe challenges to the thenstandard information-processing and syntactic views of language by showing that meaning depends crucially on performative context (language in use) as well as the intralinguistic context of interrelations between words of once-divergent

Historical and Philosophical Foundations

65

meanings. Not surprisingly, the revival of attention in metaphor research to what Biihler (1934) had called the "total field" of language encouraged some researchers to expand the study of meaning to the broader areas of narratology and discourse analysis.

Some Recent Turns in the Study of Meaning The problem of meaning has always been a problem in flux.

That the

present century is no different from others in this respect should be apparent from the foregoing account, and a sampling of recent turns in the study of meaning suggests that flux is still in force as we approach the century's end. However, there are certain ironies to be found in the shitting views of recent work, ironies that can perhaps be best appreciated against the background of other general trends. Broadly speaking, the swings in thought about meaning in this century are epitomized by the positions of the early and late Wittgensteinmthat is, from the early logical atomism, with its picture theory of meaning, to the late doctrine of meaning as language in use, relativized to community and context. This shift from viewing meanings as discrete referential mappings to viewing them as diffused in patterns of human activity was paralleled by developments in behaviorist theories of meaning, as the atomistic conditioned associations of word and object favored by the classical behaviorists gave way to the diffusion of meanings into environmental contingencies in Skinner's Verbal Behavior. Similar developments took place in cognitive psychology, where sustained critiques of Katz and Fodor's (1963) context-free mappings of meanings onto fLxed conceptual structures led to its replacement by various richly contextual accounts of meaning, including broadly cultural accounts in terms of vast webs of meaning-inducing conventions (Brunet, 1990; Gergen, 1994). When Hilary Putnam (1975) famously asserted (with all due philosophical eloquence) that " 'meanings' just ain't in the head" (p. 144), he might have been speaking for a whole generation of meaning

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theorists--on

either

side of the

cognitivist-behaviorist

divide--who

were

becoming increasingly skeptical about whether meaning could be adequately characterized as any sort of discrete mapping that was free of context and presupposition. The trend toward meaning holism that was epitomized in Wittgenstein's trajectory from atomism to contextualism would culminate in the deconstructionism of Derrida (1976) and its various near-cousins in psychology (Gergen, 1988; Shotter, 1993).

What these schemes share in common is their renouncing of

reference as a legitimate, or even possible, function of language.

As the post-

modern heirs to the tradition of German idealism, they depict language as systems of free-floating discourses by which humans construct, rather than describe, reality. In Derrida's version, meaning itself diffuses to the vanishing point, as all attempts to interpret the textuality of human culture by tracing signifiers to the signified are doomed to failure. In the somewhat more naturalistic versions of post-Wittgensteinian holism (e.g., Gergen, 1994; Shotter, 1993), what remains are coUectivities of shared rhetoric in which meaning is constructed, negotiated, and renegotiated by parties to ongoing conversations. Somewhere between the atomism of discrete reference relations and the radical meaning holism of deconstructionism and the rhetorical tradition lies the field of play for psychological theories of meaning at the close of the 20th century. Against this background, two further recent turns in the study of meaning--one behaviorist, the other cognitivistmtake on special interest, both for their rejection of extreme holism and for their unexpected status as meeting grounds, in certain respects, for otherwise opposing traditions. During the 1970s, that decade of ferment in the study of meaning, researchers in the Skinnerian behaviorist tradition became increasingly interested in various cognition-like phenomena, and in doing so began to raise questions about both phylogenetic continuity and the completeness of Skinner's account of language in Verbal Behavior (Hayes, 1992). A signal development in this trend

Historical and Philosophical Foundations

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was the discovery by Sidman (Sidman & Tailby, 1982) of stimulus equivalence classes, a phenomenon in which equivalences between symbolic and nonlinguistic stimuli emerge without explicit training following conditioning on appropriately arranged conditional discriminations. Although variously interpreted by workers in the area (see chapters by Mandell and Hayes, this volume), stimulus equivalence was quickly recognized as a promising candidate for the basic behavioral mechanism of linguistic reference, as a "kind of working empirical model of semantic relations" (Hayes, 1992, p. 1387). Viewed in historical perspective, this work can be seen as a return to a causal theory of reference of the sort that Watson sought in the Pavlovian association of word and object, and, in some respects, to the classical naming paradigm (Horne & Lowe, 1996).

It is thus

worthy of note that the arch-cognitivist Fodor (1987, 1990), in an abrupt shift, has recently abandoned methodological solipsism to pursue a solution to the symbolgrounding problem in a causal theory of reference (Kripke, 1980), going so far as to admit that the behaviorists' causal theories of meaning were among the unfortunate casualties of the Chomskyan revolution (1987, p. 163). The theory of "situational semantics" proposed by Barwise and Perry (1983) shows that Fodor is not alone among philosophers in returning to the reference model of meaning. As a second example of a recent turn of events that manifests unexpected congruences, consider the influential "cognitive semantics" developed by Lakoff and Johnson (Johnson, 1987; Lakoff, 1987; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980).

This

approach takes metaphormlong disparaged by philosophers and now resuscitated in both cognitive psychology and the rhetoric-based versions of social constructionismmand finds in it the very basis of human conceptual structures.

Moreover,

there is evidence that some of these metaphorical structures are universal, suggesting a novel route to the Cartesian dream of a common basis for thought and meaning. Still further, the cognitive semantics approach grounds meaning, including its putatively universal aspects, in the structure of the body and the way the body operates on an environment, linking it not only to the Piagetian

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tradition of developmental theory but also to the longstanding behaviorist tradition of construing meaning as a form of bodily action. As Lakoff (1994) has recently put it, cognitive semantics confirms "the insight that conceptual structure has everything to do with one's body and with how one interacts as part of one's physical environment" (p. 42).

Evidently, then, when it comes to the

problem of meaning, the currents of flux intersect and mingle in ironic but alluring ways.

CONCLUSION If meaning can rightly be called the problem of the 20th century (Kitchener, 1994), it should nonetheless not escape our attention that it has been a matter for serious deliberation in nearly every century of Western intellectual history. As a perennially contested topic of deep bearing, the problem of meaning has always called forth and put to the test our most basic

even metaphysical--views of

human nature and the world, social and physical, in which we operate. And if, in our own time, meaning has proven to be a problem in flux, so too it has been subject all along to shifting interpretations, often radically divergent yet sometimes surprisingly convergent. All of the developm~ents reviewed in this chapter reflect the challenging difficulty of the problem of meaning, as well as its perdurance, its continuing immersion in philosophical issues, and perhaps its unusual degree of intractability. But these developments also reveal that every era of attack on the problem has produced valuable new prospects for the pursuit of solutions. We have seen that there are longstanding and recurrent themata in the human effort to elucidate the semantic triangle of minds, things, and language, and that the effort to do so evinces no foregone conclusions. In renewing and recombining these themata to which we are all heir, the essays collected in this volume offer a rich array of promising directions for gaining new insight into one of our culture's most venerable problems.

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C. Mandell and A. McCabe (Editors) 9 1997 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER 2 Stimulus E q u i v a l e n c e and Meaning: The Influence of Verbal Behavior CHARLOTTE C. MANDELL

University of Massachusetts Lowell

Psychologists working from a variety of diverse perspectives are in agreem e n t in noting t h a t despite its a p p a r e n t simplicity, u n d e r s t a n d i n g how we learn to n a m e things poses a difficult problem (e.g., Horne & Lowe, 1996; Macnamara, 1982; Premack, 1990). From a behavioral perspective, when characterizing the relationship between a referent and a name, we assume t h a t the presence of the referent will increase the likelihood of the n a m e being emitted. For example, if we see a picture of President Clinton, we are likely to say (overtly or covertly) "There's President Clinton." Conversely, we assume t h a t the sound (or sight) of a name, will increase the likelihood of some response to the referent occurring. For example, if we hear the name "President Clinton" then, in certain contexts, we are likely to look for a picture or some sign of President Clinton. Further, we assume t h a t different names for common referents will all evoke similar r e s p o n s e s ~ f o r example, the n a m e s "Bill Clinton" or "President Clinton" or "Slick Willy" might all evoke a response related to President Clinton, and, in addition, they might evoke each other as well. Lastly, we assume t h a t a variety of different referents m a y acquire the power to evoke a common name. Thus, the sound of Clinton's voice, or a newspaper story about him or televised footage of him might all evoke his name. Although the example used above (President Clinton, a proper name)

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relates to the name of a particular individual, the same assumptions can be applied to common names as well (see Macnamara,1982, for a discussion of the relations between proper and common names). For example, a child who sees a dog, is likely to say "doggie." Conversely, on hearing "doggie," a child is likely to look for, point to, or pat a dog. Different types of dogs, different images of dogs, different attributes of dogs (their general appearance, their fur, their bark, their odor), and objects associated with dogs may all evoke the name "doggie," and may evoke references to each other as well. For example, on seeing a dog, a child might say "woof-woof." The same is true of different names for dogs as well. The child may respond similarly whether hearing "dog" or "doggie" or '%ow-wow." It seems clear, then, that names and referents (or referent-related behaviors) can serve both as stimuli and as responses. In this sense there is a reciprocal or symmetrical relationship between the name and the referent.

Moreover,

where there are multiple names for common references, or multiple references for common names, relations among them often emerge without explicit or apparent direct training. Any behavioral model of naming, then, must necessarily account for these emergent relations (both extended and symmetrical) among names and referents. Many of the earliest psychological models of linguistic meaning were derived, at least in part, from learning theory (Gough & Jenkins, 1963). These models utilized associationist principles from both classical conditioning and verbal learning domains (for review see Creelman, 1966; Dixon & Horton, 1968; Julia, 1983; Staats, 1964). Soviet psychologists, in particular, focussed on the question of semantic generalization, or how classically conditioned responses generalized across words with common meanings (Razran, 1939; 1961). If, for example, a particular word, say "guitar," was conditioned to elicit vasoconstriction, then semantically related words like "mandolin" or "violin" might be found to elicit vasoconstriction as well (Creelman, 1966).

Pavlov speculated that there were two signalling systems in

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the nervous system: the first consisted of unconditional and conditional reflexes and the second consisted of speech or verbal behavior (Pavlov, 1955). The second signalling system was assumed to be governed by the same laws of learning as the first signalling system.

Thus, through standard classical conditioning

procedures involving pairing or contiguity, words could become linked to internal or external responses, and these responses, in turn, defined the word.

In the

second signalling system linkages between words and their meanings could take place without recourse to external events. Hence, conditioning procedures involving responses elicited by one verbal stimulus might be transferred to another verbal stimulus without explicit training. The meaning of a word could thus be conceptualized as the responses that the word elicited in both the first and second signalling systems. In the United States, Cofer and Foley (1942) attempted to relate the empirical research on semantic conditioning explicitly to verbal learning, postulating that mediational responses and their associated stimuli constituted verbal meanings. Thus, in the preceding example, not only would the sound of the word "guitar" be conditioned to elicit vasoconstriction, but mediational responses (and related stimuli) produced by the word "guitar" (through prior learning) would be conditioned to elicit vasoconstriction as well.

To the extent that words like

"mandolin" or "violin" have similar meanings and thus produce similar mediational responses, conditioned vasoconstriction would be elicited by them as well. Cofer and Foley applied analogous reasoning to the phenomenon of transfer in paired-associate learning, conceptualizing the list terms as conditioned stimuli and responses. Later researchers (Jenkins & Palermo, 1964; Kjeldergaard, 1968; Osgood, 1953) working in the associationist tradition departed from the strict classical conditioning model, but maintained the notion of mediational responses (or processes) as a means of accounting for transfer-of-learning phenomena within the paired-associate framework.

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Mandell Although these mediational models were able to account for emergent

relations across semantically related stimuli, they, nonetheless, had several shortcomings. First, they relied upon hypothetical and unobservable phenomenon as explanatory concepts whose existence could not be independently verified. Second, they could not readily account for emergent symmetric relations among stimuli and responses. That is, in order to account for transfer-of-learning from the response terms in a list of paired associates back to the stimulus terms, it was necessary to posit the existence of backward associations or to assume that all associations were bidirectional (Asch & Ebenholtz, 1962; Deese, 1965). Evidence for such backward associations, however, is generally considered to be weak (Ekstrand, 1966).

The overwhelming bulk of evidence in the field of

classical conditioning does not support either the interchangeability of stimulus and response, or the bidirectionality of the conditioning process per se.

The

conditioned stimulus typically comes to elicit a conditioned response that is in some way related to the unconditioned stimulus, but the reverse is not true. 1 In contrast to the associationist views of learning, theories of linguistic meaning which are based on operant conditioning rely on selectionist or reinforcement models to account for learning. In 1957, Skinner published Verbal Behavior, an attempt to formulate a functional analysis of verbal behavior.

Despite the

famous scathing review by Chomsky (1959), and the outright rejection by what came to be known as the psycholinguistic community, the work has continued to be recognized within the field of behavior analysis, and, with the development of new techniques and data, has become increasing influential in recent years (Eshleman, 1991; Hayes & Hayes, 1992). Functional accounts of verbal behavior have even made some inroads into traditional psycholinguistic domains (1990; Andresen, 1992). Skinner consistently rejected the notion that meaning is a property of a particular verbal response (or stimulus); rather he viewed meaning in relation to the function of verbal behavior. He wrote, "In traditional terms, meanings and

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referents are not to be found in words, but in the circumstances under which words are used by speakers and understood by listeners..." (Skinner, 1974, p. 92). To illustrate the distinction, consider the example presented in About Behaviorism (Skinner, 1974, p. 93): The phrase, "it's two o'clock," is only meaningful to the

extent that a listener's behavior has been reinforced for acting in a particular fashion in the face of hearing similar phrases in the past (i.e., rushing to catch a train) and that a speaker's behavior has been reinforced for uttering such phrases as well (i.e., when seeing the face of a clock in a particular configuration, and issuing such responses to an educated listener). In Skinner's formulation, the primary vehicle for the analysis of the relations between names and their referents is the tact (Skinner, 1957). A tact is defined as a verbal operant in which a particular environmental stimulus sets the occasion for a particular response which is then reinforced by the verbal community. Thus, in the presence of a kitten, a child's response of "kitty," might meet with a smile from a parent. In the presence of a lovely day, the greeting "nice day out," might meet with agreement and another greeting. The reciprocal relation (i.e., comprehension of a name) was explained as a discriminative response on the part of a listener to a verbal stimulus, resulting from a history of reinforcement for such behavior. For example, the sound of the word "kitty," might serve as a stimulus for a child to look for a kitten.

The child's behavior might then be

reinforced by seeing, or touching a kitten. Likewise, hearing the words "it's chilly out," might serve as a discriminative stimulus for wearing a sweater when going outside. Thus, although Skinner did account for both the stimulus and response roles of names and referents in verbal behavior, he assumed that both relations were acquired directly and independently through reinforcement. He proposed no special process to explain the seemingly spontaneous participation of words in both stimulus and response roles (but see de Rose, 1996; Michael, 1996). In 1982 Macnamara wrote "One problem for the Skinnerian approach is to

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explain how the child sets up the appropriate equivalence classes [emphasis added]. That is, how does he know that several different sounds are all tokens of, say, the word dog?

The differences among tokens are likely to be every bit as

marked as those between the objects that are called dogs..." (p.7) In the same year, Sidman and Tailby (1982) described a procedure that they believed led to the emergence of new stimulus-equivalence relations among groups of stimuli that had been partially linked through training. included reflexivity (Stimulus A = Stimulus A);

These emergent relations symmetry (if Stimulus A =

Stimulus B then Stimulus B = Stimulus A); transitivity (if Stimulus A = Stimulus B and Stimulus B = Stimulus C then Stimulus A = Stimulus C); and equivalence which involves both symmetry and transitivity (if Stimulus A = Stimulus B and Stimulus B = Stimulus C then Stimulus C = Stimulus A). Such relations could then account both for the property of symmetry between names and referents as well as the problem in accounting for the property of extension which Macintosh addressed in his comment above. In 1994, Sidman wrote "...we often react to words and other symbols as if (emphasis added) they are the things or events they refer to. Even though we do not treat word and referent as equal in all respects, we attribute some of the same properties to both" (p.3) and later "I think the equivalence paradigm demonstrates one way that symbols do become established as such, one way that words can come to 'mean' what they 'stand for." (p.563) It should be noted that these equivalence relations are not identity relations.

They are subject to

contextual control. Thus, in one context we can manipulate a symbol as if it were the object (e.g., we conclude that if we add two apples to three apples we will have five apples), but in other contexts we are aware that the symbol is not, in fact, the referent (e.g., we do not attempt to make apple pie from the written or spoken word "apple"). 2 In their original work, Sidman and Tailby (1982) showed that equivalence classes could be established through the training of a series of related conditional

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discriminations in which one member of a stimulus class is presented as a sample stimulus and, conditional upon the value of that stimulus, the subject is reinforced for identifying other members of the same class from arrays of possible choices.

Following training with only a subset of such discriminations, new

relations between stimuli within the set can be shown to emerge. To the extent that these novel and untrained relations among stimuli do emerge, symbolic relations among stimuli can be inferred. Thus, Sidman's work provided both a behavioral procedure for assessing meaning, and, a model that seemed to account for the development of symbolic relations between words and their referents. It might be important, at this point, to remind the reader of the difference between Sidman's view of stimulus equivalence and the older associationist views of stimulus equivalence.

In the associationist view conditional stimuli

were assumed to produce mediational responses/processes and these, in turn, led to conditioned responses. Thus the stimuli, mediational processes and response bore a fLxed temporal relation to one another.

In Sidman's view, however,

equivalence can be established between any two events (stimulus, response or outcome) which participate in a reinforcement contingency.

Moreover, Sidman

does not postulate the existence of actual or hypothetical mediating responses. Instead, for Sidman, equivalence refers simply to the potential for the emergence of a particular pattern of behavioral relational responses, under the appropriate circumstances.

Equivalence has no independent existence outside of these

demonstrated behavioral relations (McIlvane & Dube, 1990; Sidman, 1994). Sidman and Tailby's seminal work unleashed a flood of related research (e.g., Fields & Nevin, 1993), much of it dealing with the question of whether the emergence of equivalence relations could occur without verbal mediation. Sidman (1990; 1994) concluded that equivalence is a "primitive" or unlearned and unanalyzable property of behavior--analogous to the property of reinforcement. Certain trends in the research, however, suggested otherwise.

First, while

stimulus equivalence is readily established in verbally able humans, it is much

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more difficult to establish in linguistically impaired humans (Barnes, McCullagh, & Keenan, 1990; Devany, Hayes, & Nelson, 1986), and

even more difficult

(perhaps impossible) to establish in nonhumans (Dube, McIlvane, Callahan, & Stoddard, 1993; Hayes, Thompson, & Hayes, 1989; Lipkens, Kop, & Matthijs, 1988; Sidman et al., 1982; But see Savage-Rumbaugh et al., 1993; Rumbaugh & Savage-Rumbaugh, this volume; Schusterman & Kastak, 1993). Second, a number of studies have shown that manipulations that involve teaching subjects names for stimuli tend to facilitate the emergence of equivalence relations (Dugdale & Lowe, 1990; Eikeseth & Smith, 1992). Lastly, research has indicated that stimulus classes involving readily nameable stimuli can be established more easily than those involving non-nameable classes (Annett & Leslie, 1995; Bentall, Dickins, & Fox, 1993; Mandell & Sheen, 1994). Thus, some researchers have argued that some form of verbal behavior is in fact necessary to establish equivalence. (See also Hayes, 1991; 1994, for yet another point of view). In a recent and comprehensive review of the literature in this area, Horne and Lowe (1996) argued that the establishment of equivalence relations among stimuli is governed by verbal behavior, in particular, "naming." They defined "naming" as "a higher-order bidirectional behavioral relation that (a) combines conventional speaker and listener behavior within the individual; (b) does not require reinforcement of both speaker and listener behavior for each new name to be established; and (c) relates to classes of objects and events" (p.207). 3 According to Horne and Lowe, naming is initially established through the merging of echoic behavior and listening behavior in the child. The fact that the allocation of common names can account for stimulus equivalence (by virtue of the bidirectional nature of names and referents) thus renders the notion of a separate process unnecessary. Mthough the evidence supporting the naming hypothesis is compelling, it cannot be said to be conclusive. The critical experiment distinguishing naming and non-naming accounts of stimulus equivalence has yet to be performed (if

Stimulus Equivalence and Verbal Behavior

89

indeed such an experiment is possible). Nonetheless, a number of studies have attempted to address this issue (Annett & Leslie, 1995; Bentall et al., 1993; Mandell & Sheen, 1994).

One approach used by researchers can be traced to

Ebbinghaus' (1885/1964) work on memory and meaning. Ebbinghaus found that meaningful material (a poem) was learned more readily than nonmeaningful material (nonsense syllables).

Subsequent researchers refined and tested

Ebbinghaus' work on memory and meaningfulness, operationalizing meaningfulness in terms of the number of "associations" (i.e., verbal responses) elicited by a stimulus within a restricted time period. The more associations produced, the more meaningful the stimulus. And, indeed, more meaningful stimuli were found to have a facilitative effect on verbal learning and memory (for review, see Walker, 1996 Chapter 8). Applying this logic to the analysis of the genesis of stimulus equivalence, researchers have compared the emergence of equivalence relations following training with meaningful stimuli to the emergence of equivalence relations following training with nonmeaningful stimuli. The assumption underlying this work is that a meaningful stimulus will elicit a verbal response (or name) and this verbal response will come to be associated with other stimuli in the class. If stimulus equivalence requires mediation by verbal behavior, then equivalence relations should be more likely to emerge among stimulus classes involving readily nameable stimuli than among stimuli which are not readily nameable. Bentall, Dickens and Fox (1993), for example, compared responding in groups of subjects exposed to "pre-associated" nameable pictograms (i.e., members of a common class of stimuli such as plants), nonassociated nameable pictograms, or abstract stimuli.

They noted that training was briefest with associated pic-

tograms; longer with nonassociated pictograms and longest with abstract forms. During testing, most errors were made in the abstract stimulus condition. Finally, they noted that response latencies during testing were longest for abstract stimuli, and that the patterns of latencies on the different types of

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testing trials (i.e., trained association, symmetry, transitivity and equivalence) differed among subjects as well. They concluded from the two distinct patterns of responding that emerged in this study that subjects used different types of learning strategies (some involving naming and some not) depending on the nature of the stimuli and the availability of common names.

Experiment I,

described below, extended this work by comparing the acquisition and emergence of equivalence relations with meaningful and nonmeaningful stimuli using within-subject rather than between-group comparisons. Such comparisons allow greater control over individual and historic differences among subjects than is possible in comparisons among groups of subjects and is generally preferred by those working in the operant tradition. In some cases, this difference in methodology can be quite critical in determining the nature of the results (see Experiment 2, below).

E X P E R I M E N T I: CONCRETE AND ABSTRACT STIMULI IN STIMULUS EQUIVALENCE In this experiment, subjects were trained to perform 16 conditional discriminations intended to produce eight 3-member stimulus classes. For four of the stimulus classes the sample stimuli consisted of meaningful pictograms (a frog, a bottle, a plane and a hand). For the remaining four stimulus classes, the sample stimuli consisted of abstract forms. All the comparison stimuli consisted of abstract forms. The complete array of stimuli is shown in Figure 1. Stimuli that were arbitrarily linked to a common sample stimulus through reinforcement contingencies were considered to be members of an equivalence class.

Each class

consisted of one sample and two comparison stimuli. In figure 1, members of a common class share the same numerical suff'Lx--thus, A1, B1 and C1 form one class; A2, B2 and C2 for another, and so forth. Relations between stimuli that were explicitly reinforced during training are represented by solid lines.

91

Stimulus Equivalence and Verbal Behavior

.

A1

D1

~

FBI

B2

~

E2

.

A2

C2

D2

~~B3 A3

~

C3

~

~

F2

B

D3

E4

B4

D4

A4

c4

F4

Figure 1. Schematic diagram of concrete (A1-A4) and abstract (D1- D4) Stimulus Classes. Solid lines are reinforced relations. Dashed lines are equivalence relations.

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92

Equivalence relations, which were probed for during testing but were not explicitly reinforced, are represented by dashed lines. The direction of the arrows is from sample stimuli to comparison stimuli. I predicted that if meaningfulness were an important factor in the formation of equivalence classes then: (1) acquisition of conditional discriminations using classes with concrete forms would be quicker and involve fewer errors than acquisition of conditional discriminations using classes with abstract forms; (2) latencies to choice on conditional discriminations involving concrete forms would be shorter than those on discriminations involving abstract forms; (3) during testing, equivalence relations would be more likely to emerge in those classes that used concrete rather than abstract forms during training, despite the fact that these concrete stimuli were not actually presented on test trials; and (4) latencies to choice would be shorter on test trials involving stimuli associated with concrete forms than on trials involving stimuli associated with abstract forms.

Methods

Subjects The subjects were 11 college undergraduates who were recruited from introductory psychology classes, and received partial credit toward their course grades.

Apparatus The stimuli were displayed on a Macintosh Computer using software developed by Bill Dube at the E. K. Shriver Center with support from NICHD Grants HD17445, HD24317, and HD22218.

Procedure Subjects were told that they were participating in a learning experiment in

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which their job was to try to determine which of several stimuli "was correct." After the subject was seated at the computer terminal a small picture (the sample) appeared at the center of the computer screen. When the subject selected this picture with the computer mouse button, four additional pictures (the comparison stimuli) appeared in the corners of the computer screen.

One

comparison stimulus from the same stimulus class as the sample was included among them.

If the subject selected this comparison stimulus (a correct choice)

then a chime sounded and the word "correct" appeared on the computer screen. For example, referring to Figure 1, if stimulus A1 were the sample, comparisons might be B1, B2, B3 and B4. B1 would be designated as the correct response. Alternatively, comparisons might be C1, C2, C3 and C4, in which case C1 would be designated correct.

If the subject selected a comparison stimulus from a

different stimulus class (an incorrect choice) the computer screen simply went blank and the next trial began. A training session consisted of quasi-randomly arranged blocks of such trials repeated until the subject completed an entire block without making any errors. Each block contained 16 trials in which each sample appeared with each correct stimulus at least once.

Completion of one

block with no errors terminated the training procedure. To facilitate the learning process, a delayed cuing procedure (described more fully in Sidman, Wynne, Maguire, & Barnes, 1989) was used such that if the subject did not make a guess about the correct response within a certain time, then the incorrect comparison stimuli disappeared and only the correct comparison stimulus remained. quickly.

At the start of training the delayed cue occurred very

Ultimately the subject was prompted by the computer only after 10

seconds passed with no response. For purposes of data analysis, such prompted responses were considered errors. After the subject completed one block of 16 training trials, a process which generally required 30 to 60 min, the testing procedure was begun. Subjects were instructed as follows: "Using what you have learned in phase one of this experi-

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ment, try to guess which is the correct answer. The computer will not give you any feedback during this phase of the experiment." A test session included both test trials (in which novel combinations of comparison stimuli were presented in order to test for the emergence of untrained equivalence relations) and training trials (in which samples and comparison stimuli identical to those used during the training process were presented in order to provide an assessment of changes in the performance of the original learning task that might arise during testing). Neither type of trial was followed by any feedback to the subject. On each test trial, one of the former comparison stimuli appeared at the center of the computer screen as a sample. When the subject selected this stimulus with the computer mouse four additional comparison stimuli appeared, including one from the same equivalence set as the sample. A response to that comparison was assumed to demonstrate the emergence of equivalence.

(Referring again to Figure 1, if B1

were the sample stimulus, then comparisons would include C1, C2, C3, and C4, and selection of stimulus C1 would be considered consistent with the emergence of equivalence). The test consisted of four blocks of 32 trials, arranged in quasirandom sequence.

Results and Conclusion

As predicted, for 10 of the 11 subjects, acquisition of the conditional discriminations with meaningful samples proceeded more quickly (t(10)--4.117, p=.0021) and with more correct anticipations (t(10)=2.529, p =.0299) than did acquisition of the conditional discriminations with nonmeaningful sample stimuli. Table 1 shows the numbers of trials to criterion (criterion was defined as a block of training trials with no errors for that class of stimuli) and the number of correct anticipations made during the course of training for concrete (meaningful) and abstract (nonmeaningful) stimulus classes. Also as predicted, median latencies to choice tended to be shorter for meaningful than for nonmeaningful stimulus classes. A comparison of latencies

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TABLE I Number of trials to criterion and number of correct anticipations made during training for concrete and abstract stimulus classes

Subject

Trials to Criterion

Correct Anticipations

Concrete

Concrete

Abstract

CK DS GM HR JT KP KY LN MN MS RN

208 64 176 112 208 224 512 352 192 272 64

240 80 240 192 176 298 656 432 256 384 352

78 25 81 56 107 79 163 133 101 135 163

MEAN SD

216.7 129.1

300.5 154.4

101.9 43.7

Abstract 41 24 64 43 111 49 129 108 74 117 116

79.6 37.5

over the entire course of training yielded a significant difference (t(10)=2.529, p=.0299) as did a comparison of latencies on the last three blocks of training only (t(10)=4.117, p=.0021).

Table 2 shows the median latencies for concrete and

abstract stimulus classes throughout training as well as on the last three blocks (z=1.823, p=.0684). During testing, 9 of the 11 subjects produced more choices consistent with equivalence with the concrete stimulus sets than with the abstract sets.

This

difference approaches significance according to the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test (z=1.823, p=.0684).

Table 3 shows the number of "equivalent" responses made

over the course of testing.

For comparison purposes, the performance on baseline

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TABLE 2 Median latency to choice (in sec) throughout training and for the last three blocks of trials Training Subject

Concrete

Last 3 blocks

Abstract

Concrete

Abstract

CK DS GM HR JT KP KY LN MN MS RN

3.412 3.300 2.410 3.605 3.300 3.290 3.908 3.748 2.570 2.985 1.758

5.342 3.148 2.520 5.415 3.015 3.140 4.930 4.347 2.750 3.213 3.100

2.975 2.790 2.315 2.225 1.420 1.370 1.750 2.370 1.480 3.025 0.970

4.135 2.550 2.235 2.600 2.090 3.120 3.850 3.360 2.675 3.625 2.275

MEAN SD

3.117 0.641

3.725 1.072

2.063 0.707

2.899 0.698

training trials presented during testing is included as well. Although differences between abstract and concrete training trials were not as great as those during testing, this interaction did not prove significant. Finally, latencies to respond were found to be higher for abstract than for concrete stimulus sets during test trials. Analysis of variance showed significantly longer latencies for abstract than for concrete forms, (F(1,10)=9.614, p<.05); significantly longer latencies for testing than for training trials (F(1,10)=13.786, p<.01); and a significant interaction between stimulus type and trial type (F(1,10)=18.152, p<.01). That is, latencies were significantly longer for abstract than for concrete forms on testing trials (t(10)=3.575, p=.0051) but no significant

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TABLE 3 Choices consistent with equivalence classes during testing and on training baseline trials (out of 32). Training Subject

Concrete

Last 3 blocks

Abstract

Concrete

10 14 31 32 25 29 32 20 31 32 32

CK DS GM HR JT KP KY LN MN MS RN

9 13 28 32 19 30 30 17 32 31 32

10 12 23 31 32 24 26 13 31 24 17

MEAN SD

24.8 8.6

22.1 7.9

6.1 2.5

Abstract

8 14 30 32 30 29 29 18 32 32 31

6.2 1.7

difference was found on training trials (t(10)=1.562, p=.1494). This interaction is important, because it suggests that the difference found on the equivalence test trials were not due to a deterioration in baseline performance on trials with abstract forms. Table 4 shows the median latencies during the testing and training trials of the test session. The results of this study strongly suggest that equivalence classes involving at least one concrete stimulus are formed more readily than equivalence classes with no concrete or meaningful stimuli. This is true despite the fact that the longer times spent on the trials involving abstract stimuli (suggestive of increased attention) might be expected to actually improve performance on those

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TABLE 4 Latency to respond on testing trials and training trials during the test session. Training Subject

Concrete

Last 3 blocks

Abstract

Concrete

Abstract

CK DS GM HR JT KP KY LN MN MS RN

2.945 2.525 2.425 2.590 4.110 2.425 3.925 4.895 2.250 2.835 1.610

3.560 2.990 4.755 2.860 3.450 4.755 5.525 6.680 2.635 4.615 5.245

3.834 2.880 2.067 2.499 3.196 2.067 3.026 4.494 2.224 2.981 1.671

3.565 2.404 2.604 2.551 2.676 2.604 3.755 4.956 2.505 3.221 2.582

MEAN SD

2.958 0.961

4.279 1.281

2.831 0.834

3.038 0.784

trials. The only exception to this pattern is found with subject JT, who consistently performed better on the abstract stimulus sets, both in terms of accuracy and speed. Close inspection of his data indicate that during training most errors occurred with one particular pair of stimuli. During testing, however, his errors were distributed across all concrete classes. With this exception, however, the results are consistent with the findings of Bentall, Dickins and Fox (1993) described above. These data are also consistent with the "naming" hypothesis, or the notion that the formation of equivalence classes is mediated by verbal behavior, and hence, concrete stimuli with readily accessible names are learned more easily than those without.

Stimulus Equivalence and Verbal Behavior There are, however, alternative explanations for this outcome.

99 One

possibility is that with their greater familiarity and resultant reinforcement history, concrete forms are simply more discriminable than abstract forms. Another possibility is that a unique association between a stimulus and any differentiated response (not necessarily a verbal one) enhances discrimination performance (e.g., Cohen, Looney, Brady, & Aucella, 1976).

Thus, a more

stringent test of the naming hypothesis was undertaken in Experiment 2.

EXPERIMENT 2

Experiment 2 was an extension of an earlier study by Mandell and Sheen (1994) in which comparisons were made between the formation of equivalence sets containing phonological (pronounceable) nonsense words as sample stimuli and the formation of such sets with nonphonological nonsense words as sample stimuli. In that study, which looked at learning differences between groups, the subjects who were exposed to phonological samples acquired conditional discriminations more rapidly than did subjects exposed to nonphonological sample stimuli.

During testing, near-perfect performance made significant differences

between groups difficult to evaluate, but subjects exposed to phonological stimuli made slightly more equivalence responses than did subjects exposed to nonphonological stimuli. In the present work, differences between phonological and nonphonological nonsense words were evaluated using within-subject comparisons following the procedure established in Experiment I. Subjects were exposed to eight 3-member stimulus sets, half with phonological pseudowords as sample stimuli and the other half with nonphonological pseudowords as sample stimuli.

In addition,

modification was made in the testing procedure in order to minimize the ceiling effect found by Mandell and Sheen and thus permit more meaningful comparisons of the emergence of equivalence responses.

Unlike the previous, and more

traditional, testing procedure in which each test trial involves one (and only one)

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choice that is consistent with the stimulus sets arranged by the experimenter, in the present procedure a number of indeterminate test trials were interspersed among the others. On these trials, no comparison stimuli from the same equivalence class as the sample stimuli were included among the possible choices. (For example, if B1 were the sample stimulus, comparisons might include C2,C3, and C4 --but not C1, the correct match). Although no correct responses were available on these trials, the subject was forced to choose among the incorrect alternatives in order to advance to the next trial. The rationale for this procedure was as follows: There is considerable evidence that behavior is not stable at the end of training, but continues to be modified during the course of testing.

Emergence of equivalence responding

during the course of testing is often reported (e,g., Sidman, Kirk, & WillsonMorris, 1985; Sidman, Willson-Morris, & Kirk, 1986).

Moreover, it has been

demonstrated that the structure of the test, specifically the order in which test trials are presented, affects the emergence of equivalence responding (Adams, Fields, & Verhave, 1993; Kennedy & Laitinen, 1988; Strikeleather & Sidman, 1990). Thus, it has been suggested that the testing process itself contributes to the emergence of equivalence (Bush, Sidman, & de Rose, 1989; Sidman, 1994). The mechanism underlying this phenomenon may be related to a reinforcement history in sophisticated subjects for demonstrating unique and consistent solutions in comparable situations. Thus, if a subject has selected stimulus B1 conditional upon the appearance of C1, then the subject is likely to repeat that response in the presence of C1 again. Equally important, the subject is unlikely to select B1 conditional upon any other stimulus.

Some experimenters have

shown that equivalence classes will be formed even in the absence of any feedback, by simply presenting a consistent pattern of sample and comparison stimuli and requiring the subject to choose among them (Harrison & Green, 1990; Saunders, Saunders, Kirby, & Spradlin, 1988). Thus, I reasoned that if the test was degraded by the inclusion of trials that were not consistent with the equiva-

Stimulus Equivalence and Verbal Behavior

101

lence relation, then the emergence of equivalence might be retarded. Moreover, it might be retarded differentially for phonological and nonphonological stimulus sets. The notion that the phonological sets might be more resistent to disruption is consistent with studies which show that when stimuli are differentially associated with reinforcement, responding in the presence of those stimuli associated with relatively greater levels of reinforcement is more resistant to disruption by extinction, satiation or distraction, than is responding in the presence of stimuli associated with relatively lower levels of reinforcement (Nevin, 1979; Nevin, 1988; Nevin, 1992; Nevin, Mandell, & Atak, 1983).

By

analogy, if the phonological stimuli were easier to learn than the nonphonological stimuli, then they might be more resistant to any disruption caused by modification of the testing procedure.

Method

Subjects The subjects were 10 undergraduate psychology students who received credit towards their psychology course for participation in experimental research.

Procedure The apparatus and procedure in Experiment 2 were identical to Experiment 1, with the following exceptions: (1) Rather than using concrete and abstract pictograms

as

sample

stimuli

on

training

trials,

phonological

and

nonphonological pseudowords were used. The concrete pictograms were replaced with the pseudowords FLODG, SNAMB, CHIRT AND GLERP; the abstract stimuli were replaced with the pseudowords RCGKP, LRJMQ, PBXRZ, ZDHLN; (2) In experiment 1, four comparison stimuli were presented on every trial throughout training and testing, whereas in experiment 2, only three were presented. In both cases the sample stimuli (e.g., A1) were located in the center of the computer screen but in Experiment 1, the comparison stimuli (e.g., B1, B2,

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B3 and B4) were located in the four corners of the computer screen (with position varied randomly across trials), whereas in experiment 2 only three of the four comparison stimuli were located in three of the four corners of the screen. For example, if A1 were the sample stimulus, the comparison stimuli on a given trial might include B1, B2 and B3. Comparisons including B4 would appear in other trials. This change in procedure was implemented in order to avoid signalling the indeterminate trials by the number of stimuli presented. That is, because the correct comparison stimulus was excluded from the indeterminate trial, only 3 comparisons remained. If four comparisons were included on training and test trials, and only three were included on indeterminate trials, the subject would be signalled that these trials were to be treated differently than the others.

(3)

Equal numbers of equivalence and indeterminate trials were presented during the testing procedure. Training trials were interspersed as before; (4) In Experiment I, testing sessions consisted of 128 trials, presented in a single test session. In order to ascertain whether any progressive changes in performance were occurring during the course of the testing procedure, the testing period in Experiment 2 was lengthened to 576 trials, presented over the course of three sessions; (5) Following the completion of the testing procedure, subjects were asked to complete an additional block of 32 trials (including training, testing and equivalence trials) while recording the rationale for their choices. They then recorded their impressions of what the experiment was supposed to show.

Results and Discussion

Surprisingly, the results of this study showed no consistent differences between performance associated with phonological and nonphonological stimulus sets during either training or testing. This held true for performance measured by trials-to-criterion, correct anticipations during training, number of equivalent responses during testing, or latency to respond.

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TABLE 5 Median latency to respond (in sec) on phonological and nonphonological testing trials, phonological and nonphonological training trials and indeterminate trials. Testing

Subject

Training

Phono

Nonphono

Phono

Nonphono

Indeterminate

AR CS ED JG JN MS NH PF RR WC

2.690 1.900 3.255 2.330 1.945 1.985 2.275 3.255 2.415 1.875

2.310 1.945 2.260 2.700 1.765 2.550 2.480 2.250 2.050 1.795

2.160 1.660 2.755 2.240 1.510 1.760 2.300 2.755 2.150 1.800

2.080 1.700 2.475 2.410 1.405 2.540 2.220 2.475 2.150 1.820

3.850 2.550 7.925 5.650 3.070 2.560 3.900 7.925 3.325 2.725

MEAN SD

2.392 0.524

2.211 0.318

2.109 0.431

2.128 0.380

4.348 2.094

Performance on the indeterminate trials, however, differed noticeably from performance on the training and testing trials.

Subjects made comments like

'~Vhat do I do if it doesn't give me the right answer?" or "the computer isn't working right." When asked the basis of their choices following completion of the testing procedure, all subjects indicated that there were some trials that did not meet their expectations. One subject indicated on her sheet that all the training and equivalence trials were "learned" whereas the indeterminate trials were "guesses." Finally, when asked simply what she thought the experiment was intended to show, one subject made the following observation: "...I figure the point of the 'duds' was to confuse the subject and try to make them forget.

I am

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guessing that the pictures without matchups did not count; they were almost acting as the talking/distraction in between oral questions [the subject may have been referring to memory studies discussed in Psychology Class, or to oral exams]. You're able to remember a question better if there is silence rather than if there is talking."

Latencies on the indeterminate trials were considerably

longer than those on the equivalence trials, especially early in the testing procedure. (t(9)=3.510, p=.0066). These data are summarized in Table 5.

GENERAL DISCUSSION What are we to conclude from this study?

Why, if the emergence of

equivalence classes is facilitated by the test itself, were the indeterminate trials so readily identifiable to the subjects as "wrong" while equivalence behavior was maintained on the "legitimate" test trials? And why did the differences between phonological and nonphonological samples not produce differences in behavior comparable to those obtained by Mandell and Sheen (1994) using a betweengroups design? The answers to these questions, and perhaps others as well, may lie in the contributions of verbal behavior to the formation of equivalence classes in verbally sophisticated subjects. In the present case, verbal behavior may not take the form of mediation by naming (i.e., assigning a common name to related stimulus classes) but, rather, it may take the form of rule-governed or verbally controlled behavior (See Horne & Lowe, 1996, on intraverbal naming).

Rule-

governed behavior is described as verbal behavior that alters the likelihood of behavior controlled directly by reinforcement contingencies (Skinner, 1969). Skinner referred to rule-governed behavior as contingency-specifying behavior, and he distinguished it from behavior that is directly controlled by contingencies of reinforcement. Rule-governed behavior allows people to benefit from instruction without necessarily experiencing a contingency. Thus, if we are told, "don't touch the stove - it's hot," we do not have to touch it to explain our subsequent avoidance behavior. Our ability to benefit from instructions or rules is believed to

Stimulus Equivalence and Verbal Behavior be a higher-order learned behavior.

105

Past reinforcement or punishment for

following rules (or not, as the case may be) increases the likelihood of our following rules in the future. One's own verbal behavior may serve as an instructional stimulus as well, and this verbal behavior is itself subject to control by contingencies of reinforcement (For review, see Catania, Matthews, & Shimoff, 1990; Hayes, 1989; Perone, Gahzio, & Baron, 1988).

Rule-governed behavior can

contribute to the efficiency of learned behavior by virtue of the fact that it permits behavior to be maintained in the absence of contingencies or despite defects in contingencies (Vaughan, 1987). However, rule-governed behavior can also produce insensitivity to new or changing reinforcement contingencies in the event that there is a conflict between a verbal rule and the ongoing contingencies. Catania and his associates (Catania et al., 1990; Catania, Shimoff, & Matthews, 1989) have demonstrated that when there is a conflict between rules given by the experimenter or by the subjects themselves and the ongoing contingencies of reinforcement, behavior is often governed by the verbal rules rather than the contingencies. How does rule governance address the questions raised by experiment 2? First, if the subjects' behavior was guided by a verbal rule generated in the course of training and testing (specifically, "select the stimulus that was previously associated with the same stimulus as the current sample"), then the absence of a "correct" comparison stimulus on the indeterminate problems would have been readily apparent.

One might ask why subjects would generate that particular

rule rather than another rule.

A number of factors, including the fact that

subjects were explicitly instructed to use what they learned in training to guide their decisions in the testing phase, and the fact that this rule could be applied to 2/3 of the trials present in the testing session, made the establishment of such a rule highly probable. No other rule that met the above criteria was applicable to as many trials. Let us use an analogy here. Suppose we instructed a verbally sophisticated subject to respond on a series of trials by choosing the red stimulus.

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If we did not include a red stimulus on some of these trials we would expect the subject to remark upon the absence of the right answer, to generate longer latencies to respond on those trials that did not include a red stimulus, and to continue to choose the red stimulus when it was possible to do so. Such seemed to have been the case in Experiment 2. The subjects were under verbal control of rules generated by the training contingencies, the instructions given to them by the experimenter and the structure of the test itself. We now turn to the reason for the failure to obtain differences between phonological and nonphonological stimulus sets in Experiment 2, especially in view of the fact that such a difference was obtained in the original work by Mandell and Sheen (1994). It is quite possible that when faced with a phonological or "word-like" textual stimulus in a problem-solving context like the present one, subjects generate rules that have applied to other words in their experience-for example, a rule like "FLODG goes with..." or ~FLODG means..." In contrast, when faced with a nonphonological stimulus, like a string of consonants, subjects may generate similar rules ("RCGKP goes with...") but they may generate alternative rules instead. For example, subjects may generate rules that relate to the position of a particular letter in the string (e.g., choose the shape which most closely resembles the initial letter in the string). Unless behavior governed by such irrelevant rules is extinguished, equivalence responding may not emerge, even if the original conditional discriminations are acquired.

The difference in

the likelihood of "correct" rules being generated as a function of the similarity of the stimuli to actual words may well account for the more rapid acquisition seen in those subjects exposed to only phonological stimuli as compared to those who were exposed to only nonphonological stimuli.

When both phonological and

nonphonological stimuli are mixed together, as in Experiment 2, it seems likely that subjects will generate a single overarching rule that applies to all stimulus classes, rather than a variety of rules for different cases. This rule may or may not be relevant to the experimenter-determined stimulus classes, but, whether it

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Stimulus Equivalence and Verbal Behavior

is or not, no consistent differences in the acquisition of the conditional discriminations with phonological and nonphonological samples would be anticipated. Thus, we see why different groups of subjects experiencing different training conditions may react so differently from individual subjects exposed to both conditions. Although there is some risk attached to the use of subjects' verbal reports to account for behavior (e.g., Hayes, 1986; Perone, 1988), it is of some interest to examine subjects' comments to determine whether they are consistent with the above account. In Mandell and Sheen's original paper, subjects in the phonological group tended to refer to the pseudowords as "words" or "names" and to use them in describing their choices. Thus, a subject in the Phonological Group wrote, "I didn't use many tricks, I just associated the symbols and names

[emphasis

added] with each other. " Subjects in the nonphonological group tended to characterize the syllables in a more idiosyncratic manner. reported, "I used personal references.

Thus, one subject

Each symbol reminded me of a certain

something and I would associate that symbol with one of the letters.

For

example, I thought one of the signs was pretty and it went with the letter 'J'. My sister's name is Jenny and I associated her with pretty." In the present work, subjects' reports indicated that they did tend to use similar strategies for both phonological and nonphonological words, although individual subjects did use different types of strategies. Thus, one subject wrote of a phonological test trial (SNAMB), "both shapes were related to letter cluster beginning with 'S' "; and she wrote of a nonphonological test trial (PBXRZ), "both shapes related to cluster beginning with 'P'." Another wrote "from previous exercise, they both went with same word," for both phonological and nonphonological test trials. Still another used an imagery mnemonic for both phonological and nonphonological samples thus for SNAMB she writes "S-stairway, which one resembles. SN-snake. Resembled snake-looking hieroglyphic Indian design," whereas for PBXRZ she writes, "Reference both designs to PB - one looks like a punching bag and one like a picture in a box."

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Finally the notion that performance on typical stimulus-equivalence tasks by verbally sophisticated subjects is rule-governed may account for other commonly seen characteristics of equivalence behavior as well. As mentioned earlier, it has frequently been noted that the emergence of equivalence relations during testing is often delayed (e.g., Sidman et al., 1985; Sidman et al., 1986), occurring in the midst of the testing procedure and, once established, remaining stable despite the absence of explicit reinforcement. This pattern of responding is unlike behavior typically emitted during the course of testing in extinction. Responding during generalization testing, for example, tends to reflect the training contingencies early in testing and to then deteriorate over time. In equivalence procedures, not only is the emergence of equivalence behavior often delayed, but many researchers have found that once the behavior is established during the testing procedure it is extremely resistant to disruption in the form of contingency reversals and changes (Pilgrim, Chambers, & Galizio, 1995; Pilgrim & Galizio, 1995; Spradlin, Saunders, & Saunders, 1992).

This delayed emergence and

highly stable performance is consistent with the notion that the experience provided by the test trials facilitates the generation of appropriate verbal rules, and that once test behavior comes under the control of the verbal rule, it is no longer sensitive to changes in the reinforcement contingencies. Are we to conclude then that stimulus equivalence does not provide the basis for symbolic behavior, but rather that the converse is true? Not necessarily. (For alternative accounts see Hayes et al., 1989; Sidman, 1990). Although the foregoing argument seems to account for the behavior of linguistically able subjects performing certain types of tasks, and following certain types of instructions, it does not necessarily account for all situations in which stimulus equivalence has been obtained. Some authors have suggested that there may be different types of processes underlying equivalence performance that 'qooks the same" (Horne & Lowe, 1996).

Bentall, Dickins, and Fox (1993) have even

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provided some empirical evidence for this stance, in their demonstration that the patterns of latencies emitted by subjects differs depending on whether the stimuli used encourages or discourages verbal strategies. They have suggested that the difference patterns reflect difference in the processes underlying equivalence responding. Thus, when trying to account for the acquisition of meaning it continues to be important to explore stimulus equivalence as a potential underlying process. Moreover it may be particularly important to study these processes in linguistically immature or disabled subjects.

Work on the developmental

parameters of stimulus equivalence has already begun (Lipkens, Hayes, & Hayes, 1993), but much remains to be learned about the role of equivalence in the emergence of language and vice versa. This chapter began with a consideration of some of the complexities involved in understanding naming. The present analysis addresses only a very small part of the task. Names and their referents do not exist in isolation, but rather they are to be understood in more extended contexts: the context of a sentence, the context of narrative, the context of the verbal community, as well as the context of individual learning history, culture and genetics.

Stimulus

equivalence may well turn out to be an important analytical tool in understanding these problems in all of their richness and variety.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to acknowledge the contributions of Allyssa McCabe and Deborah Johnson for their help in the preparation of this manuscript; Murray Sidman and Mary Duel for the conversations leading up to this work; Virginia Sheen for her contributions to my thinking on these issues; The many students who have worked with me to collect and analyze these data including Janet Paroskie, Sharon Wang, Anita Verdi.

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1. It should be noted, however, that many researchers do assume that classical conditioning provides an emotional component to meaning over and above the denoted relation between the name and the referent (see, for example, Skinner, 1957, p.357). 2. Place (1995/1996) has suggested that the symbol and referent itself are not directly linked through equivalence, but, rather the symbol and nonverbal signs of the referent are linked. 3. A higher-order behavior is one which has generalized beyond specific instances, to include a variety of controlling stimuli, reinforcers, and topographically distinct responses. Thus, imitative behavior exemplifies a higher-order operant.

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The Problem of Meaning: Behavioral and Cognitive Perspectives C. Mandell and A. McCabe (Editors) 9 1997 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER 3

Metaphor, Meaning and Relational Frame Theory STEVEN C. HAYES and ADAM M. GRUNDT

University of Nevada Reno

INTRODUCTION Verbal meaning is a lion's den for psychological science to explore. When we consider the nature of verbal meaning we are considering it verbally and both the speaker and the audience for this verbal analysis of verbal meaning must be involved in the very process being talked about. In these circumstances it is easy to let examples stand for data, and let loose metaphors stand for theories. It seems particularly important, in that context, to begin an analysis of meaning by making explicit our assumptions. Philosophical clarity may make it more likely that we will survive a visit to the lion's den unscathed. We start with three basic assumptions about h u m a n behavior. The first is that behavior can be most fully understood in its context. Analyzing behavior alone and cut off from its historical and situational context tends to assign behavior a status based on topography or structure, at the expense of its functional properties. There have been many analyses of the meaning of language that have fallen prey to the lure of structure--whatever value such analyses have is probably already available to psychological science. A second assumption regarding h u m a n behavior is t h a t inner or private events, such as thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations should be conceptualized in the same terms as overt or public behaviors.

When one speaks of behavior,

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what is being discussed is all of the situated actions of organisms, including those called thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and the like. A third assumption is that causality in science is not a matter of ontology but of successful workingmit is a way of speaking designed to accomplish scientific goals. A full account of any contextually-situated behavior occurs by specifying the participants in the total event, but this is an ideal goal never met. A causal account usually identifies those participants that are most common, and in particular those that are most useful for predicting or manipulating the event in a given context. The present chapter is structured in the following way: First, some of the empirical findings in the area of derived stimulus relations and its link to human language will be discussed.

Second, we provide a framework with which to

understand the empirical phenomena. Our framework, called Relational Frame Theory (RFT), views these empirical findings as the result of a particular kind of learned behavior, and argues that language and cognitive phenomena have their basis in this kind of behavior. RFT provides a basis for a behavioral account of some content domains commonly considered to be the province of cognitive psychology. Third, we extend our analysis to deal with two such topics: metaphor and meaning.

Relational Frame Theory attempts to explain how complex

stimulus functions emerge in language, and walks a middle path between referential and meaning-is-use accounts of verbal events. RFT can support an account of complex cognitive and verbal phenomena without abandoning the core of a behavioral approach.

EMPIRICAL PHENOMENA Because of the diverse audience envisioned for the present volume, we will build an account of metaphor and meaning from the bottom-up: starting with the data and proceeding to the theory, instead of the more usual organization. By presenting a variety of basic empirical data that seem to us to be relevant to

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understanding human language and cognition, our goal is to delineate concretely some of the phenomena that need to be explained, whatever one's theoretical approach or philosophical assumptions.

Derived Stimulus Relations

Parents often comment with a certain degree of amazement on how fast their children are able to learn.

The remarkable rate of verbal acquisition in

children has been well documented by parents and researchers alike (c.f. Novak, 1996; Whorf, 1956). We believe that the concept of derived relations provides a basis from which the rapid learning of children (as well as adults) can be understood. Consider the following situation: Suppose a parent teaches her child to say '%all" after he reads the written word b-a-l l. Additionally, suppose the parent also teaches her child to point to an actual ball after he reads the written word b-

a-l-l.

In this example, only two relations have been explicitly trained by the

parent: 1) say '%all" when you see written b-a-l-l and 2) point to ball when you see

written b-a-l-l. Any parent knows, however, that children with such training are quickly able to say "ball" after being shown a ball. Note, however, that this relation has not been directly trained, but is derived by the child. We argue that it is this derived kind of performance that enables children to learn language at phenomenal speed since a limited number of directly trained performances can lead to a large number of derived performances. One of the f~rst studies of this kind was performed by Murray Sidman (1971). He worked with a retarded boy who was unable to read printed words orally with comprehension. The boy could match spoken words to pictures and could name pictures. After directly training the boy to match spoken words to printed words, he was then capable of reading comprehension (matching printed words to pictures) and oral reading (naming the printed words aloud) without

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additional training. The very nature of derived relations makes their emergence exciting in teaching contexts: learning is accelerated as children generate seemingly novel performances from their direct training histories.

Components of Derived Stimulus Relations A common method for establishing direct relations and subsequently testing for derived relations (with humans) is the arbitrary matching-to-sample task.

It proceeds as follows: First, a sample stimulus (which may be a nonsense

syUable, sound, arbitrary visual form, or any other kind of stimulus) is presented for a given time interval, is removed, and then a number of comparison stimuli (usually three) are presented.

In arbitrary matching-to-sample procedures

(unlike similar procedures such as identity matching or oddity matching) the stimulus sets bear no common properties or non-arbitrary relations. Subjects select one of the comparisons and are given feedback on the correctness of the selection. For example, subjects may be trained to relate the sample A 1 to the comparison B 1 (where B 2 and B3 are the other two comparisons). In other trials the subject would learn to pick B 2 given th~ sample A2 and B 3 given the sample A3. In this fashion, each comparison and each sample is equally correct equally often--it is only the conditional relation that differentiates the trials. Sidman and his associates (Sidman, 1971; Sidman, Cresson & WillsonMorris, 1974) found that given direct training of only A 1 to B 1 and B 1 to C1, a number of untrained (e.g., derived) relations emerge. Given B 1 the subjects chose A 1--what they termed symmetry. That is, subjects trained to form a stimulus relation in one direction derived the mutual relation in the other. Similarly, given A l, subjects were likely to choose C 1 over C2 and C3--what they (Sidman & Tailby, 1982) termed transitivity. Finally, given C1, subjects were likely to choose A 1 over A2 or A3--what has been termed an equivalence relation (Fields, Verhave

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121

say "ball" see b.a-l-1 point to Figure 1. A representation of a simple training history. The direct relations are solid arrows, and derived relations are dashed.

& Fath, 1984). That is, subjects trained to form multiple stimulus relations in one direction will combine these to derive mutual relations in both directions. An equivalence class was defined as a set of stimuli that shows these derived relations (Sidman & Tailby, 1982). learning the meaning of b-a-l-l.

For example, let us return to the child

In this example, only two relations have been

explicitly trained by the parent: 1) say "ball" when you see written b-a-l-l and 2) point to a ball when you see written b-a-l-l. The child soon learns to relate all three stimuli--the spoken word, written word, and object. The child will be more likely to say "ball" after pointing to an actual ball, for example. Similarly, the child will more likely point to actual balls after saying '%all." An equivalence class has been formed. The diagram shown in Figure 1 illustrates the derived (untrained) relations which emerge through training the two direct relations. The directly trained relations are the solid arrows pointing to the right, the other arrows are derived relations.

In the present example, four derived relations

emerge as a result of training only two direct relations.

122

Hayes and Grundt When derived relations exist, in some contexts functions of one event may

transfer to related events. This is expected in some forms of direct relations --through classical conditioning for example--but it has now been well documented as well through derived relations. For example, let us again revisit the child learning to respond to b-a-l-l. Suppose the child now plays with balls for the first time. Through direct experience, various emotional and motor functions may be established by this play. For instance, balls may become a stimulus for approach, may lead to smiling, and may be used as a consequence for other actions. If the child later hears mother say "look, a ball!" the child may smile and approach. Because of the derived relation between actual balls and '%all," these functions have transferred among related events, and the directly established functions of balls may now occur to some degree when the spoken word is heard. We call this process the transformation of stimulus functions, where in a given context, if there is a derived mutual or combinatorial relation between A and B, and A has some additional psychological function, then, as determined by the context, B may acquire psychological functions indirectly. Transformation of stimulus relations seems to be an obvious function of human language, but it has also been repeatedly shown in carefully controlled studies of derived stimulus relations (Dymond & Barnes, 1994, 1995; Green, Sigurdardottir & Saunders, 1991; Green, Stromer & Mackay, 1993; Kohlenberg, Hayes, & Hayes, 1991; Lazar & Kotlarchyk, 1986). Although we have been speaking of derived stimulus relations using matching-to-sample, this is merely because most of the literature uses this preparation. An exciting development in the area of basic equivalence research is recent evidence supporting a non-matching-to-sample procedure which produces equivalence using classical conditioning-like procedures (Leader, Barnes & Smeets, 1996). The procedure is based upon the idea that children are normally taught that events correlated in time and space often "go together." Given this history, subjects show derived performances based upon stimuli that occur closely together in space and time.

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123

D e r i v e d Stimulus Relations Other Than Equivalence? There is a growing body of evidence t h a t similar patterns of derived stimulus relations will occur when the underlying relation established is not an equivalence relation (Roche & Barnes, in press; Dymond & Barnes, in press; Steele & Hayes, 1991). For example, if two stimuli are specified to be opposite, derived stimulus relations t h a t are mutual and combinatorial will form. If A 1 is specified to be the opposite of B 1 and B 1 to be the opposite of C 1, a mutual relation of oppositeness will be derived between B 1 and A 1 and between C 1 and B 1. These in turn will combine to form an equivalence relation between A 1 and C 1 in both directions. How stimulus relations other t h a n equivalence are specified varies. One now widely used procedure is shown in an experiment by Steele & Hayes (1991). Subjects were taught to relate stimuli in three separate contexts (contexts are indicated here by words in all capitals): In the SAME context, selecting the same comparison as the sample was rewarded. In the OPPOSITE context, selecting a comparison as far from the sample as possible (along formal dimensions established by the comparison set) was rewarded.

In the DIFFERENT context,

selecting any comparison other t h a n the sample was rewarded.

Subjects then

received arbitrary matching-to-sample training in the presence of these contextual cues. The networks established allowed testing for a wide variety of derived relations (see Figure 2). In contexts relevant only to the relation of sameness, stimulus equivalence emerged.

However, in contexts relevant to the relations of oppositeness or

difference, participants derived responding t h a t was consistent with those contextual cues present.

On the basis of these findings, it was argued that

equivalence is only one of many possible derived relational responses, and may come under contextual control like most other forms of learned behavior. Several subsequent studies have shown that derived relations other than

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equivalence can come under arbitrary contextual control (e.g., Roche & Barnes, in press; Dymond & Barnes, in press). Dymond & Barnes (in press) taught subjects to relate stimuli under the control of four non-arbitrary relations: SAME, OPPOSITE, MORE-THAN and LESS-THAN. They then tested to see if contextual control over these relational responses would transfer to arbitary stimuli. Subjects were given arbitrary matching-to-sample training in the presence of these contextual cues. When derived relations were tested, subjects responded to arbitrary stimuli in the context established by the contextual cues. Then subjects were trained to choose one of two stimuli depending their own responding (e.g., a self-discrimination response). Upon subsequent testing, subjects demonstrated a transformation of their self-discrimination responses through relations of equivalence (e.g., same) and non-equivalence (e.g., opposite, more-than, less-than). In another study, Roche & Barnes (in press) taught subjects to relate three arbitrary stimuli to three contexts: SAME, OPPOSITE and DIFFERENT. Subjects were then taught to relate the arbitrary stimuli to words such as "dominate," "submit," and "forget." Then subjects were presented with either "penis," "vagina", or "amnesia" as sample stimuli.

Subjects responded by

choosing one of the three arbitrary stimuli, or by typing a question mark (which indicated that subjects felt that none of the comparisons were correct). Subjects consistently responded to the non-arbitrary stimuli through equivalence and nonequivalence relations established by the contextual cues. These data supported an account of sociaUy established sexual categories that is based upon both multiple types of derived stimulus relations. Another long-known relation from both the behavior-analytic and cognitive traditions is exclusion, or what in the cognitive literature is called "mutual exclusivity" (Hutchinson, 1986). (For an excellent review and synthesis of the two research traditions, see Huntley & Ghezzi, 1993.) Exclusion can be described as follows: "When children are shown two objects, one familiar and one unfamiliar,

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125

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i i .~

!

"' . . . . . . . .

i S ................. D 1 --" i :: :: , ......................................................................................... ~......................................................7--

= ~

=

Figure 2 . . Relational network established by Steele & Hayes (1991). The direct relations are solid arrows, and derived relations are dashed. Letters S and 0 indicate relational context Same or Opposite.

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in the sense that they can name one correctly but not the other, and are then given a novel name and asked to assign it to one of the objects, they will ordinarily attach the novel name to the unfamiliar object" (Huntley & Ghezzi, 1993, p. 57). Exclusion has been reliably demonstrated among adults, children, and individuals with mild to severe developmental disabilities. However, the exact nature of the relationship between equivalence and exclusion remains unclear. It has been shown that symmetrical relations among stimuli obtain without both stimuli functioning equivalently in establishing exclusion (Stromer, 1986; Stromer, 1989). That is, two symmetric relations which should establish exclusion equivalently may fail to do so. This either suggests that exclusion as a relation between events need not be explained in terms of equivalence relations, or that equivalence in this context may come under control of some unknown factor.

T h e L i n k B e t w e e n D e r i v e d S t i m u l u s Relations and L a n g u a g e There exists a number of theoretical links between language and derived stimulus relations (Devany, Hayes & Nelson, 1986; Hayes & Hayes, 1989; Horne & Lowe, 1996). The research paradigms used have also been used directly in language training (Sidman, 1971; deRose, de Souza, Rossito & de Rose, 1992), which suggests the close link. Reconsider the example of the child learning b-a-l-l. In this example, the child learned to say "ball" when seeing an actual ball even though this relation was not explicitly trained.

Responding through derived

relations appears to have some bearing, on a commonsense level, to language production. As an empirical matter, derived stimulus relations performances have been shown to correlate with language abilities. For example, an experiment by Devany, Hayes & Nelson (1986) explicitly trained three groups of children (normal, retarded with language skills and retarded with no language skills) to respond to arbitrary stimuli. Four relations (A1-B1, A1-C1, A2-B2, A2-C2) were taught by presenting a sample stimulus and then prompting the subject to choose

Metaphor and Meaning one of two comparison stimuli.

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Subjects were rewarded for correct choices, and

soon all the subjects showed that they could choose the correct comparisons in their proper contexts (i.e., given A1 choose B1, etc.). Devany, Hayes & Nelson then tested for derived responding by examining how subjects responded when B1, C1, B2 and C2 were used as sample stimuli. For example, a test trial might consist of B1 as a sample with A1 and B2 as comparisons. The rationale for such testing is that stimuli may stand in some relation to one another despite their having never been explicitly trained to be so. Relations not explicitly trained, the derived relations, are represented by double arrows. That the derived relations are represented by double-headed arrows is no accident: Direct training in a single direction had oi~en produced bi-directional derived responding. One question of particular interest was how different subjects (i.e., language-able versus not language-able) would respond to sample stimuli that were not directly trained to either of the comparison stimuli.

Results clearly

demonstrated that only the language-able subjects (both normal and retarded children) could demonstrate derived relations. This offers further evidence of the link between derived stimulus relations and language. Although derived relations are clearly related to language, that is not to say that language mediates derived responding in any way.

Some researchers

( H o r n e & Lowe, 1996) have made this claim, yet it also possible that deriving stimulus relations is one of the learned component skills of language performances. If so, understanding derived stimulus relations may be a way of unlocking some of the central characteristics of language itself. Our own work is driven by this idea, as will be discussed later.

Difficulties of the Three-term Contingency in Accounting for Derived Stimulus Relations The workhorse model used by behavior-analytic scientists to explain

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behavior, namely, the three-term contingency, has a tough time accounting for derived stimulus relations in areas t h a t parallel the difficulties language presents to a three-term contingency analysis. The three-term contingency is an integrated unit of analysis consisting of a stimulus t h a t sets the occasion for an

action t h a t produces a consequence. All three terms lean upon one another: they are contextualistic and make sense only in the context of the entire unit. Specific behavioral terms (e.g., "reinforcer" or "discriminative stimulus") refer to the functions of particular aspects of the three-term contingency, but the whole unit is not built up from the parts, rather the parts are viewed as features or qualities of the integrated unit. Analogously, a coin has a front and a back; each are features of the coin. It makes no sense to think of the coin as assembled from a front and back, however, because fronts and backs do not exist as independent parts---they are always fronts and backs of something. Derived stimulus relations are somewhat difficult to account for in threeterm contingency terms, however. For one thing, a three-term contingency is a temporal unit, and the sequence matters:

Stimuli t h a t set the occasion for an

action t h a t is consequated must occur in a given direction.

The three-term

contingency is temporally bound and is not by its nature a reversible unit. Concepts like symmetry imply a mutuality, however, in which direction or sequence does not matter. The ability to derive mutual and combinatorial stimulus relations could be plausibly integrated with a three-term contingency account if derived relations could come about through a direct history of reversing unidirectional stimulus relations. Such a history could come through multiple exemplars.

Suppose we

wish to apply the three-term contingency to the previous example of a child learning the written word b-a-l-l.

It is easy to model the direct relations: b-a-l-l

sets the occasion for which pointing to actual balls, or saying "ball," will in t u r n be followed by some predictable consequence (e.g., Morn smiling or saying "right!" to the child). It is not as easy to model the derived relations, however: It is unclear

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why saying "ball" should set the occasion for pointing to an actual ball, at least from the traditional model of the three-term contingency. But the child may also have a history of positive consequences for responding relationaUy in this context. If the child points to the ball upon hearing the word "ball," Mom will probably again smile or say "right!" If derived relations are trained through multiple exemplars, when a derived relation occurs what we the observers do not see is the explicit, direct training needed to learn these mutual relations in the first place. It needs to be noted that we, as humans, seem to set a variety of contexts to provide this kind of training.

Particularly, training young children to name

objects affords youngsters the opportunity to be directly trained in reversing the relations among stimuli. For example, a child sees a cat, and her mother says "say cat," and the child says "cat." Later, when the child says "cat" the mother points out a cat in the environment.

Thus language training is naturally bi-

directional. Once the child learns to reverse stimulus relations in novel contexts bi-directional training is no longer needed: the child is now able to derive relations on her own. This simple approach to derived stimulus relations--viewing it as learned behaviormis the core of our theoretical view of the phenomenon, to which we now turn.

MAKING SENSE OF THE EMPIRICAL PHENOMENA: RELATIONAL F R A M E THEORY The chapter began with a summary of relevant empirical phenomena. In this section, we attempt to make sense of the data, further elaborating on the connections between derived relations and language through the introduction of Relational Frame Theory (RFT). Before delving directly into the specifics of RFT, a vocabulary dealing with the arbitrariness of relations needs to be built up.

Arbitrarily Applicable Relational Responding Some relations are based upon the topographies of stimuli (e.g. color,

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shape, texture). Such relations are not arbitrarily applicable because the formal characteristics of the stimuli determine the relation in which they stand with respect to one another.

As an example consider the case in which a person

compares two stimuli, say, a dime and a nickel, and decides which is "larger." The person decides the nickel is "larger than" the dime because formally the nickel/s larger than the dime. Conversely, some relations are not based entirely upon the forms of the stimuli being related (Reese, 1968), but instead are established by social convention or whim. We call such a relation arbitrary: There is nothing in the formal properties of the related events that dictate any particular relation between stimuli. For example, reconsider the above example with the dime and nickel. Given the arbitrarily applied relation of "is larger than" a person might choose the dime since a dime "is larger than" a nickel in a socially conventional or verbal sense. In this case the person's response is under the control of historical and contextual features other t h a n the formal properties of the stimuli themselves. This can be directly trained in humans or nonhumans, but what is at issue are instances in which such performances are derived. For example, if a child is taught through direct training that a dime is bigger t h a n a nickel, a shekel is like a nickel, and a libra is like a dime, then posed with the question "Which is bigger, a shekel or a libra?" the child will answer "the libra" despite never having interacted directly with shekels or libras.

It is this kind of behavior that the

three-term contingency has difficulty explaining.

General Terms Relational Frame Theory (RFT) is based on the idea t h a t there are various operant classes of arbitrarily applicable relational responding.

Because of the

flexibility of derived stimulus relations from an RFT viewpoint, general terms are needed to describe this content domain. There are three defining characteristics of arbitrarily applicable relational responding:, a) mutual entailment, which sug-

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gests that if A relates to B then B relates to A (This is a generic descriptor for the symmetry relation); b) combinatorial entailment, which suggests that if A relates to B and B relates to C, then some relation must emerge as A relates to C and as C relates to A (This is a generic descriptor for the equivalence relation.); and c)

transformation of stimulus function, which suggests that under specific conditions a stimulus A (which is related to B) may acquire new psychological functions based upon B and the derived relations between A and B. A particular kind of relation that has these three characteristics we call a

relational frame. Greater than, different from, similar to, opposite of, cause of, before, and so on are all specific types of relational frames. Although the term is used in its noun form because the alternative is awkward in English, a relational frame is always more accurately an instance of framing events relationally. The generic term we use for this kind of behavior is arbitrarily applicable relational res-

ponding.

R e l a t i n g as L e a r n e d B e h a v i o r

There is a growing body of evidence supporting the view that arbitrarily applicable relational responding is learned (Hayes, 1994; Hayes, Gifford & Wilson, in press). There are four demonstrable properties (Hayes et al., in press) for most forms of learned behavior: 1) such behavior should develop over time rather than emerging in whole cloth, 2) such behavior should be flexible (e.g., sensitive to changing contingencies), 3) such behavior should be under antecedent control and 4) such behavior should be under consequential control. These four properties have been shown in the empirical equivalence literature. Derived relational responding has been shown to develop over time in very young children (Lipkens, Hayes & Hayes, 1993. Derived relational responding has also been shown to be flexible

(Pilgrim, Chambers & Galizio, 1995;

Pilgrim & Galizio, 1990, Pilgrim & Galizio, 1995; Steele & Hayes, 1991; Wilson & Hayes, in press). Finally, derived relational responding has been shown to be

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under both antecedent (Dymond & Barnes, 1995; Green et al, 1993; Lipkens, 1992; Steele & Hayes, 1991; Wulfert & Hayes, 1988) and consequential (Wilson & Hayes, in press; Leonhard & Hayes, 1991) control.

Verbal versus Nonverbal Behavior

RFT deals with the distinction between verbal and nonverbal behavior in a simple fashion: Behavior that participates in relational flames is verbal; behavior that does not is nonverbal. When speakers speak verbally they frame events relationally; when listeners listen verbally they respond to stimuli that participate in relational flames. Multiple functions may apply to a given event, and thus many events are both verbal and nonverbal to a degree. A man may enter the restroom with the stick figure man on it in part because the figure is in an equivalence class with "men," for example, but he may do so also in part out of a direct history of finding urinals behind doors marked in this fashion. In that case, the stick figure is functioning both as a verbal and a nonverbal stimulus. Because both verbal and nonverbal functions may occur simultaneously for any given event, there is a considerable fuzziness of verbal and nonverbal functions in most instances of behavior.

What is D i f f e r e n t A b o u t a B e h a v i o r a l A p p r o a c h ?

The behavior-analytic tradition from which RFT has emerged has something to offer with respect to content domains traditionally dealt with by researchers in language and cognition. Behavior analysis takes a contextualistic and functionalistic approach to behavior. Reductionism across domains (e.g., from psychology to brain biochemistry) is actively avoided. The RFT approach to verbal and cognitive events is instead linked to an analysis of psychological processes found in the history of the individual interacting in and with the world. This approach has a "bottom-up" quality to it: very different forms of complex behavior can be constructed from basic behavioral units.

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Language phenomena in particular are not commonly approached in this way, perhaps because of the derived nature of verbal events. Mainstream psychology tends to make m a n y distinctions among various verbal performances, and if a common ground is sought for them it will be in neuroanotomical terms (e.g., looking for distinctions in terms of differences in brain structure.). Both traditions surely have value, but the behavior analysis tradition is less well known and thus is perhaps is less well-explored. RFT provides a common language, based upon behavior-analytic assumptions, for a broad range of verbal phenomena. Rather than accounting for various content domains using different terms based on separate sets of assumptions, it attempts a consistent analysis bridging various topics. In the present chapter we will explore two traditional domains of language to assess the flexibility and precision of this approach: meaning and metaphor. These two are selected because they seem integral to language and because they are central to the topic of this volume.

MEANING

There are two separate veins of meaning for the term "meaning": The first deals with what will be discussed as "meaning-as-use," and the second deals with what shall be called "meaning-as-referent."

This distinction is not

purely a

technical one: the multiple senses of the term are evident even in lay language. For example,"meaning" is defined in the New Lexicon Webster's Dictionary as "that which was intended." "Intention" is "that which one is resolved to do." In contrast, the American Heritage Dictionary defines "meaning" as "that which is referred to," and "reference" is "the state of being related." Thus, meaning can be approached, technically and in lay language, in terms of overt action or in terms of reference. Parenthetically, the same kind of confusion is seen with the closely related term "knowing." Etymologically the word came from two similar sounding terms,

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one that meant knowing "by the senses" (e.g., contingency-shaped behavior) and one that meant knowing "by the mind" (e.g., behavior evoked by verbal stimuli). In English the two terms collapsed into one, but the original senses remain and knowing can be approached either in terms of action established by direct history ("know how") or in terms of responses established by derived stimulus relations ("know that"). In the past, behavioral approaches to meaning have been dominantly associated with use-based definitions, while more cognitive or psycholinguistic approaches tended to be referential. Within B. F. Skinner's approach to meaning, for example, the meaning of a term is treated largely as an issue of stimulus control over overt behavior (Skinner, 1957; cf. Reese, 1968). A "meaning-as-use" account of language suggests that verbal behavior only means something to the extent t h a t some action B usually an overt actionmhas been taken with respect to it in the history of the organism. This turns meaning into a kind of know how. For example, when children know how to follow instructions, we begin to say that they "understand" the instructions and the instructions "mean" what they do. A "meaning-as-referent" account of language is theoretically more challenging t h a n a "meaning-as-use" account, especially to a behavioral position. In part this comes because behavioral thinking is so closely linked to processes of animal learning based in overt action B issues of know how. In part it comes because many forms of referential theorizing essentially are based on a kind of copy theory of the world, in which ideas are expressed verbally, and are true to the extent that they map onto the real world. EtymologicaUy, the root of "reference" means "to carry back" and is the same root as the word ~relation." In relations of reference, what is the relation between? Oi~en verbal events are argued to refer not just to observed events but also to mental events. In referential theories of this kind, words have meaning because they express ideas and the relation of importance is t h a t between ideas and events. It is not the idea of ideas that is troublesome here: it is the degree to which ideas are treated as something other t h a n a kind of

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activity. If relations of reference are relations between stimuli, then ideas are that very act of relating events. The RFT approach to verbal meaning depends upon a particular view of what is '~erbal:" verbal events involve relational frames (for a defense of that notion see Hayes & Hayes, 1992). Verbal stimuli, in this view, are stimuli that have their functions because they participate in relational frames for the responding organism. In a "meaning-as-use" (and m a i n s t r e a m behavioral) sense, meanings have to do with behavioral functions. Verbal meaning is the simple combination of these two concepts: Stimuli that have "verbal meaning" are stimuli with functions t h a t are established by virtue of their participation in relational frames. If it is useful to think of nonverbal meaning, then nonverbal meaning refers to the functions of events that are established directly, or by such processes as stimulus generalization, not by arbitrarily applicable relational responding. This behavioral approach differs from Skinner's analysis, which is perhaps the best known behavioral theory (1957). Skinner attempted to avoid the issue of reference at all costs. For example, Skinner admitted (1957, p. 87) that a listener behaves in a limited sense toward a word as towards named events, but vehemently denied that a tact (which in his lexicon is a behavior occasioned by a nonverbal stimulus) in any way "refers to" events. His objection to "reference" was oriented completely toward a copy theory of reference in which ideas are copies of events in the world, not to a contextually controlled derived stimulus relation. The complete rejection of reference resulted in many anomalous and implicitly dualistic features (Hayes, 1991; Parrott, 1984). For example, in Skinner's system knowing is conceptualized as a "hypothetical intermediate condition which is detected only at a later date" (1957, p. 363). In this approach, knowing does not occur in the present, but at some future point in time.

Knowing is potential

behavior, not behavior itself, and one may therefore assess only the outcome of knowledge (e.g., rule-following) and not the action of knowing itself.

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Hayes and Grundt The RFT approach essentially stakes out a position that integrates both

meaning-as-use and meaning-as-reference accounts. For example, suppose a child is taught to call an apple by the word "apple." Later the child eats and enjoys an apple for the f~rst time. When the child later hears the word "apple" its verbal meaning will be composed of the various functions that have been established by the derived mutual relation between apples and "apple." For example, the child hearing the word may taste something sweet, or smile with pleasure at the memory of eating an apple. These verbal functions of the word "apple" have been established by the transformation of stimulus functions through an equivalence relation between the object and its name: in our example, they were never directly trained to the word itself. On the one hand, the meaning of the word is entirely an issue of action and its effects and thus the view is entirely consistent with the meaning-as-use tradition of behavioral thinkers. On the other hand, the behavioral functions of "apple" are based on a derived stimulus relation B a relation of reference if you like B and thus the approach is entirely consistent with a "meaning-as-referent" account. Note, however, that the relation of reference is not between an idea and an object B the word did not "express" an idea in the sense t h a t an idea existed somewhere else, sometime else, t h a t was then channeled through the word to the world. Rather, the relation of reference is between the word and the object, and if we wish to say that the word expressed an idea, the idea is the derived stimulus relation itself.

METAPHOR Metaphor can be defined as follows:

Metaphor comes from the Greek meta, which has to do with sharing, common action or pursuit, or change, and pherein, meaning to carry or transfer. The sharing or transfer of meaning is from a secondary subject, which linguists call the vehicle, to a principal or primary subject usually

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Struggling to pull fingers ~ , apart

%,

"%%%'%%~%

Chinese handcuffs Not struggling--counter intuitively pushing fingers together

T

S

jl

S t r u g g l i n g to get a w a y from anxiety

%. .i:':" .4..'""

~

~ .....

your anxiety feelings

%".....

,4"

Not struggling--counter intuitively "leaning in" to anxiety feelings

Figure 3. A simplified network of the semantic relations in the "Chinese handcuffs" metaphor. (Direct relations are solid arrows, and derived relations are dashed.) In this metaphor, the common sense and experienced non-arbitrary relations between pushing and pulling in the case of the Chinese finger puzzle are brought into an explicit relation with feelings of anxiety, suggesting a novel approach to experiencing negative emotions.

called the

topic.

The shared ground of the metaphor includes those

qualities of the topic and vehicle t h a t together form the essence of the figurative interpretation. tors," cats is the

For example, in the metaphor "cats are dicta-

topic, dictators is the vehicle, and the ground includes the

endless demands

and ingratitude t h a t

characterize m a n y household

felines. (McCurry & Hayes, 1992, p. 764)

In RFT t e r m s a m e t a p h o r is a derived equivalence relation between sets of trained and derived stimulus relations. With metaphor, sets of relations among

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events themselves serve as relata. As with all arbitrarily applicable relational responses, contextual cues are needed to evoke the relational response. In everyday usage these cues may include paralinguistic cues, the juxtaposition of terms, or especially common words such as "like" or "as" in a comparison (i.e., "You are like the setting sun."). When two separate relational sets or domains become joined through an equivalence relation, a large number of new relations can be derived as a result. As an example, consider the following short therapeutic metaphor used with agoraphobic clients (from Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, in press): "Do you remember those 'Chinese handcuffs' you played with as a kid? Your response to anxiety is like that." Chinese handcuffs are the woven straw tubes t h a t fit loosely around children's fingers, but narrow their circumference and grip the fingers tightly when pulled. Young children sometimes take a long time to realize that solving this finger puzzle requires pushing in, not out. After all, 99% of the time getting out of something requires an outward movement, not an inward one. This therapeutic metaphor carries a message: struggling with anxiety is a kind of similar trap t h a t may require paradoxically "moving in" to the anxiety instead of trying forcefully to get rid of it. A simplified network of the expected semantic relations in this metaphor is shown in Figure 3. In this case the common sense and experienced nonarbitrary relations between pushing and pulling in the case of the Chinese finger puzzle are brought into a new domain: the behaviors exhibited toward anxiety. The paradoxical increase in anxiety when it is fearfully struggled with is probably known to the person hearing this therapeutic metaphor, but the metaphor recast this as a natural contingency, rather than a personal failure or a sign of mental illness. Further it suggests an action the person may never have considered: "moving in" (e.g., through exposure or other means) to the anxiety itself. The efficiency of metaphor is obvious: a few specified relations can lead to a large number of derived relations. Metaphor enables listeners and speakers to

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expand verbal repertoires at extraordinary rates. In an important sense metaphor serves the function of supercharging the listener's relational abilities by equating seemingly disparate sets of relations. For example, if "cats are dictators" then some of the characteristics of cats seem more predictable, or understandable. In addition, metaphor allows a set of stimulus relations in a verbally available domain that is also well known through direct experience to be transferred to less well understood domains. This allows the listener to test out new verbal relations against direct experience. In the anxiety example just given, the plausibility that struggle with anxiety is harmful can be tested against the inherent and experienced paradox of the finger puzzle. Lastly, metaphors allow new knowledge to be developed verbally without the tendency toward rigidity in rule-following that seem inherent in verbal regulation (McCurry & Hayes, 1992).

Metaphors tend to specify what terms

mean or what to do only very loosely. This helps explain the common advice to use metaphors only with great caution in scientific language (e.g., Skinner, 1984), but it may also explain why they are so commonly used in therapy, where the characteristic insensitivity to changing environments that can be produced by rules is undesirable. But these three factors, while important to the utility of verbal metaphor, are not why this topic is in the present chapter. Rather, we argue that metaphor is necessary or at least highly useful in the establishment of very abstract verbal terms. Without metaphor, language would be all about a few hundred concrete nouns and verbs, and little else. A simple equivalence relation can establish a kind of verbal meaning that closely corresponds to the world of objects. Seeing the written word "apple" may have some of the functions of actual apples, for example (e.g., taste). All of this is under contextual control, so when some functions are established nonverbally (e.g., eating), they may not be directly available in the word (we do not eat these

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pages, for example). Even in such cases, however, these functions are then modeled in additional derived relations ("I eat apples"). Thus a very specific and concrete set of events is quickly built out verbally into a complex set of stimulus relations, all of which may bear simultaneously onto a given event. "Apple" is in fact a very complex word, related to hundreds of terms and behavioral functions. This relational complexity is what gives h u m a n language its rich emotional and behavioral complexity. When we move from extremely concrete events to less concrete events this complexity and simultaneity of functions can be established through metaphor rather t h a n through multiple forms of direct experience, and it can be built out into meanings that are ever more subtle and multifaceted. Because of metaphor even very abstract concepts are ultimately about blood and bone--about direct stimulus functions--but metaphor provides a means to establish complexity even when the events themselves have no simple referent. It is remarkable how much h u m a n language is composed of metaphors. For example, when we say that we have an "inclination" to do something the word harkens back to a time when h u m a n emotion and motivation were fairly abstract concepts that could only be likened to a concrete object literally leaning toward something else. We argue that this is not only efficient---it is necessary. Metaphor allows an entire set of stimulus relations and behavioral functions to be established in domains t h a t are too abstract to be built out into complex sets of multiple relations one relation at a time. The passion people feel toward concepts such as patriotism or freedom or diversity or h u m a n dignity shows that abstract concepts are hardly "purely intellectual." Patriotism, for example, is not just one thingDit is m a n y things. The word itself is a kind of metaphor, coming from a Greek word meaning "of one's fathers." Patriotism is something felt towards one's "father land" and "compatriots" (those "with father"). Here the very complex set of responses one feels towards a family of origin are applied via metaphor to a country, land, language,

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culture, political system, set of values, and group. As these concepts are estabfished within a culture, they can be trained in more direct ways as well as through metaphor. "Inclination" can be taught to modern children the same way we teach words like "want" (which originally meant "missing") or thirsty (which came from a word meaning "dry"). With enough direct experience with such words being related to certain conditions or action tendencies they will even seem to be quite concrete. But at one time the idea of overarching "inclinations" was not concrete. This process can be seen in the present day. At the edge of the development of the culture, language immediately turns obviously metaphorical. We now "surf the net," for example, even though there are no water, waves, or surfboards in this "net." Should the term survive, many years from now the metaphorical reference to surfing will be known primarily only to those with etymological interests. Interestingly, the characteristics of many quite concrete events cannot be described except through metaphor. Musical composers will m a r k their scores with terms such as "sweetly," "with life," or "muskily." Wine critics describe a good Cabernet Sauvignon as "mellow," "rounded," "or bell-like." The taste of the wine is evident only in the tasting and the music in the hearing, but the description is evident only by metaphor.

Meaning and Metaphor If we wish to "know" something, we usually simply read about it, or ask someone about it. "Knowing" usually implies some recourse to verbal behavior of some sort. This is no accident. Verbal behavior allows us to interact with both "past" behaviors (so mistakes need not be repeated) and "future" behaviors (which have not yet arrived) in the present (Hayes, 1984). Language facilitates the evolution of old forms and functions into newer ones. New forms and functions, then, necessarily spring from older ones after some fashion. Etymologists, historians, philosophers

even scientists-- make whole careers via the study of

the changes of forms and functions accumulated by cultures over time.

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Hayesand Grundt In evolutionary terms derived stimulus relations are a very small behavior-

al advance, but this one ability seems to be enough to account for the capacity for verbal meaning. And when sets of relations become relata, a verbal engine has been createdmto use a metaphor--that allows increasingly complex concepts to be established in a fashion that maintains a rich set of psychological functions. In other words, metaphor gives meaning to the complex and the abstract so that the simple organisms we call humans can do the complicated things we call reasoning, thinking, and communicating.

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relations (pp. 69-83). Reno, NV: Context Press. Devany, J. M., Hayes, S. C., & Nelson, R. O. (1986). Equivalence class formation in language-able and language-disabled children. Journal of the Experimental

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A transformation of self-discrimination

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Green, G., Sigurdardottir, Z. G., & Saunders, R. R. (1991). The role of instructions in the transfer of ordinal functions through equivalence classes. Journal of the

Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 55, 287-304. Green, G., Stromer, R., & Mackay, H. A. (1993). Relational learning in stimulus sequences. Special Issue: Stimulus equivalence. Psychological Record, 43, 599615. Hayes, L. J. (1991). Substitution and reference. In L. J. Hayes & P. N. Chase (Eds.), Dialogues on verbal behavior (pp. 3-14). Reno, NV: Context Press. Hayes, L. J. (1994). Thinking. In S. C. Hayes, L. J. Hayes, M. Sato & K. Ono (Eds.), Behavior analysis of language and cognition. Reno, NV: Context Press. Hayes, S. C., Gifford, E. V., & Wilson, K. G. (In press). Stimulus classes and stimulus relations: Arbitrarily applicable relational responding as an operant. Chapter to appear in T. Zentall and P. Smeets (Eds.), Stimulus class

formation. New York: Elsevier-North Holland. Hayes, S. C., & Hayes, L. J. (1989). The verbal action of the listener as a basis for rule-governance.

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Rule-governed behavior: Cognition,

contingencies, and instructional control (pp.153-190). New York: Plenum. Hayes, S. C., & Hayes, L. J. (1992). Verbal relations and the evolution of behavior analysis. American Psychologist, 47, 1383-1395. Hayes, S. C.,

Strosahl, K., & Wilson, K. G. (in press). Acceptance and Com-

mitment Therapy: Understanding and treating human suffering. New York: Guilford. Horne, P. J., & Lowe, C.F. (1996). On the origins of naming and other symbolic behavior. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 65, 185-241. Huntley, K. R., & Ghezzi, P. M. (1993). Mutual exclusivity and exclusion: converging evidence from two contrasting traditions. Analysis of Verbal Behavior, 11, 56-69. Hutchinson, J. (1986).

Children's sensitivity to the contrastive use of object

category terms. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development, 25, 4956.

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Kohlenberg, B. S., Hayes, S. C., & Hayes, L. J. (1991). The transfer of contextual control over equivalence classes through equivalence classes: A possible model of social stereotyping. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 56, 505-518. Lazar, R. M., & Kotlarchyk, B. J. (1986). Second-order control of sequence-class equivalence in children. Behavioural Processes, 13(3), 205-215. Leader, G., Barnes, D., & Smeets, P. M. (1996). Establishing equivalence relations through respondent-type training procedures. The Psychological Record,

46, 685-706. Lipkens, R. (1992). A behavioral analysis of complex human functioning: Analogical reasoning. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Nevada, Reno.

Lipkens, G. Hayes, S. C., & Hayes, L. J. (1993). Longitudinal study of derived stimulus relations in an infant. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 56, 201-239. Leonhard, C., & Hayes, S. C. (1991). Prior inconsistent testing affects equivalence responding.

Paper presented at the 17th Annum Convention of the

Association for Behavior Analysis, Atlanta, GA. McCurry, S. M., & Hayes, S. C. (1992). Clinical and experimental perspectives on metaphorical talk. Clinical Psychology Review, 12, 763-785. Novak, G. N. (1996). Developmental psychology: Dynamical systems and behavior

analysis. Reno, NV: Context Press. Parrott, L. J. (1984). Listening and understanding. The Behavior Analyst, 7, 29-39. Pilgrim, C., & Galizio, M. (1990). Relations between baseline contingencies and equivalence probe performances. Special Issue: The experimental analysis of human behavior. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 54, 213224. Pilgrim, C., Chambers, L., & Galizio, M. (1995). Reversal of baseline relations and stimulus equivalence: II. Children. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of

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Behavior, 63, 239-254. Pilgrim, C., & Galizio, M. (1995). Reversal of baseline relations and stimulus equivalence: I. Adults. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 63, 225-238. Reese, H.W. (1968). The perception of stimulus relations: Discrimination learning

and transposition. New York: Academic Press. Roche, B., & Barnes, D. (in press). Arbitrarily applicable relational responding and sexual categorization: A critical test of the derived difference relation. The

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and Hearing Research, 14, 5-13. Sidman, M., Cresson, O., Jr., & Willson-Morris, M. (1974). Acquisition of matching-to-sample via mediated transfer. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of

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Conditional discrimination vs. matching to

sample: an expansion of the testing paradigm. Journal of the Experimental

Analysis of Behavior, 37, 5-22. Skinner, B. F. (1957). Verbal behavior. Cambridge, MA: Prentice-Hall. Skinner, B. F. (1984). About behaviorism. New York: Knopf. Steele, D., & Hayes, S. C. (1991). Stimulus equivalence and arbitrarily applicable relational responding. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 56, 519-555. Stromer, R. (1986). Control by exclusion in arbitrary matching-to-sample. Ana-

lysis and Intervention in Developmental Disabilities, 6, 59-72. Stromer, R. (1989).

Symmetry of control by exclusion in humans' arbitrary

matching-to-sample. Psychological Reports, 64, 915-922. Whorf, B. L. (1956). Language, thought, and reality: Selected writings (Ed. J. B. Carroll). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wilson, K. G., & Hayes, S. C. (In press). Resurgence of derived stimulus relations.

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of Behavior, 50, 125-144.

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The Problem of Meaning: Behavioral and Cognitive Perspectives C. Mandell and A. McCabe (Editors) 9 1997 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER 4

A Comparative Perspective On the Etiology of Meaning and Assaying Behaviors for Meaning DUANE M. RUMBAUGH and E. SUE SAVAGE-RUMBAUGH

Departments of Psychology and Biology and the Language Research Center Georgia State University

INTRODUCTION What is meant by meaning? How can one know whether or not behaviors are designed to convey informationmthat is, meaning?

Even to discuss

the

term compels us to appeal to its essence. Hence, we must expect a lack of consensus about its definition and measurement.

Notwithstanding, because of its

central role in many, but not all, behaviors, we must pursue the "meaning of meaning" and its etiology. Life, as we both see and experience it, is the product of evolution and experience. Whereas evolution has shaped the basic design-structure of organisms and their function systems, experience shapes the dimensions of competence and instates motivations beyond those served by fundamental biological needs and systems. Experience, in interaction with the biological systems that provide for it, serves to enhance or to restrict the adaptive effectiveness of the behavior. There has been a trend towards increased complexity in evolution. This has been particularly true with the order Primates (Rumbaugh, in press; Rumbaugh, Savage-Rumbaugh, & Washburn, 1996). The brain has generally become

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larger both with regard to absolute size and size in relation to the rest of the body (Jerison, 1985). With enhancement of the brain's size there has been an enhancement of intelligence, as measured by the ability to transfer learning efficiently and to learn by strategies that suggest patterns of thought rather than basic conditioning. It has been the augmentation of the brain that has allowed for the emergence of a number of advanced mechanisms of adaptation--including the ability to think in terms of symbols and to acquire language skills. Language is based on the ability of an organism to learn and to use meaningfill symbols. Our working hypothesis is, then, that the antecedents of "meaning" are likely to be found in the complex interactions between the contributions of biology and experience.

Evidence for the operations that provide for the mastery of

meaning should not be constrained a priori to humans, but rather might be evidenced as some function of brain evolution.

To that end, let us consider

ourselves not just as humans, but as primates, and review what comparative studies of primates tell us about the etiology of meaning and meaningful behavior.

Implications of the Principle of Continuity Of the several genera that constitute primates, the one most closely related to us is Pan--one of the three great ape genera (Andrews & Martin, 1987; Sibley & Ahlquist, 1987; Napier & Napier, 1994; Savage-Rumbaugh & Lewin, 1994; Savage-Rumbaugh, Williams, Furuichi, & Kano, in press; Tuttle, 1986).

Pan

includes two species--troglodytes and paniscus, here called chimpanzee and bonobo, respectively. (The bonobo, P. paniscus, is the second species of chimpanzee that, by tradition, has been called the "pygmy" chimpanzee, a misnomer for it is not a pygmoid version of another form.) Among primates, from the relatively primitive prosimians to the great apes, there is substantial psychological, as well as biological, continuity. The degree of continuity is a function of genetic relatedness. Hence, the continuity is more pronounced between the great apes and us

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than between any of the monkey genera and us. Interestingly, there is greater similarity between the DNA of chimpanzee and human than between chimpanzee and gorilla! Accordingly, we should expect greater continuity between chimpanzee and human than between chimpanzee and gorilla! Continuity implies that many of the held-to-be "human" qualities might not, in fact, be unique to humans! Many of them are shared by other primates, if not animals in general. Evidence that will be reviewed in this chapter supports the position, for example, that apes are capable of symbolic thought, basic dimensions of language (including the comprehension of novel spoken sentences and creative production of new communications), elemental numeric skills, and planning.

And while the modern great apes are not our ancestors, we share

common evolutionary roots. So it follows either that the apes are not the unknowing, unthinking, unfeeling beast machines that Descartes (1637, reprinted 1956) declared them to be---or both they and we are! Frankly, we hold that neither they nor we are beast machines and that it is time to revisit the basic tenets and terms of behaviorism that discount the roles of sentience, rationality, and feelingsmparticularly in animals. Questions pertaining to the meaning of meaning generally have pertained to human's use of language. What does that word, that phrase or sentence mean? Accordingly, let us consider language and some of its possible evolutionary roots.

Views of Language and Meaning Despite de Saussure's (1922) distinction between la langue (language) and la

parole (speech), language has often been equated with speechma unique endowment of our species. "When did your child begin to talk?" is a common question of mothers.

Alternatively, language can be viewed as a complex system of skills

acquired through general learning processes (e.g., that is, processes that are not specific to our species). Those of the first persuasion, and notably Chomsky (1965,

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1988), have posited genetic mutations for the presence of language in humans and have emphasized oral-type language and "universals" of grammar that transcend specific languages. Those of the second persuasion view language as the culmination of processes that have their roots in the evolution of animal life and the intelligence afforded to many of its forms by reason of their large and complex brains (e.g., Bates, Thal, and Marchman, 1991; Bates, 1993; Inhelder & Piaget, 1964; Piaget, 1926; and Savage-Rumbaugh, Murphy, Sevcik, Brakke, Williams, and Rumbaugh, 1993). From this perspective, speech is not held to be the sine qua non of language. To the contrary, the basis of language is thought to be in comprehension, in understanding. Thus, this second view allows for language to be acquired by animals--not that they can talk, but that they can understand. With comprehension "in place," they then can use nonspeech alternatives for producing language---for "talking". Perhaps it was the salience of speech that led to the quite incorrect conclusion historically that language /s speech.

Although, without question,

speech affords a highly efficient system which, together with hearing, allows for rapid expression of language, speech can do no more than to disturb molecules and to establish waves of sounds. But those sounds are without meaning except for that given them by the.listener. And so it is when we hear a "foreign" language. Comprehension, not speech, is the foundation of language, and apes have the essentials of that foundation (Savage-Rumbaugh, et al., 1993). Our working definition of language is as follows:

Language is a multidimensional system that provides for the learning and use of symbols both to understand and to convey information between individuals.

The meanings of symbols are defined and

changed through social interactions. The rule-governed combinatorial use of symbols serves to encode more information.

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Language is thus "open" to the addition of new symbols, new functions and uses, and to the sculpting of meanings of symbols through their social uses. Our working definition of meaning is as follows:

Meaning is to be understood in reference to symbols and behavior. Meanings of symbols are imputed by an organism as a function of experience. The essence of any given symbol's meaning for an organism can be inferred only on the basis of its behavior. If the organism has language, meanings of symbols might be explicated through use of other symbols and instruction.

Where advanced language skills are

absent, the meaning of symbols can only be inferred on the basis of nonverbal behaviors, such as gestures and other patterns of responses. The use of meaningful symbols is basic to complex communication and also to the carrying out of intentional behavior patterns (e.g., specific goal-oriented behaviors).

Our use of words to explain words needs no explication, but examples of the carrying out of intentional behavior patterns might be helpful to the reader. Here we reference such behaviors as those reported for chimpanzees Sherman and Austin (Savage-Rumbaugh, 1986). In their language training they spontaneously (i.e., without specific training) used labels of food containers to communicate to one another the contents of sealed containers, where such communication was a requisite to accessing those contents (i.e., favorite foods and drinks) and when their language keyboards were turned off. Another example is in their individual insistence that they be given the specific tool requested in a task where such was needed to open various puzzle boxes to obtain incentives. If, for example, Sherman needed a wrench and asked Austin to give him one, he would not bother accepting from Austin anything other than the wrench requested. Anything other than a wrench would just be thrown down on the floor and, if necessary, Sherman

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would return to the keyboard to tell Austin once again to give him a wrench! Thus it can be said that Sherman intended to ask for a wrench, by use of the lexigram symbol that designated wrench, and that he intended that Austin given him a wrench. When Austin did not, he worked to clarify his intent.

ANIMALS AND LANGUAGE The last third of the 20th century has seen a great increase in language research with animals (for a review, Roitblat, Herman, & Nachtigall, 1993). The reports include dolphins carrying out novel requests (Herman, Pack, & MorrelSamuels, 1993), sea lions learning the referents for new manual signs apparently on the basis of exclusion (Schusterman, Gisiner, Grimm, & Hanggi, 1993), a parrot seemingly able to answer questions regarding multiple characteristics of sets of objects (Pepperberg, 1993), and great apes (gorilla, Gorilla; chimpanzee and bonobo, Pan; and orangutan, Pongo) learning various kinds of symbol sets (e.g., variants of manually-produced sign language, plastic tokens, and geometric symbols) for communication with humans and each other and solving problems (Gardner, Gardner, & Van Cantfort, 1989; Premack & Premack, 1983; Rumbaugh 1977; Patterson & Linden, 1981; Miles 1990; Fouts & Fouts, 1989).

Kanzi, Speech Comprehension, Brain Complexity, and Rearing Perhaps the most significant finding of recent years is that both chimpanzees and bonobos can come to understand human speech--not only single words, but new sentences as well. Notably the bonobo, Kanzi, can understand speech at a level that compares with that of a precocious 2-1/2 year-old child (SavageRumbaugh, et al., 1993). The child, Alia, was the daughter of one of our research assistants.

Alia's mother worked with the apes in language research in the

mornings and with Alia in a parallel manner in the ai~ernoons. Both Kanzi and Alia were competent users of the lexigram keyboards. Bonobos are even more rare and endangered than is the chimpanzee and

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more closely resemble humans (Kano, 1989, 1992). For example, bonobos can walk erect more readily and competently than P. troglodytes and use eye contact to initiate joint attention; they use iconic gestures to entice others to assume physical orientations and actions (Savage & Wilkerson, 1978); and they can modulate their vocalizations much more than can the common chimpanzee. Their capacity to learn language observationally was discovered quite fortuitously in efforts to teach lexigrams to a bonobo, Matata. Although Matata failed to learn the language which formal instruction afforded her, her adopted son, Kanzi, learned it all--just by being a playful observer! Also basic to our thesi.s is the fact that the infant ape acquires optimal cognitive competence only by being reared in enriched environments. If reared in impoverished physical and social environs during even only the first two years of their infancy, the evidence is that neither their cognitive nor social competence will ever be restored to normal. And so it also is with the human child. The human child, the ape child are both hypersensitive to early environmental effects (Davenport, Rogers, & Rumbaugh, 1973). Indeed, it seems certain that the larger and more complex the brain,

the more sensitive the young are to the effects of early environment and rearing patterns. This sensitivity is not just a general one, however. It is specific as well. For instance, it is through rearing in a language-structured environment that the infant ape acquires many of its competencies in language most efficiently. That competence can include speech comprehension and the ability to decode even the syntax of novel sentences of request---a skill never instated through more conventional projects designed to teach language to apes. Apes so reared also spontaneously learn the meanings and the appropriate use of the word-lexigrams--symbols that for them function as words because they, so far, cannot speak. As with the normal child's pattern of language acquisition, the ape thus reared first comes to comprehend speech and lexigrams and then, later, spontaneously begins to produce language--through competent use of its word-lexigrams.

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Rumbaugh and Savage-Rumbaugh In controlled tests of their speech comprehension, Kanzi and Alia were

given seven different types of novel sentences of request (see Savage-Rumbaugh, et al., 1993, pp. 81-91). Kanzi was 74% (307/415 sentences; age 8 yrs.) correct and Alia was 66% (267/407 sentences; age 2-1/2 yrs.) correct. To better define Kanzi's and Alia's abilities to respond correctly solely on the basis of syntactic relations, three conditions that entailed reversals were studied (e.g., sentences in which both verb and word order signalled a differential responsem"Take the potato outdoors," / "Go outdoors and get the potato"; sentences in which the order of the key words remained constant but the nature of the response did notre"Take the rock outdoors" / "Go get the rock that's outdoors"; sentences in which the verb was retained but the order of the key words was reversed--"Put the juice in the egg" / "Put the egg in the juice".

See Savage-

Rumbaugh, et al., 1993, pp. 91-97, for details). Kanzi and Alia's performances were more similar t h a n they were different and did not differ significantly across these three types of reversals given. Overall, Kanzi was correct on 81% (71/88), and Alia was correct on 64% (53/83) of the reversal sentences.

These data

support the interpretation t h a t both Kanzi and Alia were sensitive to word order as well as to semantic and syntactic cues.

Thus, Kanzi's comprehension of

meanings of both words and their varied use in the formation of novel sentences of request was quite impressive--even by a h u m a n standard! It was his behavior subsequent to his hearing each novel statement of request t h a t permits us to infer that even for Kanzi, an ape, words and sentences had meaning. They served neither as simple stimuli nor as strings of stimuli. Rather, they were received and decoded as information-packed messages.

Early Experience, Observational Learning, and the Acquisition of Word-meanings Both ape and child seemingly learn the most complex things regarding social and cognitive competence not through executing motor responses and receiving pellets or other units of extrinsic reinforcement, but rather by observing.

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It is through observing that they learn of the relationships between all kinds of things and events of their world.

They learn not just how to make specific

responses to specific stimuli. Rather, they accrue information about the world and about behavior, including their own behavior. Primates, in particular, excel in making sense out of their diverse observations and experiences. The information base accrued through the structured experiences of infancy may remain "silent" for several months or even years.

But in due course, it

becomes active and useful. The infant ape and child alike can take the principles of complex behaviors extracted by observations of others' behaviors and eventually recast them into patterns that are their own. In addition to learning language, they can even learn how to knap flint (e.g., strike flint rock skillfully with another hard object) so as to make tools for use in extricating incentives from puzzle boxes. Kanzi is quite sophisticated as he goes about making chips of flint for use as knives. He turns the cobble to present the best edge for producing a large and sharp chip, and assesses each for sharpness and size. And, the thicker the cable of rope to be cut, the larger the chip he producesnletting the smaller ones fall by the way (Toth, Schick, Savage-Rumbaugh, Sevcik, & Rumbaugh, 1993; Gibson & Ingold, 1993). Surely a large and complex brain is necessary for the intelligence that can afford both apes and humans, if they are reared appropriately, the capacity to acquire, with apparent spontaneity, the meanings of both arbitrary geometric symbols (i.e., word-lexigrams) and speech sounds. Let us briefly consider a current view of brain evolution, intelligence, and language.

BRAIN, SYMBOLS, AND LANGUAGE Large and complex brains are of high metabolic cost in that they require a great deal of energy. Thus, for them to have evolved, they must have made a substantial difference in survival and reproduction. Complex brains presumably were selected for their enhanced information processing, learning, and memory

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that enabled individuals to retain important lessons learned from life-long cumulative experiences. Selection for brain size was gradual, and it was likely the selection for specific neural structures laid down in brain evolution that enabled the gradual emergence of language (Rumbaugh, Hopkins, Washburn, & Savage-Rumbaugh, 1991). The larger primate species have larger brains, the joint contribution of both allometry (a brain-body size relationship that characterizes mammals) and encephalization (an enhancement of the brain-body size relationship that favors in particular the great apes and humans). Correlated with both absolute brain size and body size are the abilities to transfer learning to a gainful advantage (e.g., one greater than might have been expected) and to learn relationships, rather than specific associations between stimuli and responses (Rumbaugh, Savage-Rumbaugh, & Washburn, 1996).

Competence of monkeys Compared to the apes, monkeys have smaller bodies and brains. Although they are not as skilled in learning and in the transfer of their learning to new situations, they can do some really smart things. Let us consider some of their remarkable skills (Rumbaugh, et. al, 1996). Studies with our Language Research Center's Computerized Test System (LRC-CTS; Rumbaugh, Richardson, Washburn, Savage-Rumbaugh, & Hopkins, 1989; Washburn, Hopkins, & Rumbaugh, 1989; Richardson, Washburn, Hopkins, Savage-Rumbaugh, & Rumbaugh, 1990) have substantially upgraded our estimates of rhesus monkey intelligence. We have learned that rhesus can do all kinds of tasks--none of which were even suggested by earlier studies conducted with the Wisconsin General Test Apparatus (Harlow, 1949). Rhesus can adroitly use a joystick instead of their hand to make their choices in learning tasks. They can learn to differentiate between two-dimensional patterns and even stick figures portrayed on the video screen. They can chase targets, track them, and

Meaning: A Comparative Perspective even "lead them" as they shoot them down with bullets of light. allowance for the targets' trajectories and speed

15 7

They make

even for the velocity of the

'%ullets" they shoot. Thus, rhesus are capable of complex predictions as required for the successful execution of a variety of interactive computerized tasks. Hence, they are predictor-operatorsmsomething only humans were thought capable of up to a few years ago. Quite possibly these skills reflect the mastery of predictive relationships between events and behavior, which in turn might be a basic dimension of what we call "meaning". Rhesus, to our surprise, readily learned the relative values of numerals 0-9 in a situation that did not require that they do so in order to obtain food (Washburn & Rumbaugh, 1991). Rather, they got numbers of pellets in reliable association with the number selected from each random pairing of numbers. On a final test with seven novel pairings of those numbers, they were well beyond chance in their selection of the larger number. And, even when first given an array of five randomly selected numbers as a set in a second test situation, they reliably selected symbols (numbers) from the highest to the lowest for corresponding quantities of food pellets.

Thus, they "counted-down" from the highest to the

lowest number. They did not have to do so, however, to receive food or even to maximize the efficiency of the food getting! They could have selected the numerals in any sequence and obtained the same total quantity of pellets. But instead they counted down--10, 9, 8, 7, 6 and so on--like they were counting down time for lift-off at a NASA launch site. (Also, see Matsuzawa, 1985, 1990.) Our LRC-CTS serves to reveal an important, though oi~en overlooked fact: Science is no better than the methodology employed. Our LRC-CTS has given us a completely new perspective on the brains and intelligence of primates--one that could not have been achieved with other methods. And with long-term experience with the LRC-CTS system, rhesus monkeys begin to manifest new abilities and to learn through new emergent processes--ones otherwise found only in the great apes and humans (Washburn & Rumbaugh, 1992a). Experience is germane to

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the establishment of meaning, and clearly even monkeys can learn, in measure, the meanings of numbers. When compared with rhesus and other primates, the sizes of the great apes' brains are disproportionately large relative to the sizes of their bodies. And this is even more the case for the human brain, which is three times larger than the apes'

even though our bodies are not larger than theirs. Notwithstanding,

the basic architecture of the brain remains the same (Jerison, 1985). Large brains enhance the ability to learn complexly, to learn of relationships between all kinds of things, and to transfer even small amounts of knowledge for extraordinary gains. This relationship becomes particularly favorable to the interests of creative and flexible patterns of response in the larger simian species, such as the rhesus macaque, and the great apes. Despite the impressive achievements of the rhesus in our LRC-CTS, the complex-learning capacity of the rhesus and other monkeys appears to be substantially less than that of the great apes.

Monkeys are not so "smart" as to

make them attractive candidates for really complex tasks or for learning language.

Compared to the great apes, they are slower learners, less adroit at

transferring learning to a leveraged advantage, not as affectively or socially attuned to humans, and seemingly more "hard-wired" in their behaviors (i.e., less plastic, less malleable). (To our knowledge, there has been only one long-term language study with macaques. Its findings have never been published, a telling factor given the otherwise prolific publication record of the researcher who conducted the work.) Human and chimpanzee share slightly more than 98% of their genetic material and diverged in their evolutionary lines perhaps only a few million years ago (Sarich & Wilson, 1968; Sarich, 1983). We have already noted that human and chimpanzee are more closely related than are chimpanzee and gorilla! Accordingly, it would seem particularly possible, though not inevitable, that human and chimpanzee might share psychological competencies (Darwin, 1859, 1871), as

Meaning: A Comparative Perspective well as the more obvious morphological attributes.

15 9

It is this probability that

directed early language research with animals primarily to the chimpanzee. (See Rumbaugh & Savage-Rumbaugh, 1994, for a review.)

APES, SPEECH, AND NON-SPEECH LANGUAGE SKILLS Several early attempts were made to cultivate their speech.

The first

serious effort was by Furness (1916) with an orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) which again mastered only the crudest approximations of four words. The best known systematic effort was by Keith and Cathy Hayes (see Hayes & Nissen, 1971) with Vicki, a chimpanzee. As with Furness, the success of their student was limited to four words--mama, papa, cup, and up. Their reports assured researchers for the next half-century that if apes had language skills, they were not to be accessed by teaching them to speak!

Research by Yerkes and Learned (1925) led them to

speculate that a manual sign language, rather than speech, might be more appropriate for future studies of language with chimpanzees.

Nonspeech methods--Project Washoe The mid-1960's saw the beginning of two important chimpanzee projects, each with a unique nonspeech approach. Project Washoe was initiated by Beatrix and Allen Gardner. The Gardners (1969) goal was "two-way communication" with Washoe. Given the early view expressed by Yerkes and by Hayes' chimpanzee's (i.e., Vicki) use of her hands as she attempted to "talk," the Gardners thought that Washoe might learn American Sign Language (AMESLAN; Bellugi, Bihrle, & Corina, 1991) and thereby acquire a natural language. Washoe's contributions were several--among which were (a) her mastery of a large corpus of manual signs, some of her own innovation and generalized use; (b) her performance in blind tests that documented her accurate associations of specific signs with their respective exemplars; and (c) her solitary use of signs, fortuitously captured on film as she looked at magazines and played. Through

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these and other contributions, Project Washoe revitalized interest in apes' potential for symbolism and language.

Project S a r a h The second effort of the mid 1960's was by David Premack. By contrast to Gardners' choice of manual signs, Premack used plastic tokens of various shapes and colors to function as words with his chimpanzee, Sarah.

Thus, he use a

synthetic, rather than natural, language system. Premack and Premack (1983) were concerned with how a plastic token might function as a word both specifically and generally. The contributions of Premack's Project Sarah included (a) successful implementation of a synthetic and non-iconic language, comprised of plastic tokens, (b) analysis of word function, (c) studies of ordered or transitive relationships between things, and (d) suggestions of attribution of states of knowledge to others and therewith the concept of "theory of mind" (e.g., where a chimpanzee "believes" that another agent, be they chimpanzee or human, does or does not know or expect something). Each of these, in turn, supported the argument that meaning is not limited to humans and their language systems.

Project Lana In 1970, the first author started the LANA Project with associates of Georgia State University, the University of Georgia, and the Yerkes Primate Center of Emory University. Unique to this effort (Rumbaugh, 1977) was the invention of a computer-monitored keyboard, each key of which had a distinctive geometric pattern called a lexigram. Each lexigram was to serve as a word for Lana, a chimpanzee. Initial training of Lana taught her a variety of"stock" sentences that would cause the computer to activate several devices that would give her sips of various drinks, foods, a movie, a slide show, and so on. As competent as Lana was in the

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innovative use of lexigrams, at the time we were unable to formulate tests t h a t would definitively declare the meaningfulness of her skills beyond their pragmatic functional value. That her skills had at least pragmatic meaning value was frequently in evidence. Lana was very good in using dozens of stock sentences. Stock sentences were very specific both in their structure and function (e.g., only the sentence, "Please Machine give piece of apple," produced a slice of apple, only "Please Machine make window open" raised the shade to the outdoors, etc.). Lana also creatively extended their intended use to solve problems that she faced. When a vending system for food jammed, for example, she would ask through use of a stock sentence for a person to "move behind the room," then would promptly use still another stock sentence for the vendor to workmwhich it could not. Then by pointing her finger at it, she seemingly had said, "See?mit just isn't working." She could use her lexigrams in complex strings, but her comprehension was limited to "stock questions," such as "What name?", ' ~ h a t color?", ' ~ h a t color of this (item name)," and so on. Lana also learned how to name (i.e., label) and to give the color appropriate to 36 objects, consisting of replicas of six objects (bowl, box, can, shoe, cup, and ball) in six different colors (black, white, purple, red, green, and orange). On the other hand, she never gave any indication of understanding novel requests. Perhaps the more convincing evidence that Lana knew the meaning of her several word-lexigrams was obtained in tests of her ability to name objects t h a t she could feel with her hand, but could not see.

Furthermore, she could more

accurately declare whether an object which she could only feel, but not see, was or was not identical to another object that she could see if the objects had lexigrams which served as their names. Lana also creatively asked for various otherwise "nameless" items, as for the fruit, orange, by asking for it as the "apple which-is orange (color)," for a cucumber as the '%anana which-is green," for an orange-colored F a n t a drink as

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the "coke which-is orange," for an overly-ripe banana as the "banana which-is black," and so on. She mastered elementary counting skills. In response to seeing either a 1, 2, 3, or 4 on a monitor, she removed an appropriate number of boxes from an array that was randomly configured for each trial in terms of number and placement of the boxes to be counted on the screen (Rumbaugh & Washburn, 1993). In her final tests, Lana had only her memory to guide her in so doing. "How many have been removed?" "How many, in addition, need to be removed before the trial can be completed correctly?"

She had no residual feedback from her within-trial

counting other than the disappearance of the box "counted." With about 80% accuracy, Lana could do this. She could count! When, during the course of a trial, she changed her mind, her tactic (defined in a change in the direction of cursor movement on the computer screen), it significantly increased the probability t h a t she would be correct. This means that there was an awareness and a continuous monitoring of performancc

and not just "a result or effect".

The LANA Project heightened our sensitivity to the need for subsequent research to explore the nature of what we mean by words. What was a word, and what were the boundaries of its meaning for nonhuman primates (SavageRumbaugh, 1986; Premack, 1990). In the course of language acquisition by the normal h u m a n child, language comprehension comes first and races ahead of speech competence (Bates, 1993; Golinkoff, et al., 1987). We, and all other researchers with apes at that time, started language studies with chhnpanzees by teaching production skills (e.g., use of Ameslan, plastic chips, lexigrams) and assumed that comprehension was a companion of competent symbol use.

But it was not!

Comprehension is a

capacity that can be encouraged and cultivated, but it cannot be reinforced as can the pressing of a key. Work with Sherman and Austin, as discussed later, made this point crystal clear.

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Terrace, Project Nim, and "Meaningless" Language-Behavior? The 1970's also saw Project Nim, another chimpanzee, launched by Herbert Terrace (1979) at Columbia University.

Terrace's research with Nim

started with high optimism that the operant methods to be employed might result in Nim reporting on even certain aspects of his private life and views. Nim was taught via standard reinforcement techniques how to sign. But Nim became known not so much for his precise signing in association with various exemplars as for his penchant for long strings of signs, such as "give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." Clearly, this was Nim's best effort to get an orange, but whether it was seemingly an interminable string of signs or one that, from Nim's perspective, only needed punctuation here and there as he reiterated that he wanted '~you" to "give orange me" so that he might "eat" cannot, of course, be known.

Terrace's interpretation was that Nim's

stringing of signs in this manner did not provide any more information than the use of just one or two signs would have done and that such strings were laced with "wild cards" (e.g., more, hug, give, Nim, etc.) that were always good to use

what-

ever the goal! Thus, at best Nim was not a chimpanzee of a 'Tew words," that is, not succinct; at worst, he suggested incompetence from a language perspective. Perhaps from his perspective he was just trying hard to find the golden sign, the one that would get him what he wanted. More serious, however, was Terrace's conclusion that a great deal of Nim's signs were either partial or complete imitations of what he had seen others use in the recent past.

It was this conclusion that led Terrace and his colleagues to

reverse their earlier view that Nim was acquiring language and, instead, to conclude just the opposite. Nim had no language! In 1986 Premack also reversed his earlier position and concluded that there was "...the lack of any degree of language among nonhumans," be it natural or learned (1986, p. 149). But not all analyses support Terrace's interpretation of pervasive imitation among apes.

For example, Miles (1990) reported that the signs of her

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orangutan, Chantek, were not attributable to imitation, as were Nim's, and that they were appreciably more spontaneous as well.

Similarly, Lana only infre-

quently (<10%) used lexigrams that had been used by her experimenters within the 10-minute time frame that preceded her own utterances; she rarely imitated. Quite independently, the whole issue of imitation in language acquisition was addressed by scientists studying child language acquisition (Greenfield & Savage-Rumbaugh, 1991 and 1993; Savage-Rumbaugh, 1991; Romski & Sevcik, 1991; Nelson, 1985, 1986) who concluded that imitation could, indeed, be both a normal and effective means whereby children learn and a t o m the appropriate use of words. Thus, from this perspective, to the degree that Nim did imitate in Terrace's laboratory, it might have served to instate skills that, although unused or unmeasured in tests at Columbia University, became accessible and useful to him later after he had been returned to the plains of Oklahoma.

There, some

suggested (O'Sullivan & Yaeger, 1989) that he became selective and efficient in his signs.

ETIOLOGY OF MEANINGS The etiology of meanings includes contributions from various kinds of experiences, and the valid a~ssessment of language requires great care and diverse methods of measurement in an array of contexts.

Categorization skills and semantics Concurrent with the pall cast upon ape manual-signing research in the wake of the final days of Project Nim was a study designed by Savage-Rumbaugh (1986) in Project Sherman & Austinma study that concluded that Sherman and Austin had mastered basic semantics. Semantics, or word meaning, is the most basic building block of languages. Unless words have meaning, it is unlikely that their use will have rational effects. Through use of a series of training steps, Sherman and Austin first learned

Meaning: A Comparative Perspective

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to classify three kinds of foods and three tools, for which they previously had learned lexigrams, by placing them in separate bins. Subsequent steps required them to classify not the foods and tools per se, but rather photographs and then lexigrams in lieu of the items that comprised this limited set of only six exemplars. In the final controlled tests which followed, Sherman and Austin were presented with 17 other previously-learned lexigrams that stood for a variety of other foods and drinks and other tools. The question was whether they could accurately label the correct category for each one, in turn, through use of two lexigrams---one for food and the other for tool. They didmand did so very accurately. Only one error was made between the two chimpanzees--and that was with Sherman calling a sponge a food rather a tool. This might not have been an error from his perspective, for he literally consumed sponges as he sucked avidly on them when soaked with favorite juices, extricated from recesses through use of sponges. Later, a third semantic category of juice was successfully mastered by Sherman and Austin. Sherman and Austin also demonstrated impressive symbol-based, crossmodal matching. Without specific training to do so, Sherman and Austin were able to look at a lexigram and then reach into a box, into which they could not see, and select the appropriate object (Savage-Rumbaugh, Sevcik, & Hopkins, 1991). This finding demonstrates that they learned which symbol represented each object, even if the objects were out of sight. They also declared which of several food items they would retrieve from a return visit to the room in which they had inspected a limited array of randomly selected foods and drinks (Savage-Rumbaugh, 1986).

There is no reason to doubt the data that document the ape's

capacity for entry-level semantics--that is, its capacity to use and to understand symbols that represent events, actions, and things not necessarily present. Sherman and Austin clearly showed that they could come to think and to make decisions in terms of symbols.

166

Rumbaugh and Savage-Rumbaugh But how and why were Sherman and Austin able to categorize lexigrams in

controlled tests virtually without error? The answer probably rests on the fact that their training emphasized comprehension. Their comprehension skills were cultivated by tasks that required their coordinated use of lexigrams so as to convey a message of request or information to one another. They did so both in food sharing and in tool-use tasks. In the tool tasks, for example, typically one chimpanzee requested a tool needed to open a puzzle box. That chimpanzee could obtain the needed tool only if the second chimpanzee both comprehended and then complied with the first chimpanzee's lexigram-encoded requests.

In a similar

manner, they requested specific foods/drinks of one another through use of lexigrams. Thus, Savage-Rumbaugh (1986) argued that Sherman and Austin succeeded in manifesting knowledge regarding the meanings of lexigrams, where Lana had failed to do so, because their language history was symmetrical and balanced.

Both comprehension and production were emphasized.

Thus, a "word"

used by an ape as an initial consequence of basic operant conditioning procedures is probably nothing more than a simple operant behavior. It does not necessarily ever acquire meaning to the user. Meaningfulness is instated not as a conditioned response, but rather as the result of learning to comprehend--to "listen." Whether Washoe, Sarah, Lana, Nim and other apes literally knew the "meanings" of their lexical tokens beyond simply knowing which token was associated with the receipt of a given reward remains unclear and unknown. Certainly they all knew a great deal about "how" and "when" to use manual signs or other nonspeech systems, but that is not reason enough to conclude that they also necessarily understood the meanings of those language tokens. Their language-training protocols were, from the perspective of language acquisition, "wrong side up." Human parents do not teach their children language by having them talk.

Rather, they talk to their children about their environ-

Meaning: A Comparative Perspective

16 7

ments, about what has just happened and about what is just about to happen, and so on. It is through listening that the child comes to understand, to comprehend language and how language functions in the world. Only later does it come to speak, to produce language. Even if adults do not talk, we do not say that they are without language---as long as it is clear that they comprehend in detail what is said by others. Rather, it is only said that they do not talk.

A SENSITIVE AGE FOR LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

The contrast in findings obtained with Kanzi, Panbanisha, and Panzee with those obtained with all other apes in language research, over the past 30 years, strongly suggests that during infancy a sensitive period exists for language acquisition both by children (Greenough, Black, & Wallace, 1987; Greenough, Wither, & Wallace, 1990; Lock, 1980) and by apes (Savage-Rumbaugh, et al., 1993). Kanzi, Panbanisha, and Panzee were each reared from very shortly after birth

in

a

language-structured

environment--not

unlike

that

given to

children--whereas apes of other projects have been older when first used as language subjects and have been "taught" by special procedures. Thus it appears that especially during the first few months of life, exposure to language, including speech, is critical if the acquisition of language is to be optimal. Observations of language use in the social contexts of everyday life appear to be far more effective to the acquisition of language than are the event-specific reinforcements of language productions, be they speech or use of a keyboard. Comprehension of language by the human child develops long before the musculature has matured enough for speech (Golinkoff, Hirsh-Pasek, Cauley, & Gordon, 1987). It is surely significant that Kanzi, Panbanisha, and Panzee, but none of the other several ape-language research subjects, acquired the capacity literally to understand speech. That Matata, the adoptive mother of Kanzi, failed to learn language is likely a reflection of the fact that she was feral born and learned the ways of living

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in the rain forest during her first five years rather than the language opportunities extended to her offspring. (Matata had been imported by another institution in the early 1970s for reproductive biological research and subsequently was assigned to our language research.)

A REVISED P E R S P E C T I V E ON BEHAVIORISM AND BEHAVIOR

Research with apes serves to encourage a reconsideration particularly of our traditional behavioristic framework for conceptualizing learning.

Our

research indicates that learning can be much more than either Pavlovian (1927/1960) respondent conditioning and much more than Skinnerian (1957) operant conditioning. It is clear that nonhuman primates, notably the apes but other primates as well, inter-relate and bring organization to their learning experiences obtained from various settings and incidents.

The working

hypothesis is that such organization is a natural consequence of the ape and human brain. We suspect that, in their evolution, brains generally have been selected for that very capacity--which develops optimally in enriched, logicallystructured environments. Here by logically-constructed environments we reference those that are generally afforded either by nature or those which good mothers intend for their children, rather than those lacking cause-effect consistency or predictable

patterns

of events

across

time

(e.g., chaotic).

The

rearing

environments for the human child and for Kanzi, Panbanisha, and Panzee provided just that! But while both respondent and operant behaviors dearly are important to survival, they provide the foundations for still other processes and mechani s m s - s o m e with emergent properties.

My colleagues and I call these entities

Emergents (Rumbaugh, Washburn, & Hillix, 1996). Though probably based in respondents and operants, emergents are distinctive in their origins, properties, and functions.

Their origins are not in the specific reinforcement of specific

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169

responses to specific stimuli--and they are more likely to be obtained in organisms noted for having relatively complex brains and enriched rearing in environments noted for their logical structuring.

The origins of emergents, we

hold, are in the operations of the brain--for brains of diverse species have been designed and selected for to facilitate the "making of sense" perceptual and learning processes appropriate to each species and its ecological niche (King, It is the brain's operational capacities that generate emergents--and

1994).

capacities are determined fundamentally by genetics and are not the products of the specific response-reinforcement operations that characterize respondent and operant conditioning protocols. By definition, emergents are novel, frequently unexpected, and noted for "cleverness." Their roots are in the capacity of the organism to relate independently acquired experiences and units of knowledge. Thus, although behavior and learning can establish a rich basis of informational units, it is the capacity of the brain that organizes and reorganizes them in novel ways, some of which prove to be highly adaptive. We suspect that emergents reflect the entry-level processes of thought. At their very best, emergents reflect relationships imputed between still other relationships.

Their function is similar to that of speciation: Emergents

are the fountainhead of new ways of doing things and creating better solutions to old problems and ingenious solutions to new ones in an efficient and timely manner.

Thus, emergents help us understand how rearing environments can

either foster or deter aspects of language acquisition and how even rhesus monkeys can come to predict where to shoot bullets of light on a video-monitor so as to hit an erratically moving target (Washburn & Rumbaugh, 1992b). They also help us understand how and why so much of the behavior of humans, apes, and monkeys, and perhaps animals in general, is motivated not by food and other conventional reinforcers, but by control. Thus even rhesus monkeys prefer to work on tasks of their choice, rather than ones designed by others

cven when the pay-

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off rates are the same. It helps us understand why even they would rather work for food than to get it flee---if getting it free means that they do not have their computer tasks on which to work! (For an excellent though contrasting perspective, see Sidman's (1994) formulations regarding equivalence relations and Rumbaugh (1995) for additional discussion intended to bridge perspectives.) That said, the pointing to or naming of a class of behavior (i.e., Emergents) does not explain behavior. Explanations of emergents rest upon the definition of their antecedents and their sequalae. Contrary to historical doctrines and beliefs, we are not the only creature capable of coming to learn the meanings of symbol sets. We are not a "creature apart" from the other primates.

The roots of our abilities to establish the

meaningfulness of symbols are clearly defined by the behaviors of apes in controlled test situations. And, it is in both their and our early rearing patterns that we come to be able to comprehend the complexity of novel sentences of speech.

LANGUAGE OF A P E S IN THE WILD And now we should ask--Do apes use symbolic communications in the wild? Quite possibly they do. Evidence in support of that being the case has been recently reported by Savage-Rumbaugh, Williams, Furuichi, and Kano (in press). Their evidence is that bonobos use alterations in natural vegetation as specific markers to indicate the route selected at otherwise difficult points where trails intersect in their forests.

SUMMARY The 20th century will be noted for a wide variety of scientific and technological advancements, including powered flight, antibiotics, space travel, and the breaking of the genetic code. It also should be noted as the century in which major psychological, as well as biological, continuities between animal and h u m a n have been defined. Several of the studies that define those continuities have served to

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help understand the acquisition and function of meaning, which, in turn, is the basis of language. Charles Darwin (1859, 1871) was quite right when he anticipated continuity in mental processes, some of which provide for language. Though node will argue that any animal has the full capacity of humans for language, none should deny that at least some animals have very impressive competencies for language skills, including speech comprehension. The finding that the language skills of the bonobo and the chimpanzee are likely more fully and efficiently developed as a result of early rearing than by formal training at a later age declares a continuity even stronger than that defined by the language-acquisition potential of the ape. To clarify, because early rearing facilitates the emergence of language in ape as well as in child, a naturalness to the familiar course of language acquisition, whereby comprehension precedes production, is also corroborated. In turn, the continuity and the shared naturalness of language acquisition serve jointly to define an advanced and critical point of linkage between the genus, Pan, and our own---one worthy of contributing to the series of reconceptions of ourselves (Bruner, 1972; Domjan, 1993, p. 391).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Supported by grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD-06016), from the National Aeronautics Administration (NAG2-438), and by the College of Arts & Sciences, Georgia State University. The authors are grateful to Professor William A. Hillix, San Diego State University, and to Dr. David A. Washburn for their critical reading of this manuscript during its preparation.

Special appreciation is extended to Mr. and Mrs. Steve

Woodruff and to Dr. Stephen Draper for their commitment to the future of the Language Research Center.

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graphs of the Society for Research in Child Development, Serial No. 233, Vol. 58, Nos. 3-4, pp. 1-242. Savage-Rumbaugh, E. S., Sevcik, R. A., & Hopkins, W. (1991). Symbolic crossmodal transfer in two species of chimpanzees (Pan paniscus and P. troglo-

dytes). Child Development, 59, 617-625. Savage-Rumbaugh, E. S., Williams, S. L., Furuichi, T., & Kano, T. (in press).

Paniscus branches out. In B. McGrew, L. Marchant, & T. Nishida (Eds.), Great Apes Societies. London: Cambridge University Press. Schusterman, R. L., Gisiner, R., Grimm, B. K., & Hanggi, E. B. (1993). Behavior control by exclusion and attempts at establishing semanticity in marine mammals using match-to-sample paradigms. In H. L. Roitblat, L. M. Herman, & P. E. Nachtigall (Eds.), Language and communication: Comparative

perspectives. (pp. 249-274). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Sibley, C. G., & Ahlquist, J. E. (1987). DNA hybridization evidence of hominoid phylogeny: Results from an expanded data set. Journal of Molecular Evolu-

tion, 26, 99-121. Sidman, M. (1994). Equivalence relations and behavior: A research story. Boston: Authors Cooperative. Skinner, B.F. (1957). Verbal Behavior. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Terrace, H. S. (1979). Nim. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Toth, N., Schick, IC D., Savage-Rumbaugh, E. S., Sevcik, R. A., & Rumbaugh, D. M.

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(1993). Pan the tool-maker: Investigations into the stone tool-making and tool-using capabilities of a bonobo (Pan paniscus). Journal of Archaeological

Science, 20, 81-91. Tuttle, R. H. (1986). Apes of the world (pp. 421). Park Ridge, NJ: Noyes Publications. Washburn, D. A., Hopkins, W. D., & Rumbaugh, D. M. (1989). Automation of learning-set testing: The video-task paradigm. Behavior Research Methods,

Instruments, & Computers, 21, 281-284. Washburn, D. A., & Rumbaugh, D. M. (1991). Ordinal judgments of numerical symbols by macaques (Macaca mulatta). Psychological Science, 2, 190-193. Washburn, D. A., & Rumbaugh, D. M. (1992a). The learning skills of rhesus revisited. International Journal of Primatology, 12, 377-388. Washburn, D. A., & Rumbaugh, D. M. (1992b). psychomotor performance:

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The Problem of Meaning: Behavioral and Cognitive Perspectives C. Mandell and A. McCabe(Editors) 9 1997 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER 5 Sign Language Acquisition and the Development of Meaning in a Lowland Gorilla

J O H N D. BONVILLIAN

University of Virginia and FRANCINE G. P. PATTERSON

The Gorilla Foundation

Not too m a n y years ago, a request to prepare a paper on the acquisition of meaning in any n o n h u m a n primate probably would have been considered a preposterous proposal. In the past, m a n y leading scholars (e.g., Miiller, 1862) proclaimed t h a t animals had neither the ability to form concepts nor the capacity for language.

Meaning, for such creatures, would be at a very basic level.

How t h e n did we get to the point where a discussion of the development of meaning in a gorilla could be seen as a serious academic endeavor?

Two

important changes in people's perspectives had to occur for this to happen.

One

was t h a t the m e n t a l abilities of the higher apes needed to be viewed as sufficiently advanced to m e r i t careful examination.

The second f u n d a m e n t a l

change needed was in how people conceptualized the very nature of language. A brief historical account of how these changes occurred will set the stage for the present study.

182

Bonvillian and Patterson An important early step in changing people's perspectives on the abilities

of apes was the publication in February 1871 of Charles Darwin's two-volume work entitled The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. In The Descent of Man Darwin examined the evidence for humankind's primate origins. In the first chapter, the anatomical evidence of humans' resemblance to other animals is laid out. In the next chapter, Darwin broached the much more controversial topic of whether man's mental powers also had their beginnings in the abilities of other animals. Although Darwin conceded that a wide gulf in ability existed between ape and man, he arrived at the conclusion that "there is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties" (1871, p. 35). This conclusion sparked considerable heated debate in Darwin's time and continues to do so today. Those scholars who differed with Darwin on the origins of man's mental powers often supported their position by asserting that animals had no power of abstraction, were unable to form general concepts, did not use tools, and failed to employ language.

In attempting to counter his critics' assertions, Darwin

was able to marshal some evidence of animals' cognitive abilities and elementary tool use.

He was not, however, able to rebut their claim that language was

the peculiar domain of humans. This absence of language in animals indicated, for some of Darwin's opponents, that an insuperable barrier existed between humans and animals.

Darwin, for his part, saw this absence as reflecting

animals' lower levels of cognitive functioning and not particularly as a language deficit:

"The fact of the higher apes not using their vocal organs for speech,

no doubt depends on their intelligence not having been sufficiently advanced" (1871, p. 59). Although Darwin attributed the higher apes' failure to learn to speak to their lower level of intelligence compared to that of humans, he also observed that the apes' vocal organs, with long-continued practice, might be used for speech. This observation was examined empirically earlier this century in several

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concerted efforts to teach apes spoken language (Furness, 1916; Hayes, 1951; Kellogg & Kellogg, 1933). Despite many hours of training, none of the apes was able to produce more than several utterances that resembled words.

The

disappointing outcomes of these investigations, moreover, were seen by many scholars as compelling evidence that apes did not have the capacity for language. Some years after the last of these speech-training studies had been completed, however, it became apparent that Darwin had been incorrect in his belief that the vocal organs of apes sufficiently resembled those of humans that they could be used to produce speech. Rather, the structure and function of apes' vocal tracts are now seen as differing so much from those of humans as to preclude apes from ever producing spoken language (Lieberman, 1968). Also in The Descent of Man, Darwin alluded to the role that gesture might have played in the origins of language. He observed as well that deaf persons could communicate effectively and efficiently with their hands.

Unfortunately,

Darwin did not expand on either topic, but chose to accept the widely-held view of his contemporaries that language was intimately tied to the vocal organs. This equating of language with speech was to remain virtually unchallenged until relatively recently.

If the mental abilities of nonhuman primates were to be

viewed more favorably, however, this perspective that speech and language were essentially synonymous needed to change. The view that a language is always speech-based only began to be seriously questioned in the 1950s. The individual most responsible for challenging this long-held belief was William Stokoe. Stokoe, in his pioneering investigations of American Sign Language (ASL), discovered that each sign had a distinct formational structure. (ASL is the principal language of members of the deaf community in the United States.) Each sign, Stokoe (1960) claimed, was made up of specific handshapes, movements, and locations that operated in a manner highly similar to that of phonemes in spoken languages.

Prior to Stokoe's discovery, most

scholars had believed that the signs used by deaf persons were largely panto-

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mimic.

In the years following Stokoe's breakthrough, additional research

revealed that ASL had an extensive vocabulary, a rich system of morphological processes, and rule-governed syntactical mechanisms (Klima & BeUugi, 1979; Stokoe, Casterline, & Croneberg, 1965; Wilbur, 1987).

Today, most linguists

recognize ASL and other sign languages used by deaf populations as full and legitimate languages (Brown, 1977). An unforeseen consequence of the recognition of sign languages as fullfledged languages was the stimulus it provided to research with nonhuman primates.

Whereas apes' spoken language acquisition was predestined to fail,

their acquisition of a sign or visuomotor language was a very different matter. First the Gardners (Gardner & Gardner, 1971) and subsequently other investigators (Fouts, 1973; Miles, 1983; Patterson, 1978, 1979) began reporting impressive language-like abilities in various nonhuman primates taught to communicate in signs.

Once an effective avenue of communication was established between

human caregivers and sign-using apes, it became possible to probe these animals' understanding of their worlds much more thoroughly and accurately. In this chapter, we approach the topic of meaning through examining the development of a lowland gorilla, Koko. In this investigation, we focus primarily on the early stages of Koko s acquisition of a sign language lexicon. In particular, we examine how Koko learned to use signs, her rate of sign acquisition, and the content of her vocabulary. But there is more to an organism's development of meaning than just learning a small vocabulary of signs or words. For this reason, we also describe Koko's use of gestures and her emerging cognitive abilities. This additional information both supplements and buttresses our depiction of how Koko's development of understanding unfolds. Finally, throughout our presentation, we systematically compare Koko's development with that of young children learning to sign. We felt that such comparisons would help frame Koko's achievements as well as her shortcomings. In the past, comparative studies often have led to valuable insights about the course of development.

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THE RESEARCH PROGRAMS Project Koko Koko was born on the fourth of July 1971. She was given the name HanabiKo (Japanese for "Fireworks Child'), but it is by her nickname, Koko, that she became well known. Her early months were spent with her mother and the other lowland gorillas at the San Francisco Zoo. At the age of six months, however, she was removed from the gorilla group because serious concerns had arisen about her survival; Koko was suffering from dysentery and chronic malnutrition.

At the

time she was separated from the other gorillas, Koko weighed only 41/2 pounds--the average birthweight of a gorilla.

Over the next ten days Koko

received intensive medical treatment at an animal care facility. She was then placed with a h u m a n family for additional care. Koko remained with this h u m a n family for most of the rest of her first year. Her health and strength gradually improved. The family members often spoke English with Koko during their interactions with her. This pattern of exposure to spoken English has continued on a daily basis ever since. Late in her first year, Koko was placed in the San Francisco Children's Zoo nursery where she was frequently on public display. By the age of one year, Koko weighed 20 pounds and, by all appearances, was thriving. It was at this time that Francine Patterson (FGPP) started working with Koko and Project Koko began.

The project has continued, uninterrupted, for a

period that now extends more than a quarter of a century. For the first 11 months of the project, FGPP typically spent about 5 hours each day interacting with Koko. When Koko was 23 months old, the project was relocated from the Children's Zoo to Stanford University. This relocation enabled Koko's interaction with h u m a n caregivers to be increased to between 8 and 12 hours each day. Increased direct h u m a n contact was not the only change associated with the move to Stanford University.

Koko moved into a 5-room, 10' x 50' house

trailer, which (other t h a n some modifications for safety and security purposes)

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was furnished with household items common to most small homes.

Further,

Koko had a number of toys and several pets with which to play, and for much of the year, she was able to exercise outside. In addition, Koko frequently was taken on short trips or excursions. The various excursions and the presence of human caregivers, toys, pets, and common household furnishings were all part of a deliberate effort to raise Koko in an environment that closely resembled one in which a human child might be reared. This approach to Koko's care was taken purposely with an eye toward providing an enriched setting in which to teach her to communicate using signs. It was felt that if Koko were to learn to communicate effectively in signs, then she would need to have both extensive interaction with other signers and an interesting environment that was worthy of communicating about. To become a successful signer, Koko would need not only to learn to sign but also how to interact with other language-users.

A second reason was to facilitate comparisons between

Koko's development and that of young children.

Having both species reared

similarly would help clarify whether any differences observed in the development of the two species should be attributed to environmental factors or to real differences between the species. With the commencement of the project, interaction with Koko in sign language began in earnest. In general, Koko's sign input took two different forms. One form was American Sign Language or ASL. Starting in the second month of the project, native signers provided Koko with between 10 and 20 hours of ASL input and instruction each week during the first several years of the project. (These individuals had acquired ASL as their first language from their deaf parents.) The second form of sign input that Koko received consisted of ASL signs used in English word order; this form of signing often is referred to as pidgin sign English or PSE. Those teachers and caregivers who interacted with Koko in PSE frequently combined their signing with spoken English input.

Over time, this

.latter form of language use became the predominant form of input in language

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18 7

interactions with Koko. Regardless, it should be noted that the individual lexical signs in ASL and PSE are essentially the same. Koko's teachers introduced new vocabulary items to her using two techniques: molding and modeling (imitation). Molding involved the teacher taking Koko's hands into her own, molding Koko's hand(s) into the correct handshape, and then guiding Koko's hand(s) through the movement aspect of the sign. In sign modeling, the teacher would first form the sign and then have Koko imitate the sign. Both these procedures were used in the early stages of Koko's vocabulary building.

But because Koko oi~en did not respond positively to regimented

training, these procedures were used in a less formal manner as Koko's signing skills became well-established. Information on Koko's development including her language acquisition was collected by a number of methods.

One early approach was the use of daffy

written diary accounts. The primary focus of this record-keeping was Koko's use of signs and the contexts in which these signs were produced. Also included in the diary accounts, however, were observations about Koko's play and social behavior, cognitive skills, motor development, physical growth, and health. Beginning the fifteenth week of the project, periodic detailed written samples were kept of Koko's linguistic exchanges with her caregivers.

By the fortieth week, Koko's

increasing sign productivity necessitated a switch to audiocassette recording in order to capture her linguistic exchanges.

Briefly, an observer with a tape

recorder would dictate an account of Koko's sign production and those of her caregivers, as well as a description of the situational context of Koko's sign productions.

These sampling sessions lasted about 8 to 16 hours each month.

Furthermore, the reliability of many of the written records of Koko's sign production was enhanced by having two independent observers maintain simultaneous accounts of Koko's sign production. The written and dictated accounts of Koko's development were supplemented from the beginning of the project by periodic film and videotape records.

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As videotaping technology improved over the course of the project, more and more of Koko's sign productions were captured using this format. Finally, additional information about Koko's development was obtained by giving her several tests of intelligence and cognitive abilities; all of these tests had been developed originally to assess young children's abilities.

The Children and Their Families

Throughout this chapter, aspects of Koko's early development are compared with those of 22 young, sign-learning children (8 boys, 14 girls).

Each of the

children participated in one of two longitudinal studies of sign language acquisition (Bonvillian, Orlansky, Novack, & Folven, 1983; Folven & Bonvillian, 1991). Two of the children were deaf; there were no other discernible disabilities among the children. The children came from families in which one or both of the parents were deaf. For 17 of the children, both their parents were deaf; the remaining 5 children had one deaf and one hearing parent.

With a single exception, the

hearing parents were actively involved in both the education of deaf students and the deaf community. Most of the parents had graduated from state schools for deaf students.

The majority of the deaf parents also had attended Gallaudet

University, an institution of higher learning for deaf students located in Washington, DC. At the time of their research participation, the families lived in the vicinity of Washington, DC. All of the families reported that the principal means of communication within their homes was a sign language, typically ASL. In one family, the sign language of their former country was used when the parents interacted with each other; ASL was used in their interactions with their child. All of the hearing children experienced spoken English to some extent. In the five families where one of the parents was hearing, these parents were important sources of spoken language input to their children. These parents, moreover, often combined ASL signs with spoken English in their interactions with their children. Among the

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deaf parents, both their use of speech and its recognizability varied quite widely. The children also were exposed to English through television, as well as hearing friends, relatives, and baby-sitters.

Regardless of family background, sign

language constituted the principal language of the young children and their families during their research participation. Information about the children's sign language acquisition was collected in ways similar to those used to document Koko's progress.

The families were

visited in their homes about once every 5 or 6 weeks during periods that ranged from 5 months to 2 years. Each visit typically lasted about 1 hour. During these visits videotape records were made of each child's signs, parent-child interactive play, parent-child communicative exchanges, and of the parents demonstrating how they formed the signs that their child was learning. Between visits, each set of parents maintained diary accounts of their child's sign language development. The parents recorded the date and English gloss (translation equivalent) of each new sign in their child's lexicons. Each set of parents also described how their child formed new signs and the situational context in which these signs were produced. During the monthly home visits, the investigators made a copy of the parents' written records and reviewed with the parents any changes that had occurred in their children's signing since the previous visit. Finally, the early cognitive development of many of the children was assessed through the administration of items from the Ordinal Scales of Psychological Development (Uzgiris & Hunt, 1975).

EARLY SIGN LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Measurement Issues and Early Findings Almost from the beginning of Project Koko, Koko produced gestures that formationally resembled ASL signs. reported that

In the project's second week, volunteers

she produced gestures that

approximated the ASL signs

FOOD/EAT and DRINK. (By convention, the English glosses of ASL signs are

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printed in all capital letters.) One month into the project, and after only a small number of teaching sessions, Koko consistently made a close approximation of the sign FOOD/EAT when she was offered pieces of fruit. Over the next handfifl of weeks, Koko added considerably to her repertoire of gestures that resembled ASL signs. These new gestures included recognizable versions of such ASL signs as DRINK, MORE, TOOTHBRUSH, HAT, DOG, and OUT.

Clearly, after just a

couple of months of sign instruction and exposure to signers, Koko had demonstrated that she had the ability to produce a range of gestures that were formationally similar to ASL signs. Koko also had shown that she could produce these gestures spontaneously--not just as imitations of others' immediately preceding signs. Koko, however, did not use these individual ASL-like gestures in a highly consistent, systematic manner. Thus, it would appear that at this time these gestures were not associated with particular meanings. Because Koko began producing gestures that clearly resembled ASL signs soon after the project began, it became necessary to establish criteria that could be used to decide whether or not Koko should be credited with having acquired a particular sign.

Unfortunately, there was not (and still is not) widespread

agreement among linguists and psycholinguists as to what constitutes the acquisition of a word or sign. Patterson and her associates decided to employ two different sets of criteria in their evaluations of Koko's vocabulary development. In one set, the Emitted criteria, a gesture that closely resembled a sign formationally and that was used spontaneously and in an appropriate context on at least one occasion was considered to have been acquired. In the other index, the Patterson criteria, a sign was considered acquired only if two different observers

recorded Koko as producing that sign spontaneously and in a contextuallyappropriate situation on at least half the days of a month-long period. Clearly, many fewer signs would meet the more stringent Patterson criteria.

Further-

more, the acquisition period for a particular sign would necessarily be longer using the Patterson criteria than it would be using the Emitted criteria.

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191

An advantage of the Patterson criteria is that this approach largely precluded crediting Koko with signs that she did not produce relatively regularly. At the same time, the use of these criteria might underestimate Koko's vocabulary by excluding signs that she had learned, but either did not produce very often or had only a limited number of appropriate situations in which to produce them. The Emitted criteria, in contrast, may overestimate Koko's vocabulary by including gestures that she used only rarely and/or never fully understood.

It

should be noted, though, that the Emitted criteria more closely resemble the criteria used by many investigators of children's early language acquisition. (Because virtually every child with normal abilities eventually acquires an extensive vocabulary, most child language investigators have not felt the need to employ rigorous vocabulary acquisition criteria in their studies of early word learning.) In spite of employing both methodologies in recording Koko's sign acquisition, questions about the use of these criteria and Koko's signing remain. Koko's relatively inconsistent use of many of her early "signs" raises a question in particular about the use of the acquisition criteria. For example, Koko might use a sign in a contextually appropriate way at one time during a day and then use the same sign in a contextually inappropriate manner later than same day. Because of this inconsistent usage, it was not clear just how well Koko understood the concepts underlying her sign production.

By not including the times when

Koko produced a "sign" in an incorrect or contextually inappropriate situation, and only counting correct instances, it was possible for Koko to be credited with having acquired a sign while she was still frequently using that

sign

inconsistently or inappropriately. In future work, it might be worth considering establishing a requirement that a "sign" meet a certain percent correct usage level before being credited as having been acquired.

The information about

inappropriately used signs was collected in Project Koko, but was not included in determining if a sign met the acquisition criteria.

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Although Koko frequently was observed producing different "signs" on a daily basis several months into the project, it may have been a mistake to attribute lexical status to these initial "sign" productions for a number of reasons. First, as we have stated already, Koko oi~en did not use these "signs" consistently in a contextually-appropriate manner. Rather, upon being shown a desired object, she oi~en produced various "signs" from her repertoire until she made the gesture desired by her caregiver or teacher;

at this time, Koko fre-

quently was rewarded. For example, Koko, aider being shown a banana, was first rebuffed when she immediately reached for it. Koko then produced several "signs" from her gestural repertoire before producing FOOD/EAT and being given the banana. At this point in her development, it appeared that Koko had a number of ASL-like gestures in her memory and that Koko had learned to produce these different "signs" in something akin to a tool-like manner to help her obtain desired objects and actions. Additional concerns about crediting Koko with a substantial early sign vocabulary were that some of her signs might have been the product of inadvertent cuing by her caregivers and that some might have been mistakes in observation by the staff members. In light of these various concerns about the nature of Koko's sign vocabulary knowledge, double-blind testing of many of Koko's vocabulary items was instituted. This procedure allowed the investigators to control for some of the possible confounds involved in recording Koko's signs as having been acquired. More specifically, the double-blind tests were used to explore Koko's knowledge of object names in her vocabulary. In these tests, Koko was able to see different exemplars of the signs in her lexicon, but the person recording her performance was not able to see these objects. This was accomplished by having one staff member put an object in a plywood box with a removable plexiglass window. Koko could see the item through the window, whereas the second staff member, who recorded Koko's signs, stood behind the plywood box. This approach

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largely eliminated the problems of the recorder's over-interpreting Koko's gestures or cuing Koko's sign production.

On the double-blind test trials

conducted during the early years of the project, Koko gave a correct response about 60% of the time. This level indicates that there is considerable systematicity in her signing--clearly Koko is producing the correct sign to an item most of the time. Nevertheless, this level of performance also raises questions as to why she did not perform better than she did. It may be the case that her knowledge of lexical boundaries is rather incomplete or that she relies considerably on contextual cues for assistance in her normal signing. Patterson, however, believes that Koko's difficulties on double-blind test items largely reflect her dislike for highlystructured testing sessions. As a consequence, Koko's performance suffers. In many ways, Koko's signing improved over the course of the study. By her third month of instruction, Koko's interactional skills had improved to where she typically used her "signs" to reply to simple questions.

By 16 months of age,

Koko's repertoire of "signs" had increased to ten different signs using the Emitted criteria. Again, it should be noted, Koko used these "signs" spontaneously and in a contextually-appropriate manner only some of the time. As the year progressed, however, the incidence of her use of signs in a contextually-inappropriate manner gradually declined. From the diary accounts, the picture that emerges is one of Koko relatively slowly learning to produce her "signs" in a consistent, systematic, and contextually-appropriate manner.

Koko's increasingly consistent and

appropriate use of her "signs" in the latter half of her second year would appear to indicate that the meanings associated with these signs were becoming more solidified. In comparison with Koko, the young sign-learning children were slightly accelerated in their early sign production. All of the children produced gestures that clearly resembled their parents' ASL signs before they were a year old. Indeed, most of the children began producing these recognizable "signs" when they were about 8 to 9 months old.

These early sign-like gestures typically were

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imitations of their parents' signs or parts of gestural routines. The children often did not start using their signs in a truly symbolic manner until after they had acquired a vocabulary of about ten signs (Bonvillian, Orlansky, Novack, & Folven, 1983). Unfortunately, systematic records were not maintained of the accuracy and consistency of the children's early sign usage. It is our impression that the young, sign-learning children were more consistent in their sign usage during their second year than was the case for Koko. It would be a mistake, however, to convey the impression that the children's early signing was highly consistent, spontaneous, and contextually-appropriate.

During their second year, there were a

number of instances of the children over- and underextending concept boundaries using the signs in their lexicon (Bonvillian & Folven, 1993). Similar phenomena occur in young children acquiring a spoken language (Clark, 1973).

Sign Acquisition Rates Vocabulary acquisition rates have long played an important role in the assessment of early language development. Koko, using the Emitted criteria, was credited with producing her 10th different sign when she was about 16 months old and her 50th different sig~ at 25 months of age. For signs that met the more conservative Patterson criteria, the corresponding vocabulary milestones were achieved at the ages of 28 and 35 months. In contrast, the sign-learning children reached the same vocabulary milestones at considerably younger ages.

The

children were reported as producing their 10th different sign at a mean age of 13.3 months. They typically attained a lexicon of 50 different signs by their 18th month.

Thus, regardless of the criteria used, most of the children attained

various vocabulary milestones at least several months before Koko. One factor influencing this timing in sign acquisition may be that Koko was not introduced to signs until she was a year old.

In contrast, the children's

parents had begun signing to them early in infancy. Moreover, all the children

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began making recognizable "signs" well before the end of their first year. Indeed, one little girl had produced 30 different recognizable signs before her first birthday. Because of the children's substantial headstart, it was felt that other approaches needed to be included in any cross-species comparison of acquisition rates. One alternative employed was to calculate the number of months between an individual's production of his (or her) first sign and production of his (or her) fiftieth different sign. Most of the children acquired their first 50 different signs within a period of 10 months; using the Emitted criteria, Koko took 13 months to attain a 50-sign vocabulary. Another method used to calculate vocabulary acquisition rates was to determine the rate at which new vocabulary items were acquired between the ages at which the 10th and 50th different sign was learned. (This approach was employed by Nelson, 1973, "to correct for late starters," in her study of children learning to speak.) Employing this alternative methodology, the children had an average acquisition rate of 7.8 signs per month, with the range extending from 3.6 to 13.3 new signs per month. Using the Emitted criteria, Koko learned 4.4 new signs per month. As can be seen with this latter approach, Koko's rate of early sign learning, while slower than that of most of the children, overlapped with that of at least some of the children (Bonvillian & Patterson, 1993). Koko's rate of new sign learning increased substantially when she was between 21/2 and 41/2 years of age (Patterson & Cohn, 1990). During this period, Koko added about 200 new signs per year using the Emitted criteria and about half that number using the Patterson criteria.

Unfortunately, comparable sign

acquisition data for children learning ASL as their first language are not available. For children learning to speak, there often is a quite noticeable vocabulary spurt that begins at about 18 or 19 months of age (Nelson, 1973). This would be about a year before Koko's period of most rapid vocabulary acquisition began. Most children continue to add many new words to their lexicons in the years that follow;

an estimate of over 2000 different words at the age of five years is

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common. This would be about four times the size of Koko's emitted lexicon at the same chronological age. Finally, if we were to consider the rate of acquisition of new vocabulary items to be indicative of the number of new meanings learned, then Koko would have been acquiring new meanings at a considerably slower rate than the children.

Vocabulary Content The content of Koko's sign lexicon was very similar to that of the young sign-learning children (Bonvillian & Patterson, 1993).

In arriving at this

conclusion, we compared the children's 50-sign vocabularies with both the first 50 signs in Koko's lexicon that met the Emitted criteria and the first 50 signs that met the Patterson criteria.

Moreover, the resemblance in vocabulary held for

analyses conducted on both individual vocabulary items and grammatical classification. When Koko's and the children's signs were grouped according to the grammatical categories identified by Nelson (1973) for children's early lexicons, the rankings of the categories (based on the number of different signs placed in each category) were quite similar across species.

Both Koko and the children

produced general nominals (e.g., HAT) most frequently, followed by signs for action (e.g., GO, OUT) and then by signs classified as modifiers (e.g., MINE, PRETTY).

One difference, however, was that Koko tended to make a higher

proportion of personal-social signs (e.g., NO, SORRY) than specific nominals (e.g., KOKO). The rank order of these two low-frequency categories was reversed in the children (BonviUian, Orlansky, & Novack, 1983). The individual signs in Koko's 50-sign lexicons also frequently appeared in the children's early sign language vocabularies.

Approximately three-fifths of

Koko's signs were present in one or more of the children's 50-sign lexicons. Of those signs in Koko's vocabulary that were not present in the children's lexicons, many were the names of Koko's favorite foods (e.g., NUT) and activities (e.g.,

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These differences probably are more indicative of species' dietary

preferences and locomotor abilities than of differences in signing abilities. What might account for the substantial overlap in vocabulary items and resemblance in grammatical categories between the children and Koko?

One

explanation would be that the physical environments for both species clearly resembled each other. Koko and the children might primarily be naming those objects and actions that they encountered regularly. A second explanation would be that both species received their sign input from human caregivers. Human caregivers might have labeled many of the same things for Koko and the young children. A third explanation would be that the two species had similar interests and learning mechanisms. That is, the same objects, actions, and properties that captured the attention of a young member of one species likely captured the attention of a member of the other. This last explanation has the advantage of also accounting for the differences between the two species (e.g., Koko's fondness for certain foods and games). Unfortunately, the design of the present study does not allow us to accept or reject any of these explanations. factors--physical environments,

similar

input,

and

Moreover, all three

internal

mechanisms--

probably contributed to the similarities in vocabulary. Regardless of explanation, if one were to consider vocabulary content as an indicator of early meanings, one would be struck by the considerable overlap in early meanings between Koko and the children.

Non-ASL G e s t u r a l P r o d u c t i o n

In addition to the ASL signs she was taught, Koko made use of a number of other gestures in her early communication for which she received no prior instruction. These self-constructed gestures fell into two distinct groups. The first group of non-ASL gestures that Koko produced served a more communicative purpose than a lexical function. Gestures in this group did not refer to particular actions, objects, or properties. Consequently they were never included in lists of Koko's

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vocabulary items. Gestures of this kind, however, appear to play an important role in establishing early communicative interaction.

The emergence of such

gestures and their relationship to language onset have been studied extensively in children. Young children learning to speak (Bates, Benigni, Bretherton, Camaioni, & Volterra, 1979) and to sign (Folven & Bonvillian, 1991) make a number of nonsign communicative gestures early in their development. These gestures have been depicted as setting the stage for children's subsequent language use by introducing social turn-taking, shared reference, and conventionalized communication (Bates et al., 1979; Bruner, 1978). Language, according to this approach, is seen as emerging out of such communicative gestures. Bates and her associates (1979) identified five gestures that both preceded the onset of referential spoken language and predicted vocabulary size. Four of these gestures played a strong com_municative role: ritual requests (conventionalized requests such as touching an adult's hand and then waiting), showing (holding an object out for another to view), giving (voluntary surrendering of an object to another), and communicative pointing (pointing to an object or action and looking to another). The fifth gesture, noncommunicative pointing (pointing to orient or guide oneself) played more of a self-directing role and was often evident in the children's object examination. These five gestures typically emerge in children when they are between 9 and 13 months of age. We examined the records of Koko's development for evidence of her production of these five gestures.

Our primary source was the written diary

records of Koko's early development.

These accounts were supplemented by

reviewing film and videotape records of Koko's early years. (It should be noted that because Project Koko records did not begin until Koko was a year old, Koko may have produced some of these gestures before the record-keeping began.) Noncommunicative pointing was observed one week into the project when Koko was observed exploring cracks with her index finger. Instances of ritual requests

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were evident when Koko was 13 months old. For example, she would extend her arm to FGPP if she wished to be picked up. Communicative points emerged when Koko was 14 months old--Koko would point to something and then look to FGPP. Clear instances of giving, as opposed to letting others take things from her, were not reported as being present in Koko until she was 21 months old. behaviors were the last of the communicative gestures to emerge.

Showing She began

showing objects to others around her second birthday. Overall, then, instances of each of the five gestures were evident in Koko's records during her first two years. There were several differences between Koko and the signing and speaking groups of children in their acquisition of these nonsign gestures.

First, Koko

acquired the gestures more slowly than the children. The children produced each of these gestures by the end of their first year or beginning of their second. This was nearly a year before Koko began showing objects to others. difference was in the order of appearance of the gestures.

A second

The children con-

sistently demonstrated showing and giving behaviors before they made communicative points, while the reverse was observed in Koko. Finally, it was our distinct impression that Koko showed objects to others less frequently than the young children did. One possible explanation for this difference is that showing behaviors may reflect a species' difference in interactional patterns. For example, for a gorilla to stand before you with an object may be more of a threat gesture than a communicative exchange. Koko, it also should be recalled, produced signs and sign-like gestures in communicative interactions with others almost from the beginning of the project. To some extent, then, Koko must have been aware of her caregivers' sensory capacities as she typically signed where she could be seen. (Additional support may be inferred for this awareness from her frequent use of vocalizations to call or summon caregivers who were out of her sight.) The second group of non-ASL gestures that Koko produced without prior instruction was quite sign-like.

These gestures were used to refer to different

objects and types of actions and subsequently became recognized as part of her

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vocabulary. Altogether, FGPP observed 17 different sign-like gestures that were "invented" and used by Koko during the first two years of the project. Unlike the ASL signs that Koko was taught, Koko consistently used her "invented" gestures in contextually appropriate situations.

Most of these sign-

like gestures that Koko invented were iconic or pantomimic.

That is, these

gestures clearly represented the actions or objects to which she was referring. For example, Koko's gesture for "bite" consisted of her putting the side of her hand, palm down, in her mouth.

Some of her invented gestures, however, were less

clearly iconic, such as the gesture she used to request that a caregiver "walk-upmy-back-with-your-fingers" (Patterson, 1978).

Koko conveyed this request for

action by putting both her hands, palm up, on the floor behind her back. It is, of course, quite possible that Koko invented other, noniconic sign-like gestures, but that they were neither responded to nor recorded by project staff members. If the meanings of Koko's invented gestures could not be understood by project personnel, then these individuals would not have been likely to respond appropriately to the gestures; no shared meaning would have been established. So the finding that most of Koko's invented "signs" were iconic or pantomimic may reflect human communication processing capabilities to some extent as well. Koko's invention and use of these sign-like gestures are important for what they appear to reveal about Koko's language, cognitive abilities, and understanding of her world.

These gestures indicate that at some level Koko

understands that the gestures she produces can stand for objects or actions. That is, these gestures have a meaning attached to them. Moreover, Koko apparently recognizes that particular gestures stand for particular kinds of actions or objects. Koko's production of her sign-like gestures to her human caregivers also shows that she is trying to convey the meaning of these gestures to another. Koko's invention of these gestures would also appear to indicate that Koko appreciates that she can play a role in constructing her communication with others.

Finally, it should be noted that Koko is not alone among gorillas in

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creating an extensive iconic gestural communication system; gorillas, both in captivity (Tanner & Byrne, 1996) and in their natural habitat, have been reported as using gestures to communicate with each other.

Because the sign-gestures

Koko invented were mostly iconic and appeared in her lexicon near the beginning of Project Koko, we thought it imperative to examine the extent to which iconicity affected Koko's early vocabulary development.

Sign Iconicity With the exception of a very small number of onomatopoeic words, words in spoken languages bear no discernible relationship between their sound pattern and what they stand for or represent. The relationship between spoken word and concept is thus nearly always an arbitrary one, based on the conventions of usage within a particular society.

Sign languages, such as ASL, differ from spoken

languages on this dimension to a considerable extent. A substantial number of ASL signs have clearly transparent meanings. That is, these signs are sufficiently iconic or pantomimic that their meanings can be readily guessed by individuals unfamiliar with ASL. It should be emphasized, however, that most signs in ASL do not have readily transparent meanings.

In these cases, the

relationship between sign and referent often is an arbitrary one. One could argue that the clearly observable ties between iconic signs and the concepts they represent might make these signs easier to learn than noniconic signs. The evidence on this issue, however, is not conclusive. For example, iconic or pantomimic signs are learned more readily than noniconic signs by mentally retarded students and nonspeaking children with autistic disorder (Konstantareas, Oxman & Webster, 1978). On the other hand, sign iconicity was interpreted as playing only a relatively minor role in the early sign language acquisition of the present young, sign-learning children (Folven & BonviUian, 1991; Orlansky & Bonvillian, 1984). Only about one-third of the signs in these young children's early lexicons were classified as iconic.

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If iconic signs predominated in Koko's early lexicon, it might be argued that her early signs were not true symbols in that they clearly resembled what they stood for.

For example, Koko's sign-gesture FOOD/EAT clearly resembled the

action of putting food in one's mouth. Systematic comparisons, however, revealed that iconic signs were only slightly more common in Koko's initial sign lexicons than they typically were in the young, sign-learning children's vocabularies. For Koko's first ten emitted signs, six were classified as iconic. For Koko's first ten signs to meet the more conservative Patterson acquisition criteria, five were identified as iconic. By the time Koko had attained a 50-sign vocabulary, there had been a small decline in the proportion of iconic signs in her lexicon.

For

Koko's first 50 emitted signs, 20 (40%) were classified as iconic. For Koko's first 50 signs to meet the Patterson criteria, 23 (46%) were identified as iconic. Clearly, by the time that Koko's lexicon was fairly well-established--the 50-sign level--iconic or pantomimic factors were not playing a predominant role in her sign acquisition (Bonvillian & Patterson, 1993). The majority of Koko's signs now were classified as noniconic. Although it is possible that the iconic aspect of certain signs may have facilitated their learning by Koko, it is not at all clear that Koko perceived these signs as iconic or pantomimic.

As a two-year-old gorilla, Koko may not have

perceived the resemblance between the sign and its referent. That is, those signs which have clearly transparent meanings to adult human investigators may not be perceived as iconic or pantomimic by a young gorilla (or child).

For Koko,

nearly all her ASL signs may have seemed noniconic. Regardless, with many of Koko's signs classified as noniconic, the pantomimic aspect of certain signs cannot be a critical factor in her vocabulary acquisition.

Functional Communication Piaget (1936/1963) was one of the first investigators to discuss the intentional behaviors of human infants. For Piaget, intentional behavior became evi-

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dent when infants made attempts to overcome barriers in order to obtain desired ends. More recently, other investigators have examined the different ways that young children communicate their intentions. Infants have been found to convey their intentions through actions, vocalizations, gestures, and words. For example, systematic analyses of children's speech and the context in which it is used have revealed that young children have a number of intentions in mind when they are first using words. Dore (1974, 1975), in particular, has identified a wide range of functions (or intentions) in children's one-word speech. Among these pragmatic functions compiled by Dore are labeling, requesting action, answering, calling and greeting. Koko's records during her first year of signing were reviewed to determine instances where Koko produced functional communicative acts that met the criteria established by Dore (Patterson, Tanner, & Mayer, 1988). This examination revealed that although Koko was already successfully communicating many of these pragmatic functions by the end of the first month of the project, many of her functional communicative acts were expressed through gestures and vocalizations rather than sign utterances. For example, Koko would often greet others by clapping, call others by pounding or knocking, and request actions by extending her arms toward the desired object. By the end of the third month of the project, Koko was credited with performing all the different functional communicative acts described by Dore for the one-word period in children. At this time, Koko began answering others' questions in signs and requesting answers from others through gestures. Over time, a larger proportion of Koko's functional communications were expressed in signs. pragmatic functions:

Koko typically used signs to communicate the following labeling, practicing, repeating, requesting action, and

answering. She still relied upon vocalizations more often for protesting, greeting, and calling (Patterson et al., 1988). It is quite likely that vocalizations were a

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more effective way for her to get others' attention. Signs probably were a more effective way for her to transmit specific information or requests.

Referential Signing Another important advance in children's language acquisition is said to occur when children demonstrate their capacity for referential language usage. Referential language is identified as the use of vocabulary items to name new instances of objects or events. The individual who employs a word or a sign to name a new instance of a concept demonstrates an understanding that language can be used to categorize objects, events, and people, that things have names or labels, and t h a t language is not tied to a particular context or item (Bates, Camaioni, & Volterra, 1975). With the acquisition of referential language, the young language-learner is no longer limited to using words or signs either imitatively or as a way to elicit desired responses from others. As we have noted earlier, as Koko's sign language program progressed, her signs gradually were applied more consistently to objects, actions, and persons. Then, at 20 months of age, another change took place--the onset of referential signing. This was seen in her spontaneous use of her sign BABY for new instances of that concept. Early in the day, as she had olden done in the past, Koko made her sign BABY to her doll. Next, she was shown a new doll, and she again produced her sign BABY. A little while later, Koko encountered a h u m a n baby and immediately signed BABY.

Within the next month, there were several

additional instances of Koko spontaneously (and correctly) applying signs she had previously learned to new instances of a given concept. Thus, by 21 months of age, the evidence indicates that Koko was demonstrating referential language ability. How does Koko's age at onset of referential language ability compare with t h a t reported for children learning either to speak or to sign? About half of the children learning to speak were reported to use words referentially for the first time by 12 to 13 months of age (Bates et al., 1979). A similar time frame for the

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onset of referential language has been found for children acquiring ASL as their first language from their deaf parents (Bonvillian & Folven, 1990; Folven & Bonvillian, 1991).

Their mean onset age was 12.6 months, with the range

extending from 10.1 to 16.2 months. Koko's age at onset of referential language ability thus lags behind that of all the sign-learning children studied by four months or more, and behind that of most of the children, regardless of language modality, by about seven months. Koko's use of signs referentially indicates that Koko has learned that signs can be used to name or label things. With the onset of referential usage, signs no longer are tied to particular objects or actions, but are applied to n e w instances of concepts. This correct application of signs to new exemplars also indicates that Koko also apparently can discern the various features or characteristics that identify certain concepts. The meaning of a sign for Koko would now be coupled at least in part to the identifying characteristics (or critical features) of the concept.

COGNITIVE D E V E L O P M E N T

Sensorimotor Development One of the major models of symbol development rests on the notion that the ability to use symbols is largely the outgrowth of the attainment of certain cognitive or sensorimotor skills.

Proponents of this view, most notably Piaget

(1945/1962), claim that the ability to use symbols--the semiotic function--is established by the end of the sensorimotor period of cognitive development. According to Piaget (1936/1963, 1945/1962), the h u m a n infant progresses in an essentially invariant pattern through a sequence of six different stages of sensorimotor development. With the completion of the sensorimotor period, the infant has the cognitive skills needed to use words or other symbols to represent concrete objects, events, and even abstract concepts. In Piaget's model of sensorimotor development, the key skill that serves as the foundation for symbol use is mental representational ability. This ability has

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been assessed in most cases by measuring an individual's level of object permanence development. According to Piaget, the young infant does not understand that an object continues to exist when it is not in view because the child lacks the ability to create a mental representation of the object until late in the sensorimotor period. By the time the child is in the last stage of sensorimotor development, typically between 18 and 24 months of age, the child should have the cognitive ability to search for objects even when there are multiple displacements, some of which must be inferred. This semiotic functioning also allows the child to discover new means to ends through mental combinations and to imitate others' actions when they are not present (Uzgiris & Hunt, 1975). Furthermore, with the acquisition of stage 6 mental representational skills, the child has the capacity to comprehend and to produce symbols even in the absence of the referent (FlaveU,

1985). In light of the prominent position historically accorded to Piaget's model of early development, it should not be surprising to learn that investigators have examined the cognitive abilities of nonhuman primates through test items based on Piaget's model. These studies of sensorimotor development have shown that nonhuman primates typically pass through the six stages of sensorimotor intelligence with the exception of vocal imitation ability. Included among these studies are reports of such cognitive attainment in chimpanzees, gorillas, Cebus monkeys (Cebus capucinus), and orangutans (Chevalier-Skolnikoff, 1977, 1979, 1981; Miles, 1990; Redshaw, 1978). In her review of the research on these species' cognitive development, Chevalier-Skolnikoff (1981) concluded that these animals often progress through the first four stages of sensorimotor development slightly more rapidly than human infants typically do.

She also claimed that apes

usually took considerably longer than human infants to achieve stage 5 and 6 levels of sensorimotor functioning. Regardless of their rate of sensorimotor skill acquisition, it is important to note that different investigators have reached the

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conclusion that apes manifest the same nonlinguistic cognitive abilities frequently viewed as the basis for symbol use in humans. Project Koko focused on Koko's cognitive development both inferentially and through direct testing.

During the early months of the project, Koko's

behavior in different situations oi~en provided clues as to her cognitive processing. Much of Koko's sensorimotor development could be seen in how she overcame various obstacles or resolved problems she encountered during her daily activities.

More systematic assessments of Koko's cognitive abilities came from

periodic administration of Piaget-type items designed to probe her sensorimotor development.

Included in these assessments were tests of Koko's mental

representational skills on object permanence tasks.

Koko's performance was

observed as well on a series of tasks designed to assess both her ability to use tools and her level of goal-directed behavior. Finally, tests of mental and motor development normed on h u m a n children were given to Koko periodically as an additional index of her cognitive growth. From the early days of the project onward, Koko demonstrated aspects of object permanence development.

For example, she would search for fallen and

hidden objects, skills associated with stages 3 and 4 of sensorimotor development.

By 15 months, Koko's searches for objects that had fallen had become

quite systematic;

she would push furniture out of the way in her efforts to

retrieve the items that had disappeared. By 19 months of age, investigators felt sufficiently confident to test Koko on the stage 6 sensorimotor task of multiple invisible displacements.

In this task, the examiner would put a desired object

(e.g., a crayon, a miniature rabbit) in a fist and then move this fist under a sequence of three covers.

At 19 and 20 months, Koko responded by looking

initially under the first cover.

By 21 months, Koko completed this series of

multiple displacements correctly by targeting the terminal cover first. Koko also revealed her knowledge of object permanence on a more mundane basis by often systematically searching for missing toys and by hiding things under covers and

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then lifting the covers. Thus, by the end of her second year, Koko was demonstrating considerable mental representational skills, at least as assessed by her ability to complete stage 6 tasks on the object permanence scale. Other indications of Koko's sensorimotor development were evident during her second year. These included simple tool-using skills, discovering new meansto-ends relationships, and elementary problem-solving.

Early on, Koko olden

would try to move barriers to obtain an object she apparently desired. By the time she was 14 months old, Koko would enlist others' hands to help her achieve a goal, such as being tickled or securing an object. Such removal of barriers and use of adults' hands to achieve a goal typically would be accomplished by children in stage 4 of the sensorimotor period. Koko's increasing resourcefulness in securing desired items was clearly evident a month later.

When jumping proved an

unsuccessful approach to obtaining food dangled from the ceiling, Koko moved a plexiglass box underneath the food and climbed up to secure the desired morsel. Less than two weeks later, Koko was observed stacking several objects and then climbing on them to reach a suspended reward.

Finally, Koko demonstrated

additional problem-solving and tool-using skills when she used a stick to try and retrieve a small plastic duck that was out of her reach under the door to her room. Taken together, these examples of Koko's behavior indicate that she had learned to use other people and objects as instruments to achieve her ends.

These

behaviors also revealed elementary planning in problem-solving as well as a degree of mental foresight. The sensorimotor development of many of the young children learning to sign was assessed by using the Ordinal Scales of Psychological Development (Uzgiris & Hunt, 1975). These scales are based on Piaget's model of sensorimotor development during infancy.

Except for their low performance on the vocal

imitation subscale, with increasing age the children progressed steadily through the different scales (Bonvillian, Orlansky, Novack, & Folven, 1983).

(The

children's low performance on vocal imitation was not unexpected. Many of the

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children received only limited spoken language input from their deaf parents.) In general, the children tended to be advanced in their performance on the object permanence and means-ends abilities scales relative to the other scales. Interestingly, it is these two scales that are most frequently associated with language acquisition because of their mental representational and problemsolving components.

The children typically completed these scales or were in

stage 6 on these scales before the middle of their second year.

The children

usually passed items on these scales several months before Koko did.

Tests of Intelligence Additional evidence of Koko's emerging cognitive skills during her first two years came from the periodic and repeated administration of various tests of mental and motor abilities. Although the administration of these different tests to Koko enabled us to compare performance across species, it should be recognized that these tests were developed, normed, and standardized for the assessment of h u m a n infants and young children. No assumptions about the validity of the tests probably should be made when the tests are given to another species. Moreover, it is possible that Koko benefitted from increased exposure to the same test items because of the repeated test administration.

However, we feel that

such an effect would be relatively small, as Koko's mental age scores across tests did not vary substantially when a new test was introduced to her. Of the tests given to Koko, probably the best known and most widely used assessment instrument in child psychology is the Bayley Scales of Infant Development (1969). When Koko was given the Bayley at 15 months of age, she scored at the 11 month level for h u m a n infants on the mental scale. When the Bayley was administered for the second time two months later, Koko's performance on the mental scale was the equivalent of a 12-month-old h u m a n infant. At 20 months of age, Koko earned a human mental age score of 15 months, and at 29 months of age, Koko's h u m a n mental age score was 22 months.

A similar

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pattern of performance was evident in Koko's scores on the other tests (e.g., Cattell Infant Intelligence Scale, 1940) used to chart her development. In general, during the first several years of the project, Koko's performance on the different test items improved with increasing age, but her performance did not keep pace with her chronological age. Over all the different tests and testing sessions during this period, Koko's mental age scores trailed her chronological age by a mean of 6.7 months. Although Koko's scores would be clearly below average if achieved by children, children earning such scores would be expected to acquire language and eventually attend school. In contrast with her mental age scores, Koko was often quite precocious in comparison with human infants on measures of motor development during infancy. For instance, at 15 months of age, Koko scored at the 19 month level on the psychomotor scale of the Bayley Scales of Infant Development. In general, Koko's locomotor abilities emerged considerably earlier than those of her human counterparts.

It should be noted, however, that free motor skill in humans

eventually surpasses Koko's fine motor control. The fact that there was a great deal of consistency in Koko's performance on both the sensorimotor scales and the tests of intelligence in infancy and early childhood should add to our confidence in the tests' results.

On both types of

instruments, Koko typically showed steady and gradual improvement in her performance on the test items. Her performance relative to the children also was similar across the different test instruments.

She was usually at least several

months behind the sign-learning children in completing the sensorimotor scales. Her performance on the infancy and early childhood tests of intelligence also lagged behind what would have been expected for children her chronological age. The picture of Koko that emerged from the tests of childhood intelligence and sensorimotor development was one of an organism that, while below average in mental abilities in comparison with children, still possessed a number of important cognitive skills. By the end of her second year, Koko was able to form

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mental representations, to use simple tools, to answer basic questions, and to understand symbols.

Moreover, Koko readily attained the sensorimotor skills

most often depicted as precursors or prerequisites for language. Finally, probably the most compelling evidence of Koko's cognitive development was her acquisition and use of numerous signs. Clearly, Koko had the ability to keep some representation of dozens of signs in her memory along with some understanding of how to use these signs.

CONCLUDING REMARKS Before discussing Koko's accomplishments and what they might indicate, it probably is important to mention briefly what she has not achieved. Although Koko continued to acquire new signs after the age of 41/2 years, her rate of vocabulary acquisition declined considerably. Ten years into the project, Koko was adding about 35 new signs annually (Patterson & Cohn, 1990). In contrast, young children learning to speak typically learn words at a high rate throughout childhood and have lexicons consisting of many thousands of words by the time they are ten. It is possible that some of the differences observed in vocabulary development between Koko and children can be attributed to nonlanguage factors. As the children got older and attended school, their range of experiences probably increased much more rapidly than did Koko's. Koko's relatively more circumscribed environment, compared with that of children, may have been less conducive to vocabulary growth. Differences between the species in fine motor ability might also account in part for Koko's smaller vocabulary; certain signs may have been more difficult for her to form than for children to make. Differences in utterance complexity between the species, however, may be even more telling in their implications about Koko's language capabilities. When Koko was about two years old, she began combining signs for the first time. She has continued to form multi-sign utterances ever since, but the complexity of these utterances has remained relatively limited (Patterson & Linden, 1981). In

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contrast, the sign language skills of the children of deaf parents increased rapidly throughoht childhood until they became highly fluent signers. Koko's vocabulary size and the complexity of her sign utterances does not approach those manifested by highly fluent signers. Examination of Koko's development during the first couple of years of the project revealed considerable consistency in her behavior across various language and cognitive domains. She successfully passed items designed to assess young children's intelligence and sensorimotor skills.

She did so, however, at a rate

slower than that of children with normal abilities. Koko acquired a substantial vocabulary of signs, but again her rate of learning was slower than that of most children. Koko also demonstrated an ability to use signs referentially, but she first manifested this ability at an older chronological age than that of any of the sign-learning children studied. Although Koko's cognitive and language development progressed more slowly than it did for children, this should not be interpreted as indicating that her understanding of her world differed fundamentally from that of children. At least during her first several years, the content of Koko's vocabulary and the function of her communications closely resembled those of young children. This resemblance in early lexical development, moreover, would not have been nearly as evident if the two species had not both been acquiring language in sign. Koko's production of the various sign-like gestures that she invented served to provide insights into her understanding of her world. Her production of these gestures appears to indicate that at some level she recognized that these gestures could be used to transmit meaning.

These sign-like gestures also may be

construed as indicating that Koko's representation of her world included the presence of other social creatures who might understand her gestures and possibly act on them. Of course the same thing may be inferred about the use of language by the children to express their expectations about and their understanding of the world around them.

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What, then, can we say about how signs acquired meaning for Koko? Although we cannot answer this question definitively, the general trends in Koko's sign and gesture production suggest the following path:

Initially, Koko

learned to imitate signs that were modeled for her. Then Koko showed that she was able to produce gestures from memory that were formationally similar to ASL signs, but she did not convey the impression that she was aware that these gestures had distinct referential meanings.

Those ASL signs that Koko was

taught in the first several months of the project did not appear to be tied to particular referents. Koko, during this period, often used these gestures inconsistently and not in contextually-appropriate situations.

When she wanted some-

thing, or in response to a question, Koko frequently would produce a number of the gestures that she had been taught. She seemed to use those signs to some extent as tools to achieve desired ends. Gradually, over the first year of the project, Koko began using her signs much more consistently; she used them predominantly to refer to specific objects, actions, or properties. In response to a question, she less frequently replied with a string of gestures.

The meanings of the signs in her

lexicon at this time appeared to be largely tied to particular objects or actions. Then at about 20 months of age, Koko began using the signs in her lexicon to name or label new instances of previously-acquired concepts. These instances of referential naming behavior indicate that the meanings of Koko's signs were now being based more on the identifying characteristics or critical features of concepts. Thus, by the end of her second year, the meanings of Koko's signs no longer appeared to be bound primarily to specific concrete instances but were tied to the more abstract collection of characteristics that identified a concept. The young children's initial steps in vocabulary learning and acquisition of meaning resembled those of Koko. Like Koko, the children's initial signs often were either imitations of other persons' signs or parts of gestural routines. Also, like Koko, the children early on appeared to learn that specific signs stood for distinct objects, actions, persons, and properties. But months before Koko did so,

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the children began using signs to name or label new instances of a concept. In the months and years that followed, the children continued to progress more rapidly than Koko in their vocabulary acquisition and in the complexity of their utterances. Thus, although there were clear similarities in the attainment of early language and cognitive milestones between Koko and the children, Koko's development has not kept pace with that of the children over time. Finally, we believe that Darwin would have greatly enjoyed learning of Koko's accomplishments. In many ways, Koko's achievements provide considerable support for the views first expressed by Darwin over a century ago. Koko, during her first several years, demonstrated a capacity to use simple tools, to make mental representations, to form basic concepts, and to learn elements of a human language. Koko also showed that she could interact effectively with other language-users and that she could invent gestures to facilitate her communication. At least, during the early years of Koko's life, both her mental abilities and her understanding of her world do not appear to differ fundamentally from those of young children.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS During the preparation of this chapter, the first author was supported by a Sesquicentennial Associateship from the University of Virginia. Susan B. Dell made many helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

Her

contribution is deeply appreciated. The authors also with to thank Georgina R. Slavoff and the staff of The Gorilla Foundation for their assistance in the preparation of this chapter.

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Bates, E., Camaioni, L., & Volterra, V. (1975). The acquisition of performatives prior to speech. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 21,205-226. Bayley, N. (1969). Bayley scales of infant development. New York: The Psychological Corporation. Bonvillian, J. D., & Folven, R. J. (1990). The onset of signing in young children. In W. Edmondson & F. Karlsson (Eds.), SLR ~87: Papers from the Fourth International Symposium on Sign Language Research (pp. 183-189). Hamburg: Signum Press. Bonvillian, J. D., & Folven, R. J. (1993). Sign language acquisition: Developmental perspectives.

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perspectives on deafness (pp. 229-265). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Bonvillian, J. D., Orlansky, M. D., & Novack, L. L. (1983). Developmental milestones:

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Development, 54, 1435-1445. Bonvillian, J. D., Orlansky, M. D., Novack, L. L., & Folven, R. J. (1983). Early sign language acquisition and cognitive development. In D. Rogers & J. A. Sloboda (Eds.), The acquisition of symbolic skills (pp. 207-214). New York: Plenum Press. Bonvillian, J. D., & Patterson, F. G. P. (1993). Early sign language acquisition in children and gorillas: Vocabulary content and sign iconicity. First Language, 13, 315-338. Brown, R. (1977). Why are signed languages easier to learn than spoken languages? In W. C. Stokoe (Ed.), Proceedings of the National Symposium on Sign Language Research and Training (pp. 9-24). Silver Spring, MD: National Association of the Deaf. Bruner, J. S. (1978, September). Learning the mother tongue. Human Nature, 42-49. Cattell, P. (1940). The measurement of intelligence of infants and young children. New York: The Psychological Corporation.

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Chevalier-Skolnikoff, S. (1977). A Piagetian model for describing and comparing socialization in monkey, ape, and human infants. In S. Chevalier-Skolnikoff & F. E. Poirier (Eds.), Primate bio-social development: Biological, social, and

ecological determinants (pp. 159-187). New York: Garland Publishing. Chevalier-Skolnikoff, S. (1979). Kids: Zoo research reveals remarkable similarities in the development of human and orangutan babies...and one very special difference. Animal Kingdom, 82, 11-18. Chevalier-Skolnikoff, S. (1981). The Clever-Hans phenomenon, cuing, and ape signing:

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T. A. Sebeok & R. Rosenthal (Eds.), The Clever Hans phenomenon:

Communication with horses, whales, apes, and people (pp. 60-93). Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 364. New York: New York Academy of Sciences Clark, E. V. (1973). What's in a word? On the child's acquisition of semantics in his first language.

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acquisition of language (pp. 65-110). New York: Academic Press. Darwin, C. (1871). The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex (Vol. 1). London: John Murray. Dore, J. (1974). A pragmatic description of early language development. Journal

of Psycholinguistic Research, 3, 343-351. Dore, J. (1975). Holophrases, speech acts, and language universals. Journal of

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mental Psychology, 27, 806-816. Fouts, R. S. (1973).

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281-290. Gardner, B. T., & Gardner, R. A. (1971). Two-way communication with an infant chimpanzee.

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primates (Vol. 4, pp. 117-184). New York: Academic Press. Hayes, C. (1951). The ape in our house. New York: Harper. Kellogg, W. N., & Kellogg, L. A. (1933). The ape and the child. New York: McGraw-Hill. Klima, E. S., & Bellugi, U. (1979).

The signs of language.

Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press. Konstantareas, M. M., Oxman, J., & Webster, C. D. (1978). Iconicity: Effects on the acquisition of sign language by autistic and other severely dysfunctional children.

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research (pp. 213-237). New York: Academic Press. Lieberman, P. (1968).

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Orlansky, M. D., & BonviUian, J. D. (1984). The role of iconicity in early sign language acquisition. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 49, 287-292. Patterson, F. G. (1978). The gestures of a gorilla:

Language acquisition in

another pongid. Brain and Language, 5, 72-97. Patterson, F. G. (1979).

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dissertation, Stanford University, 1979). Dissertation Abstracts International,

40, 977B. Patterson, F. G. P., & Cohn, R. H. (1990). Language acquisition by a lowland gorilla: Koko's first ten years of vocabulary development. Word, 41, 97-143. Patterson, F., & Linden, E. (1981). The Education of Koko. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. Patterson, F., Tanner, J., & Mayer, N. (1988).

Pragmatic analysis of gorilla

utterances: Early communicative development in the gorilla Koko. Journal of

Pragmatics, 12, 35-54. Piaget, J. (1962). Play, dreams, and imitation in childhood. New York: Norton. (Original work published 1945) Piaget, J. (1963).

The origins of intelligence in children. New York: Norton.

(Original work published 1936) Redshaw, M. (1978).

Cognitive development in human and gorilla infants.

Journal of Human Evolution, 7, 133-141. Stokoe, W. C., Jr. (1960). Sign language structure:

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communication systems of the American deaf. Studies in Linguistics, Occa-

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can Sign Language on linguistic principles.

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Uzgiris, I. C., & Hunt, J. McV. (1975). Assessment in infancy: Ordinal scales of psychological development. Urbana: University of Illinois. Wilbur, R. B. (1987). American Sign Language: Linguistic and applied dimensions (2nd ed.). Boston: College Hill.

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The Problem of Meaning: Behavioral and Cognitive Perspectives C. Mandell and A. McCabe (Editors) 9 1997 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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CHAPTER 6 Input and the Acquisition of Vocabulary: Examining the Parental Lexicon

JEAN BERKO GLEASON

Boston University and RICHARD ELY

Boston University

INTRODUCTION In this chapter, we provide a sociocognitive perspective on the acquisition of vocabulary by young children. Three facets of the lexicon are under consideration: First, we examine the core vocabulary, the most common words in the language, words that are provided by all parents and learned by all children; next we move to two delimited domains, the lexicon of basic color words, and the lexicon of monetary terms. We use two data sets from the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES), the Gleason Corpus and the New England Sample, to consider the relation between parents' input language and children's acquisition of a core vocabulary, as well as acquisition of specific color and monetary terms. Our findings suggest that, although children universally possess cognitive propensities that predict the order of acquisition of vocabulary, adults' language to children reflects and accentuates a similar hierarchy. Moreover, examination of the input vocabulary shows that the emphasis and elaboration provided by adults within a given domain varies with the cultural importance of the domain.

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CORE VOCABULARY How uniform are adults in the words they use when speaking to young children? And when adults in a given situation are talking to children acquiring language, how big is the total pool of words from which they draw?

Little

is known about the total vocabulary that adults use when speaking to young children; and estimating the size of children's vocabularies, which must derive from the adult speech they hear, is notoriously difficult (Anglin, 1993; Lorge & Chall, 1963).

Many researchers have now documented the fact that input

language to children, or child-directed speech (CDS), has predictable syntactic consistencies, such as well formedness, simple sentences, and lack of embedded phrases (Bohannon & Warren-Leubecker, 1988; Snow & Ferguson, 1977). Consistent phonological features have also been described, features that vary with the age of the child addressee (Bernstein Ratner, 1984). For example, such features as slow rate and exaggerated intonation are much more pronounced in speech directed to infants than in speech directed to preschoolers. Whereas not all adults use all of the grammatical and phonological features of CDS, it is fairly safe to say that at least some features are, if not universal, at least pervasive: For instance in our culture, almost all adults use a higher pitched voice and avoid complex syntactic structures when addressing 2-year-olds. They also provide these modifications quite consistently--that is, almost any sample of speech to a 2-year-old is marked by characteristic phonological and syntactic features.

Given these consistencies, we hypothesized that adults talking to

children would also be consistent lexically; that is, we hypothesized that children in our culture all hear a basic, or core, vocabulary, as well as predictable and basic syntax. There is an extensive literature on the topic of the basic object level (Mervis & Bertrand, 1993; Rosch, Mervis, Gray, Johnson & Boyes-Braem, 1976), and on the cognitive similarities across children that might dictate the kinds of words adults use when speaking to them. Basic object level terms are defined as those

I n p u t a n d the Acquisition of Vocabulary

223

words t h a t are at the level of abstraction most useful to the speakers employing them.

For instance, in everyday speech we would probably refer to a one cent

coin as penny, r a t h e r t h a n as either money (too general) or as an uncirculated 1993 Lincoln penny (too specific), whereas we might use one of these alternate terms in speech to an infant, and the other to a n u m i s m a t i s t (Brown, 1958).

Our

first assumption was t h a t if one puts some toys, a 2-year-old, and a p a r e n t in a room together with instructions to, for instance, "play store" for 10 minutes we could predict t h a t the adult would utter some appropriate basic object level words such as store and money during t h a t period of time.

For the purposes of this

paper, we will refer to those words t h a t are used by each and every parent as core words. Ultimately, our aim has been not just to know if adults in a particular situation use a predictable vocabulary. lexical content of CDS.

Instead, our goal was to describe the

We wanted to be able to estimate the size and composi-

tion of the lexicon t h a t children hear in the speech addressed to t h e m as they, themselves, acquire language. There are m a n y theoretical and practical ramifications of this work. language acquisition.

Studying parents' lexicons is one way of studying children's What, for instance, is the relation between the lexicon of

CDS and children's own lexical development?

Presumably, the words t h a t

children hear from the adults around t h e m are the words t h a t become their receptive v o c a b u l a r i e s ~ a t least this m u s t be so until such time as children begin to acquire new words from peers, television, or reading. We know t h a t by the time children enter school, some of t h e m are relatively advanced lexically, and some are so far behind t h a t they may never catch up; for children whose school-related lexicons are not sufficient to ensure success in the elementary grades, specific vocabulary instruction can only provide a fraction of the words t h a t are ordinarily learned incidentally.

Are the vocabulary dissimilarities t h a t have been docu-

mented among young children reflections only of innate individual differences, or are they also related to parental input language?

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224

This research was undertaken to determine if adults in the same situation do indeed use the same vocabulary when addressing young children. Core Studies 1 and 2 address this question; in Core Study 3 we devised a procedure t h a t allowed us to estimate the size and content of the total lexicon t h a t children might be exposed to in a particular situation.

Core Study 1 Core Study 1 addresses the question posed above: If we put a parent, a 2year- old, and some toys together with instructions to play, can we predict what words the parent will use? Is there, in this sense, a core vocabulary common to all parents in a given situation? In this study we analyzed the lexicons of 6 mothers and 6 fathers of the youngest children in the Gleason Corpus of CHILDES, speaking to their children in separate sessions in a laboratory playroom. Child subjects were 3 girls and 3 boys, with a mean age of 29 months.

All families in

this corpus were white, middle class, and well-educated. Each child was seen twice in a laboratory playroom, once with the mother and once with the father, where, among other activities that will be described later,

they were instructed to play "store." The playroom was furnished with

suitable props, including boxes of various foods, a cash register, and money. Each store session lasted approximately 10 minutes, and was videotaped and audiotaped. Transcripts of the sessions were prepared according to CHILDES guidelines (MacWhinney & Snow, 1990). In order to examine the parental lexicon, a list of all the words used by each parent was obtained using the frequency (FREQ) program of the CHILDES system.

The FREQ program provides an alphabetized list of all the different

words (types) used in a transcript, as well as a total count of all the words used (tokens).

In our analyses we compared the lists of the parents' word types to

determine the degree of lexical overlap in the parents' vocabularies. Results indicated that there was little overlap among parents: Only 4% of

Input and the Acquisition of Vocabulary

Shared

Total Word types: 767 Shared Types: 34 (4% Figure 1. Lexical Input to 2-Year Olds. Word types used by every parent.

e

ds

Total Tokens = 10368 Figure 2. Core Words as a proportion of total tokens used by parents.

225

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226

the combined word types used by all parents were core words, i.e., words used by each and every parent. As Figure 1 shows, of a total of 767 different words used by the parents in the store situation, only 34 words were used by every mother and father.

These words are listed in Table 1. Although the group of

word types that appears in every parent's speech is small, these core words are used very frequently.

In fact 47% of the total number of word tokens

the children heard were core words, repeated over and over, as shown in Figure 2. As might be expected, most of the core words in this situation were function words, but some content words ( e.g., put, see, and know) were also used by all parents. Contrary to expectation, some of the basic object level words that were most salient to the activity were not used by all parents.

For instance, even

though the parents were instructed to play store, and they all did so, they did not all use the word store; instead, some parents used the words supermarket, bakery,

TABLE 1 Core words: Word types used by all parents "playing store"

a at can do don't for have here how I I'll in

is it it's know let's like me of oh okay put

see some that that's the there this to what what's you

Input and the Acquisition of Vocabulary

227

and grocery. Nine of the 12 parents did use the word store, however. Parents typically structured this situation into a scenario in which they took turns with the child, playing customer and salesperson.

The salesperson or cashier was

referred to as storeman, seller, store owner, store keeper, and cashier. Thus, specific semantic information may be conveyed with words drawn from quite different levels by parents speaking to 2-year-olds. We also looked at the children's words in this situation. There were only six core words in the children's speech: a, here, I, it, no, and yeah. Five of these were also parental core words. The one word used by every one of these 2-yearolds that was not used by all parents was no.

Core Study 2 Core Study 1 revealed considerable diversity in the lexicons parents directed to their young children.

We reasoned that one explanation for this

diversity was the relatively unstructured nature of the setting. Therefore, in Core Study 2, we used data drawn from a more highly structured situation. Subjects for Core Study 2 were 40 white, middle- and working-class mothers with their 20-month-old children drawn from the New England Sample in the CHILDES database. study of child development.

These subjects were participants in a longitudinal The data that were analyzed were drawn from

videotaped observations of a tightly structured laboratory visit.

Children and

mothers were instructed to play with a limited number of objects, and thus had fewer opportunities for the kind of imaginative play and lexical diversity that we had seen in the store situation.

Since the children were younger than those in

Core Study 1, and their play was more constrained, we anticipated finding a larger core vocabulary than we had found in Core Study 1. Again, contrary to expectation, less than 1% of the total word types were used by all 40 mothers.

The only core content word used by all mothers was put;

all other core words were function words. Of the children, 35 of 40 said ball, and

Gleason and Ely

228

33 said no. These results indicate that even in a highly structured situation one cannot predict that all children will hear a specific basic level word, even one like

ball that is acquired early by most children. We then asked if there were another way to estimate the lexicon to which children are exposed in interaction with their parents.

Core S t u d y 3 Since a large core vocabulary was not uncovered in Core Studies 1 and 2, this study was designed to approach the question from a different direction. Our earlier finding that there was little overlap among parents in a one-time laboratory situation led to the hypothesis that we would need to sample a parent's speech in the same situation more than one time if we wanted to identify all the words that a child is likely to hear in that situation.

Sampling a parent's speech

just once may provide a restricted picture of the nature of the input vocabulary; for example, even though all parents did not say money in the store situation, this is undoubtedly a word that they all use to their children at some time.

If we

brought parents back 5 or 10 times they would surely at some point say money. We made the additional assumption that parents are enough like one another in their CDS vocabularies tha~ sampling a number of parents once would be similar to sampling one parent many times. Subjects were the same 40 mother-child pairs observed in Core Study 2. We analyzed data obtained at two ages, when the children were 14- and 20months old. In order to assess the size and content of the CDS vocabulary, we employed the technique of pooling the speech samples across families one at a time; that is, we obtained the vocabulary of two mothers, then three mothers, and so on, additively, until we had the total vocabulary of the entire sample of 40 mothers.

We were then able to determine the number of different word types

added by each mother at each data point, as shown in Figure 3. Using this approach, we addressed two questions. First, is there a point at

Input and the Acquisition of Vocabulary

229

1400 1200 e~ ),.. L_

100 80

k.

60 40 20

i•

--u- 20 months

5

10

15 20 25 30 35 40 Number of mothers pooled Subjects = 40 Mothers

45

Figure 3. Cumulative total of words spoken to 14- and 20-month olds which the number of new words contributed by an added mother becomes negligible? And, second, is this point different for mothers speaking to 14- and to 20- month-old children? Results indicate that 14-month-olds heard a total of 1158 different word types in this play situation, and 20-month-olds heard 1323. At both ages, there is a leveling off in the increase to the pool of new words at about 20 mothers. As can be seen in Figure 3, at 14 months there are approximately 1000 word types after pooling the words of the first 20 mothers. At 20 months there are about 1100 at the same leveling-off point. At both ages, the vocabulary inventory accumulates rapidly with the first 20 mothers. The additional lexicon that is obtained after the first 20 mothers' words have been pooled is much smaller and more idiosyncratic, consisting primarily of personal vocabulary items such as family names. At 14 months, each of the first

Gleason and Ely

230

20 mothers adds an average of 35 new words; each of the second 20 mothers adds an average of only 9 new word types. At 20 months, the frrst 20 mothers each add an additional 42 words, and the second 20 add an average of 11.

There is

obviously some variability among the mothers, with some adding more word types than others. However, regardless of the order in which we computed each mother's incremental contribution, the rate of increase levels off after the frrst 20 mothers. In addition to the analyses described above, we tallied the words that appeared relatively more pervasively in this CDS lexicon.

Specifically, we

tabulated the words that were used by 20 or more mothers to their 20-month-olds and coded them as verbs, function words, modifiers, nouns, and miscellaneous words, as can be seen in Table 2.

In speech to the 20-month-olds, this list

includes 137 words; in speech to the 14 month olds, the number of words used pervasively is 123.

Discussion: Core Vocabulary Is it surprising that 20-month-olds may hear any one of over a thousand different words in a brief play situation? Not when we consider the ultimate size of children's vocabularies.

Children are surrounded by a sea of words, most of

which will ultimately be added to their vocabularies.

However, some of those

words are heard much more frequently than others at any given age. We began these studies asking about uniformity in adults' speech to young children in a given situation, and if there were a way of estimating the size of the vocabulary pool from which adults might draw. It turns out that both of those questions are important to answer, because there is variability in what adults say when speaking to young children. One cannot guarantee that adults playing store with a 2-year-old will say the word store or that mothers playing with a ball with their 20 month olds will say the word ball. On the other hand, the input lexicon is not totally unpredictable: 9 out of 12 parents who played store with

Input and the Acquisition of Vocabulary

231

their children did say store and 39 out of 40 mothers who played ball with their child did say ball. Some words are said frequently, and the presence of variability gives us an opportunity to have a first attempt to estimate what the limits of the CDS potential vocabulary might be in a situation. Our results show that for 20month-olds, parents draw from a vocabulary of over 1300 different words when they play with them in a brief structured situation, and there is a body of about 150 words that are used very frequently. Children's productive vocabularies are often thought to be a good reflection of their cognitive capacity, linguistic stage, and way of organizing the world; but there are phonological, memorial, and even preferential constraints on the kinds of words children produce. Even though children may not yet produce them, the words they hear most frequently are the most frequent words of the language, the function words that are associated with the syntax that every child acquires. When we look at the substantive words in parents' speech to even very young children we find that these are not limited to the basic object level. Children, in fact, hear a variety of words for the same referents, even at very early ages.

COLOR WORDS IN PARENT-CHILD CONVERSATIONS We turn now to the delimited lexicons of color terms and monetary terms. Examining the color terms used by parents is of particular interest, since a universal hierarchy of color term acquisition by children has been posited, based on presumed cognitive constraints, whereas there has been essentially no prior research on the nature of the color term lexicon parents draw upon when talking to children. Color terms are an essential component of children's developing lexicons. In order to use color terms appropriately, children must learn the words themselves, as well as how to apply them correctly to various referents in their surroundings. A number of authors have proposed that children's acquisition of color

232

Gleasonand Ely TABLE 2

Words used by 50% or more of mothers of 20 month olds in a structured play session

Nouns (N = 25) book (39) ball (39) box (39) baby (35) crayon (34) mommy (34) duck (34) paper (32) chair (32)

car (31) color (28) kitty (27) kangaroo (27) something (26) picture (26) toy (24) thing (24) jack-in-the-box (24)

bunny (23) bear (23) way (22) pig (21) hand (21) donkey (21) animal (20)

Verbs (N = 29) put (40) see (39) look (39) go (39) want (38) play (38) like (38) let (37) come (37) say (36)

get (36) sit (35) know (35) throw (32) draw (31) read (29) turn (28) take (28) make (28) think (27)

hold (23) wanna (22) try (22) got (22) watch (21) thank (21) catch (21) wait (20) gonna (20)

some (31) too (30) again (30) other (29) little (29) away (29)

nice (27) else (27) just (26) pretty (23) well (22) big (21) ready (20)

Modifiers (N = 19) right (37) one (37) all (37) good (36) more (32) another (32)

Input and the Acquisition of Vocabulary

233

Table 2 (cont.)

Functors (N -- 55) what (40) this (40) the (40) that (40) is (40) it (40) in (40) I (40) you (39) we (39) to (39) there (39) here (39) do (39)

can (39) a (39) with (38) at (38) are (38) and (38) where (37) us (37) on (37) have (37) back (37) your (36) up (36) of (36)

me (36) has (26) an (25) will (24) who (24) they (24) him (24) but (24) be (24) then (23) his (23) her (23) she (21) about (20)

no (39) huh (33) peekaboo (32)

hmm (27) yes (20) meow (20)

Miscellaneous ( N = 9 ) oh (40) yeah (39) okay (39)

Note. Number in parentheses represents the number of mothers (out of 40) who used the word. terms mirrors a universal color hierarchy. The color hierarchy most frequently investigated both cross culturally and developmentally was proposed by Berlin and Kay in 1969 after they had examined the lexicons of nearly 100 languages. These researchers found 11 basic color terms used by the languages of the world. According to their hierarchy, black and white are the most universal terms. If a language has 3 color terms it is likely to have black, white and red. The presence of color terms like pink or grey in the lexicon of a language presupposes the prior existence of hierarchically more basic terms.

234

Gleason and Ely Other researchers, for instance Miller and Johnson-Laird (1976) have

proposed that of the 11 basic colors, 6 are landmark, or very basic colors, that children learn first because they are in some sense more salient.

Miller and

Johnson-Laird go so far as to propose that the basic 6 landmark colors have neurophysiological correlates that contribute to their saliency for human beings. These first 6 landmark colors of the hierarchy are black, white, red, green, yellow, blue, and brown.

The Berlin and Kay hierarchy, divided into landmark and

secondary colors, can be seen in Table 3. The conceptual basis for the acquisition of color terminology has been investigated in a number of laboratory studies (Andrick & Tager-Flusberg 1986; Bartlett, 1977; Carey & Bartlett 1978).

Andrick and Tager-Flusberg, for in-

stance, found that very young children tended to be able to name some primary colors, and they were better able to name focal colors (e.g., very red reds) than less prototypical exemplars of the color. These authors found only moderate support for the Berlin and Kay universal order hypothesis, and they also found that there were large discrepancies between ch~dren's comprehension and production of color terms. Laboratory studies of this sort have provided limited confirmation of predictions based on either universal hierarchies or cognitive strategies.

TABLE 3 The Universal Color Hierarchy (Berlin & Kay, 1969)

Landmark colors Blackm~ W h i t e - - ~ R e d - - ~ Green--~ Yellow--~ B l u e - - ~ Brown

Secondary colors P u r p l e - - ~ P i n k - - ~ Orange--~ Grey

Color

Input and the Acquisition of Vocabulary

235

terms in the language children hear from those around them, particularly parental use of color terms has been little studied, although an examination of color terms in the input to Brown's subjects Adam, Eve, and Sarah by Andrick and Tager-Flusberg (1986) indicated a correlation between maternal and child use.

Other authors, such as Shatz and her colleagues (Shatz, Behrend, Gelman, and Ebeling, 1996) have also shown that schooling makes a difference in young children's knowledge of color terms. These authors point out that there have been cohort changes in children's knowledge of color terms. For instance, they cite work by Miller and Johnson-Laird (1976) that when our grandparents were children, 80 or 90 years ago, children could not name the basic colors red, yellow, blue, and green until they were about 7-years-old; by the 1970s, much younger children, 4year-olds, were able to name these basic colors. This earlier age at which children could name the colors may have come about because the generation of the 70's had all had experience with crayons and coloring activities.

The age at which

children know color words continues to decline---now in the 1990s, children of 3 perform better than 4-year-olds did in the 1970s, and 7-year-olds did at the turn of the century. Current age norms for the production of common color terms are now included in the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory (Fenson, Dale, Reznick, Bates, Thal, and Pethick, 1994), and they indicate that the first color words now appear in children's vocabularies when they are less than two years old. This generation is more likely to have attended a preschool than children of the 1970s, and they have all been exposed to educational television shows such as Sesame Street. Since explicit teaching and the availability of crayons seems to affect children's knowledge of color terms, it is clear that an explanation of color term acquisition from a strictly neurocognitive perspective is insufficient. Environmental factors, such as the input children receive in school and through television, are important.

Of course, parental input is also important.

As we

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noted earlier, Andrick and Tager-Flusberg (1986) found a correlation between the color words used by the mothers and those used by their children in Roger Brown's original Adam and Eve and Sarah corpus. But no larger investigation of parental input with respect to color terms has been conducted. In particular, if a universal set of terms is learned by children, it is of some interest to find out what terms children are hearing from their parents as they acquire their lexicons. It is also of interest to know which color terms children actually use in their own speech during everyday activities, and how that compares with the color words that parents use in speech to them.

Thus, the purpose of this study was to investi-

gate the spontaneous use of color terminology in a sample of children and parents so that the role of input in the acquisition of color terms could be more adequately addressed. In addition to the questions about the relations between the proposed universal hierarchy and parents' use of color terms, we were also interested in finding any gender differences in the speech of parents or in speech to girls and boys, since there are some longstanding claims in the literature about differential use of color terms by males and females in our society (Lakoff, 1975).

Subjects and Procedure: Color Words As in Core Study 1, the subjects for this study were drawn from the Gleason Corpus. However, in this project we included the entire sample of 24 preschool-age children (12 boys and 12 girls) and their parents.

For the full

sample, children's ages ranged from 25 to 62 months, with a mean age of 42 months. We also used transcripts of the entire laboratory observation, not just the store segment, as we had done in Core Study 1. To reiterate, the children were seen individually in a laboratory playroom twice, once with the child's mother and once with the father, for a half-hour play session each time. On each occasion, the parent and child played with a toy auto, "played store" as described earlier, and read a wordless picture book. No attempt was made to elicit color terminology, and no obviously color-related activity (e.g., coloring with crayons)

Input and the Acquisition of Vocabulary was included. dinner.

237

Twenty-two of these same families were recorded at a family

Transcripts of the dinners and laboratory sessions were analyzed for

parents' and children's use of color words.

Results: Color Words

Results indicated that the color words used by parents and children were exactly the ones designated by Berlin and Kay and noted above, with the exception of grey, the lowest term in the hierarchy. Thus, 10 of the 11 color terms in the Berlin and Kay hierarchy were used by these 24 families. In terms of pervasiveness, 23 of these 24 families used at least some color terms. In terms of overall frequency, the color term most commonly used by all speakers in all situations was red. Blue, and green came next.

The order of

frequency of the color terms used by all speakers in the 24 families can be seen in Table 4. Note again that these are 10 of the 11 colors of the color hierarchy, with only grey, the last color of the hierarchy, not represented. The frequency of use by individual speaker category (mothers, fathers, and children) are listed in Table 5. Note that children used as many different color terms as parents, 10 of the 11 of the Berlin and Kay hierarchy.

Table 5 also includes the age norms for the

production of color terms that were reported by Fenson et al. (1994). There were no gender differences, either in the numbers of color terms addressed to boys and girls, in the numbers produced by girls and boys, or in the speech of mothers and fathers. In the laboratory visits, parents and children used a total of 213 color word tokens (total color words). Mothers produced 71 color terms and fathers produced 77. Girls produced 39 and boys produced 26, a nonsignificant difference. Thus, if there is any reality to the stereotypical notion that females are more attuned to color than males, this is not apparent in speech to these preschoolers, or in their own speech. In looking qualitatively at the data we found that the parents engaged in many teaching episodes, not called for by the situation, including naming colors

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Gleasonand Ely TABLE 4

Frequency of use (in descending order) of color terms by all speakers across all observations

Red Blue Green Yellow Black Orange White Brown, Purple Pink

parent and child were looking at the picture book). Test questions of this type constituted 14% of the parents' u s e of color terms.

The following exchange

between a mother and her daughter is an example in which color terms and test questions are emphasized:

Mother:

... is this a different color than we usually have?

Patricia:

(incomprehensible)

Mother:

What color is the apple?

Patricia:

Us [it's] green.

Mother:

It's green, right! And what color apples do we usually have?

Patricia:

Red.

Mother:

Red, right. So these are a little different. (Patricia, Dinner) 1

Sometimes color terms were used in conjunction with even more complex teaching. In the following example, a father quizzes his 4-year-old son not just

Input and the Acquisition of Vocabulary

239

TABLE 5 Frequency of use of color words by speaker category and age norms for color words

Note.

Parents

Children

Production norms

blue red green yellow black orange white brown purple pink

red blue green orange black yellow white purple pink brown

blue (22 months) red (23 months) orange (23 months) green (25 months) yellow (25 months) white (27 months) brown (28 months) black (29 months)

Production norms based on the criterion of appearance in 50% of the sample. The upper age limit of the assessment was 30 months (Fenson et al., 1994).

about the identity of the berries he is about to eat for dinner, but he calls attention to the morphological components of the words in the child's lexicon, noting that blueberries are indeed blue.

Note t h a t this example also has registral

features t h a t are more typical of fathers t h a n mothers, particularly in speech to their sons; the father uses a style that is mildly sarcastic, one that unhesitatingly tells the child how wrong he is.

Father:

What do you call this, those?

Bobby:

Strawberries.

Father:

No way! Try again. What color are they?

Bobby:

Um ... bwue [blue].

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Gleason and Ely Father:

So what do they call 'em?

Bobby:

Blueberries.

Father:

Right.

Bobby:

Blueberries. (Bobby, laboratory visit with Father)

A less sardonic example can be seen in the following exchange between a father and his 3-year-old daughter:

Katie:

Here's your cup.

Father:

Do you wanna have the big cup?

Katie:

Yep. You have the ... cup.

Father:

All right, H1 have the blue ... What color is this one?

Katie:

It's wed [red].

Father:

It's blue.

Katie:

No.

Father:

Can you say blue?

Katie:

Yep. (Katie, laboratory visit with Father)

In this segment, the father and daughter are in the laboratory, having an imaginary meal.

The father asks the test question ("What color is the cup?").

When the child provides the wrong color, he corrects her (without adding "No way,

try again" as in the previous example), and then provides the indirect directive "Can you say blue?"; the child does not appear to understand the directive nature of the question, and responds to it as if it were a simple yes/no question. She says

'Tep:

I n p u t and the Acquisition of Vocabulary

241

D i s c u s s i o n : Color Words

It is clear from this study of 24 families that color words and concepts are important to parents and children in our society. Essentially all families used color terms, and parents went out of their way to teach children color words by calling attention to colors and by asking test questions.

The terms are used

pervasively, and in situations where adults would not typically call attention to color in speech to one another; for instance in one transcript a father says to his daughter while reading the book: "That's a pretty flower.

That's a pretty orange

flower." A little later he says '7 think he's got a big yellow whistle", referring to a picture of a policeman in the book.

Use of color terms in this fashion thus

appears to be one feature of the CDS register that has not previously been noted. Although we found pervasive use of color terms, we did not find differences based on the gender of the parent or of the child. If there are gender differences in the use of color terms, they must emerge aider the preschool years. These data indicate that the preschool years are a time when parents are anxious for all children to know the basic colors, and there is not one single usage in the 70 transcripts we analyzed of any color other than the 10 most frequent terms of the Berlin and Kay hierarchy. Finally, we must say a word about the universal color terms proposed by Berlin and Kay and others. These researchers make a strong prediction about the presence of basic color terms, or landmark color terms, in the languages of the world. They also claim that color words will appear in a particular order as a language evolves, and that children's acquisition of color terms will mirror that order. Our present work strongly supports the presence of a restricted set of basic color words. The color terms used by children and parents in our observations are limited to those basic terms identified by Berlin and Kay, and no others. However, the universal order proposed by Berlin and Kay is not the same order

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that we found in the frequency of spontaneous production by children and parents. Berlin and Kay proposed that black and white are the most basic of the terms, Black and white were not the most fre-

and presumably the earliest acquired.

quent color terms used by our subjects. Of course we were not testing comprehension and it is possible that children understand black and white early on, even if they do not produce the terms as oi~en as others. In our data, the terms most frequently used by parents were blue and red; the terms most frequently used by children were red and blue, and, according to published norms (Fenson, et al., 1994), blue and red are also the earliest acquired by English speaking children. In fact the production norms show blue and red appearing at the ages of 22 and 23 months, whereas white and black are not seen in production until an average age of 27 months for white and 29 months for black. Parents use red and blue most frequently and children appear to acquire these words earlier than other color words and to use them more frequently than other color words.

Thus, although children's neurological and cognitive propensities

may be important prerequisites for the acquisition of color terms, the role of parental input cannot be ignored. The basic color terms acquired by children are exactly those terms that are used and emphasized by their parents. ***

Our final look at the lexicon involves another category that (at least in our society) is very important to parents and, eventually, to children: money.

MONEY WORDS IN PARENT-CHILD CONVERSATIONS Acquiring knowledge about money and achieving competence in managing money are important developmental tasks all children face. At the very least, children must learn the rudiments of buying and selling, including the names for coins and bills.

In order to accomplish this task, children must come to an

understanding of a relatively unique "object" in their environment. Unlike many other real objects, the primary function of money is social--it serves as a symbol

Input and the Acquisition of Vocabulary of exchange (Csikszentmihalyi & Rochberg-Halton, 1981).

243

Thus, in order to

master the concept of money, children need to learn about both its physical properties (e.g., the difference between a nickel and a dime) as well as its social functions (e.g., buying, selling).

However, we currently know very little about

children's early experiences with money. For example, we do not know to what degree parents expose their children to statements or explanations about money. Nor do we know to what degree parents convey social and cultural attitudes about money to children. In order to address these questions, we present analyses of conversations between parents and young children, focusing specifically on the vocabulary or lexicon of moneymthe words children are exposed to and the words they themselves use.

In this study, we examine whether, and in what way,

families with young children talk about money in everyday conversations, in this case, at the dinner table.

We then investigate how these same families talk

about money when they '~play store" in the laboratory setting we have described earlier when discussing core vocabulary and color terminology. There is a small body of research that describes children's knowledge of and attitude toward money.

From a cognitive perspective, researchers have

focused primarily on children's understanding of the origins of money and the concept of buying and selling (Berti & Bombi, 1981; Furth, Baur & Smith, 1976). For example, Furth and his colleagues (Furth, Baur & Smith, 1976) found that children below the age of six years believe that money comes from the "change" received after purchases, and that the function of a store is to provide goods as well as to provide money in the form of "change" (p. 354). Only later do they understand that money is earned through work. Children's understanding of buying and selling also shows a developmental progression. Using a Piagetian framework, Berti and Bombi (1981) described several stages through which children pass. At the youngest ages (between three and five years) children exhibit little understanding of the necessity of making payments in exchange for goods. Later, children understand that payment must be made, but they have little concept of

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price or cost. By the time children are seven, most appear to have a good grasp of the basic aspects of buying and selling, including the concepts of paying and receiving change (Wimmer, 1979). Children's cognitive development is likely to be reflected in their language. Thus the use of monetary terms describing more complex concepts (e.g., change) can be viewed as an indication of a more sophisticated understanding of the monetary domain. Gentner (1975) conducted a study of children's early understanding of the verbs buy, sell, pay and spend. She studied children between the ages of three and eight and found that they correctly comprehended the verb pay before they understood buy.

However, throughout this age range, children

displayed only partial understanding of the verb sell. Her results supported her semantic component theory, which holds that verbs based on more complex componential structures (e.g., sell: X sells Z 1 to Y for Z 2 [money]) are acquired only after verbs with simpler structures (e.g., pay: X pays Z to Y) Other work within the field of semantic development provides a general model for children's acquisition of monetary terms, and proposes a number of principles that underlie lexical development (Clark, 1993; Markman, 1989; Merriman & Bowman, 1989). As we noted earlier, some researchers have claimed that both mothers' speech to children (their input lexicons) and the early productive lexicons of children are composed primarily of basic object level terms (Hall, 1994; Mervis & Mervis, 1982). Again, basic object level terms include words like

flower and dog, rather than words like rose or schnauzer, and they seem to reflect the way that children themselves categorize the world. Another principle that is felt to guide early lexical acquisition is children's belief that there is no overlap between words; the young child believes that each word has a separate meaning (Clark, 1993). Thus, when young children hear what they know as money referred to also as pennies, nickels, or dimes they must determine the appropriate referents for these new terms, and, in time, learn the

Input and the Acquisition of Vocabulary more subtle distinctions embodied in each money term.

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Mervis & Mervis (1982)

found that mothers tended to restrict their use of labels to the child's basic object level until their children demonstrated productive mastery at this level.

Only

then did the mothers begin to use terms at other levels. It is interesting to note that only three monetary terms (buy, money, penny) are included in the age norms for words produced by children under the age of 30 months that we cited earlier (Fenson et al., 1994). The studies reviewed above have shown that children between the ages of two and five years have a rudimentary grasp of monetary concepts, and that parents' and children's speech about money follows a developmental progression. For example, basic object level terms like money and semantically simple verbs like buy are the first to appear. The overall goal of this study is to arrive at a better understanding of how parents and young children talk about money. We focus primarily on the lexicon of parents and children, specifically on their use of monetary terms. Although our study was exploratory in nature, we did hypothesize that when speaking to their children about money, parents would focus on elementary concepts (e.g., identifying coins, what it means to buy something). We anticipated that the youngest children would hear and would themselves use the simplest lexicons.

Older

children would be exposed to more complex concepts (e.g., what change is) and would themselves use larger and more complex lexicons. We also considered that there might be gender differences in parents' speech to children.

Previous work (Gleason, 1975; Mannle & Tomasello, 1987;

Perlmann & Gleason, 1993) has shown that fathers are less sensitive to their children's linguistic abilities than are mothers.

In addition, fathers are more

likely to use complex terms than mothers when speaking to their children (Gleason, 1975; Ratner, 1988). Thus we expected that mothers would "tune" their lexical input to the child's understanding more than fathers, and that fathers would use a more complex vocabulary when speaking to their children than would

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246

mothers. Finally, having previously observed many teaching episodes involving colors, we wondered if parents explicitly teach their children about monetary concepts.

Subjects and Procedure: Money Words Subjects were the same 24 white middle class families with children between the age of 25 and 62 months, drawn from the Gleason Corpus in CHILDES. Both the laboratory and dinner observations were used. For our analyses, we extracted from the data all those words that could be used as monetary terms (e.g., buy, dollar, cash, dime, change, quarter)? We then examined each use of the term in context and excluded all instances in which the term was not used as a monetary term (e.g., we excluded "This morning we had to change his pants ,

because he had orange juice all over them").

In this way we compiled lists of

monetary terms used by each parent and each child at each observation. These lists included the number of different word types (e.g., money is one word type and

dollar is another) as well as the number of word tokens (e.g., all the occurrences of dollar as well as dollars). We also examined qualitatively each use of a monetary term in its original context, looking for evaluative comments about money as well as for episodes in which parents explicitly instructed their children about money terms and values.

Results: Money Words Although talk about money at dinner was not extensive, it did occur at least minimally in most, but not all, families. In 19 of 22 families there was at least one use of a money term.

Many parents used money terms, including 16

mothers and 11 fathers. However, only 8 children actually used money terms. In general, talk about money at the dinner table did not directly involve the child. Given the small number of terms across families, no quantitative analyses were conducted.

Input and the Acquisition of Vocabulary

247

Qualitatively, there were two notable aspects of the dinner table conversations. First, parents' lexicons contained a number of relatively rare or infrequently used words, as can been seen in the following excerpt:

Mother:

You know this surcharge thing that everybody got back? Well he counted that as, as how much, as part of our

overpayment so that we reduced our estimator. (Frank)

Although these words were not part of discourse directed specifically to children, they may serve as '~rare events" that prime children's conceptual development (Carey & Bartlett, 1978). At a minimum, they demonstrate that very young children are exposed to a fairly complex lexicon of monetary terms. Dinnertime talk also included a proportionately greater number of evaluative statements t h a n was found in the laboratory sessions.

Parents often

discussed the value or relative cost of products and services. The focus of these conversations ranged from bids on building projects and concerns about tax payments to mundane issues like the price of applesauce:

Father:

I tell you, brown applesauce is cheaper. Plus I like it better.

Mother:

I don't know if it's cheaper. (Martin)

Only occasionally did these evaluative conversations directly involve children. However, when they did, they appeared to have an impact, as exemplified in Wanda's parents' talk about a plastic trinket that had come from a coin machine:

248

Gleason and Ely Father:

I can't imagine anybody paying money for that can you?

Mother:

That's why Mommy doesn't let you buy those things because they're really junky.

Wanda:

But ... but ...

Family dinners provided an arena for parents to discuss the fiscal matters that concerned them, with little attempt to engage children or to fine tune vocabulary about m o r t g a g e s or overpayments to the children's linguistic or cognitive level. Here, children were exposed to a variety of sophisticated terms and concepts. Evaluative comments were also made at dinner, and we speculate that these may be one way young children acquire an understanding of the social value of money, as the examples cited above demonstrate. In the laboratory observations, playing store was a popular activity. Only one of the 24 children (Victor) failed to engage in some form of extended play, and this failure was limited to the laboratory visit with his mother; he played store in a subsequent session with his father. Table 6 presents descriptive statistics on the number of word types and tokens for the laboratory observations.

Developmental Patterns We had hypothesized that age, as a general index of children's level of cognitive and linguistic development, would be a factor in the number of monetary terms children and their parents used.

We ran correlational analyses on the

child's age and the parent's use of monetary word types to assess the relationship between the two variables. For mothers, but not for fathers, there was a significant correlation, r(24) = .49, p < .02, indicating that the size of mothers' lexicons was positively associated with children's age. The relationship between children's use of monetary terms and age was similarly tested. Again, in the visits with mothers, but not with fathers, there was a significant correlation, r(24)= .52, p < .01, indicating that the size of children's lexicons was positively associated with

Input and the Acquisition of Vocabulary

249

TABLE 6 Monetary word types and tokens at in the laboratory observations

Mothers

Fathers

Children with: mothers fathers

Total number of types Mean number of types Range of types

39 40 24 27 10.2 (4.2) 10.0 (4.5) 4.8 (2.7) 5.0 (2.6) 4- 18 2 - 19 0 - 10 1 - 10

Total number of tokens Mean number of tokens Range of tokens

931 840 281 395 38.8 (29.7) 35.0 (20.8) 11.7 (8.7) 16.5 (15.2) 7- 145 2 - 66 0 - 41 2 - 66

Note. Numbers in parentheses are standard deviations their age. Thus, at least for visits with mothers, these results support our hypothesis t h a t the smallest and presumably simplest lexicons would be found in the discourse involving the youngest children.

Specific words and monetary concepts We had hypothesized t h a t parents would use basic object level terms like

money frequently when speaking with their young children. Table 7 lists the words used by at least half the subjects during the laboratory visits. As expected,

money was the most frequently used word across all speakers, used by 46 of 48 parents, and 22 of 24 children (across both visits).

Buy was the second most

frequently used term across all speakers. The relative pervasiveness of these two terms suggests that when asked to "play store" in an observational setting, parents and children comply by enacting prototypical "store" scripts (e.g., buying goods with money). Furthermore, the fact that many children used the terms buy and money suggests they possess at least a rudimentary understanding of what

money is and what it means to buy something.

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250

TABLE 7 Monetary terms used by more than half the subjects: Laboratory observations

Mothers (N = 24) word

frequency

money buy dollars cash pay change cents

194 178 108 54 49 44 46

Fathers (N = 24) number mothers

of

23 21 14 19 18 14 13

word

money buy cash cents penny change

Children with mothers (N = 24) word

frequency

money buy dollar

number children

58 42 36

17 14 13

frequency

148 89 52 73 56 37

number fathers

of

23 19 19 14 14 13

Children with fathers (N = 24) of

word

money

frequency

88

number children

of

17

In this regard, it is of interest to note that parents used the word change relatively frequently and pervasively (27 of 48 parents), yet the use of this word was uncommon in the speech of children. This suggests that these middle-class parents may be trying to foster indirectly their children's cognitive development by introducing concepts (and the terms used to describe them) with which children are less familiar. Another example of this process may be found in parents' occasional use of monetary terms referring to complex concepts. was used three times.

For example, the word inflation

However, unlike the fairly pedagogical way in which

Input and the Acquisition of Vocabulary

251

parents discussed the names of coins (see below), each use of the word inflation was embedded in discourse without any attempt to explain the concept, as exemplified in the following exchange.

Xavia:

Chocolate milk is fifty dollars.

Mother:

Fifty dollars! Holy smokes! Uh, are you sure that's not fifty cents?

Xavia

No.

Mother:

Fifty dollars, yes?

Xavia:

Milk is ten dollars.

Mother:

Ten dollars.

Inflation is killing me Xavia. Thus, although parents usually employ basic-level terms when speaking with their children, they also provide new words and concepts that go beyond the child's current linguistic and cognitive level of development.

Parental Instruction In looking qualitatively at the transcripts of the laboratory visit we were struck by the degree to which parents engaged their children in explicit instruction.

These "lessons" were focused almost exclusively on children's

knowledge of coins.

They did not focus on more abstract concepts (e.g., what

change is), on mathematical calculations, and only rarely (and sometimes humorously, as can be seen in the preceding example) on knowledge of real world prices.

Instead, many parents energetically led their children through coin

identification drills. For example, 4-year-old David is subjected to the following rather intense lecture:

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252

Mother:

Is that a dime really? Are you sure? I think that looks more like quarter. ooo

But you know what? I wanna tell you so you~ know. That's a penny. That's a nickel. (Be)cause it's big and fat. And that's a dime.

Another parent, Charlie's father, is equally persistent, although he appears more good natured. After Charlie (a 3-year-old) has exhausted his knowledge of coin terms, his father asks him about a detail few preschoolers might be expected to know.

Father:

And you remember who's on the dime, don't you? Because that is our good friend ...

Charlie:

Who?

Father:

Franklin...

Charlie:

Jefferson.

Father:

Franklin Jefferson? You've forgotten all your people on the coins. D. Roosevelt is that guy's name.

Although we had anticipated that parents would focus attention on labeling coins, the frequency and persistence with which some parents engaged their children in these types of interactions was surprising. parents value children's ability to identify coins.

It suggests that

Presumably, this didactic

Input and the Acquisition of Vocabulary

253

pattern of instruction ends once children have mastered coin identification.

Gender Differences. We had hypothesized that there might be gender differences in parents' speech to children. We already noted t h a t mothers, but not fathers, appear to pitch their lexical input to the child's age in providing older children with larger monetary lexicons. In contrast, the size and diversity of fathers' vocabulary did not vary with the age of their children. One way this finding can be interpreted is that fathers are less sensitive to children's developmental status and, thus, fathers may sometimes impede their child's development by talking "above" them. An alternative interpretation is t h a t in being less sensitive, fathers can be seen as being more demanding of their children.

This second interpretation,

which we favor, suggests that fathers enhance cognitive and linguistic development by supportively challenging their children's linguistic and cognitive abilities (Gleason, 1975; Mannle & Tomasello, 1987). In addition to the difference between mothers and fathers noted above, we tested for the presence of other gender differences in parents' speech to children. T-tests revealed no significant differences between mothers and fathers in the number of word types and tokens used (see Table 6). To assess the effect of child gender on parents' use of monetary word types and tokens, we ran analyses of covariance (ANCOVA) with sex as a factor and child age as a covariate.

Only

fathers showed a significant effect of child gender, F(1, 21) = 5.24, p < .05. Fathers used more monetary word tokens when talking to boys (M = 44.1) than when talking to girls (M = 25.9). This hints at the possibility that fathers may view money (like cars and sports) as a masculine domain, and thus talk about it more with boys than with girls.

Discussion: Money Words We began this study with questions about how young children acquire their

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Gleason and Ely

knowledge about money. We found that in most family dinnertime conversations, there was some mention of monetary matters, although little of it was directed toward children. Nevertheless, children at home were exposed to a wide variety of money terms, and, proportionately, much evaluative talk centering on money. In laboratory play sessions, parents restricted their vocabulary to a much smaller set of terms, in keeping with their children's age. Parents were often didactic in their interactions with children.

They asked many test questions,

particularly about coins. In addition, there were two notable gender differences. First, mothers, but not fathers, appeared to tune the complexity of their input to the child's level of development. And second, fathers, but not mothers, used more monetary word tokens to boys than to girls. This study was exploratory in nature and raises a number of issues, three of which will be addressed. First, some of our specific findings suggest areas for further study.

For example, the gender difference in father's speech to boys

deserves replication. Past work has documented how parents encourage gender stereotypical behaviors. For example, Fagot and Hagan (1991) found that fathers condoned aggression in young boys, and mothers encouraged communication in girls. Although these domains are broader than domains like money, they clearly indicate that parents actively support what they believe to be gender-appropriate behaviors.

Future work, including more fine-grained analyses, may uncover

subtler gender differences in parent-child interactionswithin more constrained domains like money. Second, the paucity of explicit comments about the social and affective aspects of money in the laboratory visits was somewhat surprising.

This may

have been due to the fact that parents and children were engaged in play rather than real interactions with money. Incidental observations of young children in real world settings like supermarkets and toy stores suggest that discussions about the affective and social aspects of monetary behaviors are relatively common. These would be ideal sites in which to make observations in the future.

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255

Our third observation is that, although children may not understand terms such as taxes and surcharge, very young children in middle-class families are exposed to a variety of sophisticated monetary terms in some family settings. In specific interactions with their children while playing store, these same parents are consistently didactic, concentrating especially on coin identification. At the same time some parents occasionally provide broader comments about money that children may later employ in a formulaic manner (e.g., "Inflation is killing me").

Thus, by the time middle-class children enter school they have a basic

lexicon of money in place, as well as some general attitudes about money.

CONCLUSION In this chapter, we have examined parent-child interaction as it relates to three domains of the lexicon acquired by young children. In our first set of studies we examined the core vocabulary, in particular the words used by all parents in their speech to children who were just beginning to acquire language (6 2-year-old and 40 20-month-old children).

We found that the core words spoken by all

parents are primarily a delimited set of the function words that serve English syntax. These include, for instance, prepositions like in and on that are among the earliest grammatical morphemes acquired by children. When we looked at the content words used by parents in these interactions we found that although, as predicted, many parents did use basic object level terms (e.g. store), they also used a variety of words at different levels of abstraction, even to these very young children. Thus, parents clearly do not restrict themselves to the basic object level, and children early on have the opportunity to hear varying terms for the same referent. When we next moved to the lexicons of basic color words and of monetary terms we found that, in regard to color terms, parents used a very restricted set of words that almost exactly matched the universal set that earlier researchers had posited. We found little support for the order of the hierarchy, however, in

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children's frequency of use; in other words, although black and white are the most basic and universal of the colors, these were not the most frequently used terms. Rather, we found that red and blue are the terms most used by parents and children in our samples, and that this observation is supported by other work that has described the order of emergence of color terms in the lexicons of a large sample of young children. Color appears to be a very limited domain for most speakers in our society; the color words used to children in our samples not only reflected the universal set noted earlier, but they were limited to this set of only 10 colors, and beyond the identification of colors very little elaboration was provided to these children about the nature of color. Parents emphasized the importance of correct color identification by making frequent reference to color themselves and by occasional use of test questions and other pedagogical devices. Ultimately, children must learn the affective and metaphorical connotations of color words--what it means "to feel blue", for instance, but input to infants and preschool-aged children is limited to literal reference. In the monetary domain, by contrast, parents focus not only on encouraging referential competence, they also provide a complex and elaborated set of terms, as well as a rich affective matrix in which the terms are embedded. Identification of coins, like color naming, is obviously important to parents. Here, too, particularly in the laboratory visits, we found that the CDS register is marked by instructional interchanges focusing on the acquisition of a basic set of monetary terms (e.g., penny~ nickel~ quarter).

In the laboratory, parents talked to their

children about money in an elaborated way, exclaiming in dismay over the inflated prices of goods in the "store", commenting on the physical characteristics of coins, and even discussing the personages depicted on the money. In the home dinners, parents spoke among themselves as well as to their children, and here we found that they used an extensive vocabulary of monetary words, discussing their mortgages, interest payments, and other fiduciary matters, with a good deal of intensity. Thus, by the time these middle class children enter school they have

Input and the Acquisition of Vocabulary

257

been exposed to a rich lexicon of monetary terms, and they have overheard their parents talk about fiscal matters in a way that reflects the importance of this domain in our society. The studies we have presented here on features of the lexicon of parentchild discourse interface with work that shows that children universally possess cognitive propensities that constrain their acquisition of vocabulary.

Adults'

speech to children acknowledges these propensities and reflects them.

Our

analyses reveal that, within a given domain, child-directed speech reflects cultural and social values as well.

NOTES

1. All subjects are identified by pseudonyms. Names in parentheses or in the text identify the file name in the Gleason Corpus of CHILDES.

2. The monetary terms that were extracted from the frequency lists of parents' and children's speech included: account, add, adjust, afford, amount, appreciate,

balance, bank, bid, bill, borrow, bought, business, buy, cash, cent, change, charge, cheap, check, coin, collect, consume, cost, count, coupon, customer, dime, dollar, economically, estimate, expensive, figure, generous, heir, inflation, interest, lend, money, nickel, offer, overestimate, overpayment, overtime, owe, pay, penalty, penny, poor, price, purchase, quarter, reduce, resource, rich, ring, sale, save, sell, shop, single, sold, spend, surcharge, tax, tight, total, trade, underestimate, worthless.

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Journal of Child Language, 13, 119- 134. Anglin, J. M. (1993). Vocabulary development: A morphological analysis. Mono-

graphs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 58 (10, Serial No. 238). Berti, A. E., & Bombi, A. S. (1981). The development of the concept of money and

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its value: A longitudinal study. Child Development, 52, 1179 - 1182. Bartlett, E. (1977). The acquisition of the meaning of color terms. In R. Campbell & P. Smith, (Eds.), Recent advances in the psychology of language, New York: Plenum. Berlin, B., & Kay, P. (1969). Basic color terms. Berkeley: UC Press. Bernstein Ratner, N.

(1984).

Patterns of vowel modification in mother-child

speech. Journal of Child Language, 11,557 - 578. Bohannon, J., & Warren-Leubecker, A. (1988). Recent developments in child-directed speech: You've come a long way, baby-talk. Language Science, 89 - 110. Brown, R. (1958). How shall a thing be called? Psychological Review, 65, 14- 21. Carey, S., & Bartlett, E. (1978). Acquiring a single new word. Stanford: PRCLD. Clark, E. (1993).

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(1981).

The meaning of things:

Domestic symbols and the self. New York: Cambridge University Press. Fagot, B. A., & Hagan, R.

(1991).

Observations of parent reactions to sex-

stereotyped behaviors: Age and sex effects. Child Development, 62, 617 - 628. Fenson, L., Dale, P. S., Reznick, J. S., Bates, E., Thal, D. J., & Pethick, S. J. (1994). Variability in early communicative development. Monographs of the

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(1976).

Children's concept of social

institutions: A Piagetian framework. Human Development, 19, 351 - 374. Gentner, D. (1975). Evidence for the psychological reality of semantic components: The verbs of possession. In D. A. Norman & D. E. Rumelhart (Eds.),

Explorations in cognition (pp. 211 - 246). San Francisco: W. H. Freeman. Gleason, J. B. (1980). The acquisition of social speech and politeness formulm. In H. Giles, W. P. Robinson & P. M. Smith (Eds.), Language: Social psychologi-

cal perspectives. Oxford: Pergamon. Hall, D. G. (1994). How mothers teach basic-level and situation-restricted count

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nouns. Journal of Child Language, 21, 391 - 414. Lakoff, R. (1975). Language and women's place. New York: Harper & Row. Lorge, I., & Chall, J. (1963). Estimating the size of vocabularies of children and adults:

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Education, 32, 147 - 157. MacWhinney, B., & Snow, C.

(1990).

The Child Language Data Exchange

System: An update. Journal of Child Language, 17, 457- 472. Mannle, S., & Tomasello, M. (1987). Fathers, siblings, and the Bridge Hypothesis. In K. Nelson & A. van Kleeck (Eds.), Children's Language, Vol. 6 (pp. 23 41). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Markman, E.

(1989).

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Development, 54: 3- 4. Mervis, C. B., & Mervis, C.A. (1982). Leopards are kitty-cats: Object labeling by mothers for their thirteen-month-olds. Child Development, 53, 267 - 273. Mervis, C. B., & Bertrand, J. (1993). Acquisition of early object labels: The roles of operating principles and input. In A. Kaiser & D. B. Gray (Eds.), Enhancing

children's communication: Research foundations for intervention (pp. 287 - 316). Baltimore: Brookes. Miller, G. A., & Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1976). Language and perception.

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bridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Perlmann, R. Y., & Gleason, J. Berko. (1993). The neglected role of fathers in children's communicative development. Seminars in Speech and Language, 14, 314-324. Ratner, N. B. (1988). Patterns of parental vocabulary selection in speech to very young children. Journal of Child Language, 15, 481 - 492. Rosch, E., Mervis, C. B., Gray, W. D., Johnson, D. M., & Boyes-Braem, P. (1976).

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The Problem of Meaning: Behavioral and Cognitive Perspectives C. Mandell and A. McCabe (Editors) 9 1997 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

261

CHAPTER 7

Making Meaning in Parent-Child Interaction: A Pragmatic Approach ALISON L. IMBENS-BAILEY

Arizona State University and CATHERINE E. SNOW

Harvard Graduate School of Education

INTRODUCTION The prototypical problem of meaning is getting information about a nonshared experience across to a listener, for example, telling an anecdote or recounting a film to someone who hasn't seen it. Learning how to do this has its antecedents in early parent-child interactions. In this paper we trace the development of meaning making from children's earliest encounters with talk about shared and nonshared events through their first years in formal education. The problem of making meaning for others requires control over a number of basic linguistic and pragmatic skills. The linguistic skills required include such things as knowing what words to use, which tenses to select, and how to compose sentences that represent information about events. Pragmatic skills necessary for effective communication range from the skills needed to express communicative intents appropriately, to the skills needed to participate in conversational exchange, to the skills needed to relate utterances in an extended discourse and provide precisely the information the audience needs, neither more nor less (see Ninio & Snow, 1996). These latter skills are the ones most relevant to adult

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pragmatic challenges like getting someone else to share one's own point of view. Explaining something that one understands to a listener who does not understand it requires assessing the listener's relevant knowledge, providing information in such a way that links among individual bits of information can be understood, and providing the explanation in the order and format that the listener expects. For instance, a child must learn that there are rules of referential coherence that require that a new subject or object be preceded by an indefinite article, but be preceded by a definite article in subsequent references to signal to the listener that this subject or object has previously been introduced (Chafe, 1974). An awareness of what the listener should and should not know is apparent in the correct use of referential coherence, but also extends to knowledge about nonshared experiences more broadly. A child must come to realize that he or she cannot assume shared knowledge and in order to make sense of a nonshared experience, a listener will need relevant background information such as the identities of the major protagonists. The child must then be able to present information in ordered chunks for the listener to process effectively. In the case of explaining nonshared events a child must come to recognize the culturally defined format for narrative presentation. In white, middle-class America the sequence of meaningful components has been identified as orientation information, followed by complicating action, evaluation and resolution (see McCabe, 1996, for further discussion on culture-specific formats for narrative). Narrative is the most studied, but is not the only genre in which the problem of making meaning for others is confronted. Definitions of words and explanations are other discourse types that have particular, culturally prescribed formats that are subject to rules restricting the kinds of information that should be included for the listener. Definitions and explanations, like narrative, challenge the speaker to produce a sequence of utterances whose interconnections are clear, in a way that is adapted to the background knowledge of the listener (Beals & Snow, 1994).

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The emergence of the ability to produce extended discourse that conveys new information comprehensibly is described by Ninio and Snow (1996) as emerging in three phases. In the first phase, the child's utterances are tightly linked to events in the world ("uh-oh" as a tower falls over) or to interactive formats ("quack-quack" in response to "what do ducks say?'" or naming objects or pictures in response to "what's that?"). One could argue that these utterances are not yet truly conveying novel meanings, but yet their occurrence in the context of shared objects or activities constitutes a jumping-off point for the child's ability to convey new information. Ninio and Snow argue that the second phase is marked by the emergence of the capacity to respond informatively to utterances in nonformatted settings--in other words, grafting informativeness onto the already established

turn-taking

of conversation.

These

informative

conversations

frequently occur in the context of joint attention to an object, e.g., after naming an object the child might r e m a r k about its similarity to another object, thus truly providing new information to the listener. Finally, though, Ninio and Snow argue that effective communication about nonshared experiences requires that the child go beyond responding to aspects of the interaction or to engaging in informative conversational exchange, to develop the capacity to take the listener's perspective into account. Thus, telling a story or giving an explanation requires assessing what the listener already knows and what is likely to pique the listener's interest, so as to be able to be comprehensible and effective. Ninio and Snow do not suggest that these accomplishments emerge in a stage-like sequence, nor that the role of social interaction is negligible at any of the three phases. In fact, they argue precisely that the emergence of the capacity for autonomous extended discourse in the third phase builds on interactive scaffolding. Scaffolding, or verbal support, by parents provides help

of several

types

that

enables

children

to

extend

their

communi-

cative abilities beyond those which they are able to express without help: conversational scaffolding (using the present objects or an established topic of

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conversation as a basis for helping children decontextualize their talk), historical scaffolding (using shared knowledge of past events) and psychological scaffolding (using the adult capacity to take the child's perspective in support of the child's expression of his/her own perspective). This scaffolding can be seen in the clarification questions adults ask, in their provision of information or of evaluation for child stories, and in their ratification of the child's right to tell those stories. In this paper we discuss the progression from the child'sinitialmapping of communicative intents onto utterances in early child-parent interaction, the subsequent conversations between child and parent in which parents provide contextual support for the child's increasing attempts to convey nonshared information, to the later development of extended discourse skills necessary for sustaining the task of making meaning for others autonomously. W e draw here on data from a number of sources, including the N e w England Corpus available through the Child Language Data Exchange System (Pan, Imbens-Bailey, Winner & Snow, 1996; Snow, Pan, Imbens-Bailey & Herman, 1996), mealtime conversations collected for the Home-School Study of Language and Literacy Development (Snow, 1991), and data available from the School-Age Language and Literacy Corpus (Hadley, 1996). The data from which we draw includes conversations between middle-class parents and their 14-32 month olds (New England Corpus), between working class parents and their children aged three to five years (Home-School Study Corpus), and between parents and their children aged six to eight years enrolled in a program for school-age children with developmental language disorders (School-Age Language and Literacy Corpus). The opportunities available to the two latter groups of children to participate in the collaborative production of extended discourse were of interest precisely because there are considerable data suggesting that extended discourse abilities are related to literacy outcomes (e.g., Snow, 1991; Westby, 1989), and that they are particularly susceptible

Making Meaning in Parent-Child Interaction

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to disruption from brain injuries or in children with language-learning disorders. Delays in conversational skills (e.g., Brinton & Fujiki, 1982; Johnston, 1985) and narrative abilities (e.g., Liles, 1985, 1993; Scott, 1988) have been found in schoolage children with language-learning difficulties. Thus children's participation in extended discourse has been a focus of analysis within both the Home School Study and the School-Age Language and Literacy program.

P H A S E ONE: MAPPING COMMUNICATIVE INTENTS ONTO

UTTERANCES The first step in expressing information so that the listener can understand it requires mapping one's communicative intents onto conventional (or, at the beginning, interpretable) language forms. This stage of development requires that participants share an understanding of the kind of communicative activity in which they are engaged. The Inventory of Communicative Acts-Abridged (INCAA) 1, a shortened and modified version of the system developed by Ninio and Wheeler (1984; see Ninio, Snow, Rollins & Pan, 1994, for a fuller discussion of the coding scheme) was used to code the interaction of 52 children and their parents in the New England Corpus when the children were 14, 20 and 32 months old (see Snow, et al., 1996, for further details about the sample). Ninio and Wheeler's system was based both on Speech Act Theory (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969, 1976) that is limited to categorization of individual utterances and on studies of face-toface interaction (Goffman 1961, 1974; Streeck, 1980) that emphasize the importance of socially constructed communicative interchanges. Thus, the system identifies and codes communicative intent at two different levelsmthe level of the utterance and the level of the social interchange, thus acknowledging the existence of an organization of talk at a level higher than the single utterance (c.f. Dore & McDermott, 1982; Streeck, 1980). Previous coding systems for pragmatic meanings have typically failed to discriminate among or fully integrate analyses at different levels (see Chapman, 1981, for further discussion). Another failing of

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many coding systems is the confusing of functional with semantic features (e.g., Greenfield & Smith, 1976), or functional with formal levels of analysis (e.g., Dore, 1976). Elsewhere, coding systems have been found lacking in the number of different types of communicative intents they identify, often with little overlap across systems proposed by different researchers (see Ninio & Snow, 1996, for comparison of coding categories). For the purposes of this paper we focus on the level of the social interchange. An interchange is defined as one or more rounds of talk all of which serve a unitary interactive function implicitly agreed upon by the interlocutors, for example the negotiation of mutual attention to an object. Since the system was designed to provide exhaustive coding of the communicative attempts expressed by children of varying ages (as well as their mothers), it can reflect development and continuity across a wide age range. In addition to its theoretical grounding, the ecological validity of the system was assured by distinguishing categories based on parent's interpretations of their own and their children's intents. Finally, it is important to note that the type of analysis employed is communicative rather than functional. On the level of the interchange, it is the speaker's overt (though not necessarily explicit) framing of the immediate social situation that is coded. The system used with the New England Corpus differs from the original Ninio and Wheeler (1984) system primarily at the interchange level; Ninio and Wheeler designed their system for coding interaction at home during naturally occurring activities, and thus included categories for establishing mutual attentiveness and moving into joint activity that were unnecessary in the more structured setting of the New England Corpus (see Ninio & Snow, 1996, for more extensive comparison of the two systems). Snow et al.'s (1996) use of the system also differs from Ninio and Wheeler's in that the former included nonverbal and semi-gestural communicative acts, whereas Ninio and Wheeler included only purely verbal ones.

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267

D i s c u s s i o n s of a J o i n t F o c u s

We present here examples drawn from the New England Corpus, which has been fully coded with the INCA-A, to illustrate how parent-child discussions move from focussing on the here-and-now, in which information is shared, to more remote topics about which the child has little information initially (for description of other types of interchanges in child and parent pragmatic repertoires see Snow et al., 1996; Pan et al., 1996). Discussions of joint focus (DJF) typically involve naming and describing objects--providing the child with linguistic representations for shared information. For example, in the following exchange when Mark was 20 months old, his mother labeled a character in a picture book that they were both already focussed upon and Mark spontaneously repeated her. His mother also took this joint focus as an opportunity to expand his exposure to a broader vocabulary by providing a subordinate label for sheep-like objects. (We refer the reader to a key to transcription conventions that can be found at the end of the chapter) 2.

Mother:

this is a sheep.

Child:

sheep.

Mother:

a lambie.

There are two types of discussions that constitute a bridge from these discussions of the present to discussions of events far distant in time or space from the present. These two bridging kinds of discussions involve either discussions of topics related to activities or objects in the present (e.g., discussing the child's toothbrush on seeing a picture of a child brushing teeth) or discussions of very recent past events (e.g., discussion of how the child just tripped and fell).

D i s c u s s i o n s R e l a t e d to t h e P r e s e n t

Soon after discussions of the present emerge, discussions start to occur in

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which parents provide information verbally that children have no direct access to. These discussions typically refer to events, behaviors, objects and so on that are related to the present (DRP), and serve to increase the child's encyclopedic knowledge, for example, knowledge about the properties of things, where things belong, who uses them, how things should behave, what people do with things and how they feel about them. These discussions therefore function to relate to the child the norms of behavior or generalities associated with specific objects. The discussions are almost exclusively object-mediated, with some toy or tangible object typically used by the parent as a point of reference for the child. For example, in the following exchange when Sam was 32 months, his father took the opportunity of Sam's engagement with a toy dog belonging to a doll house to convey the usual behavior of a pet dog:

Father:

(wh)oop(sadaisy).

Father:

now, now the doggy's gonna bark.

Father:

can the doggy bark?

Child:

doggies do-'nt bark like that.

Father:

when somebody rings the doorbell?

Father:

does Steamer bark?

Child:

yeah.

Father:

that's right.

Father:

Steamer goes woof woof.

Child:

[no response].

Father:

and then Steamer runs to the door.

Father:

where's the door?

Discussions of events or objects related in some way to the present appear in most cases to be designed to build the child's script knowledge and serve as a transition to personal narrative, although occasionally DRP talk is already

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269

narrative, as in the following example, when Andrew was 32 months. His mother made use of events in a storybook to relate an actual recurrent event in his life:

Mother:

do you know what that [= picture] is?

Child:

I do-'nt know.

Mother:

it's [= picture] an egg.

Mother:

who eats eggs in our house ?

Child:

uh do-es Prissy do-es?

Mother:

Prissy does.

Child:

do-es do I do?

Mother:

I don't think I've ever seen you eat an egg cooked like this.

Mother:

daddy eats them [= eggs] like that though.

Child:

and I do too.

Discussions of events and objects related to the present were almost exclusively initiated by the parent both at 20 months and 32 months. Occasionally a child utterance was taken up by a parent as a connection between the present and some other event or nonpresent object, which the parent would then make explicit. For example, Rachel, at 32 months, appeared to be making a connection between the ball she was currently playing with and the game of football. Her mother picked up on her struggle to verbalize the connection and scaffolded the link between the ball in the here-and-now and the game of football Rachel has seen televised:

Child:

ball.

Mother:

that's a football ball?

Child:

yes.

Mother:

yeah.

Child:

people play.

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Imbens-Bailey and Snow Child:

[unintelligible] on the TV [unintelligible].

Mother:

people play football on TV?

D i s c u s s i o n s of R e c e n t P a s t E v e n t s

Discussion of recent events (DRE) also constitutes a transition to narrative. These exchanges are typically brief comments on just-occurred events, rather t h a n developed narratives. For example, at 32 months, Anna and her morn were playing with a doll h o u s e n t h e current focus of their attention. After the house fell during their play the mother attempted to elicit a description of the event from Anna:

Mother:

my!

Mother:

what happened?

Child:

my!

Child:

what happen-ed?

Mother:

it fell over. [= toy house]

Whereas mothers tended to initiate discussions of objects and events

related to the present, children in this corpus were much more likely to initiate discussions of recent past events, presumably because the situational and cognitive complexities are somewhat less demanding in this type of discussion. The actual objects involved in the recounted events were still present for the child to use or point to in his/her retelling of the events. There was no ambiguity as to whether the listener shared the experience with the child. Memory capacity and retrieval issues were at a minimum for discussing a recent past event and the process of creating a mental representation of the past event was likely to be aided by the toys still available in the here-and-now, whereas in maternal discussions of events or objects associatively related to the present the child was

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271

required to represent those events or objects, which were in fact removed in time and location and link them to a present event or object. It is worth noting that these earliest discussions of events or objects related to the present and recent past events were almost exclusively of shared experiences. In addition much of the talk during these types of social interchanges was related to objects present in the immediate environment that in most cases were already explicitly established as a joint focus of attention. In other words, there is still some physical support for the talk about the nonpresent. While the use of a tangible and shared subject of conversation makes the task of making meaning less complex for the young child, it still serves as an important precursor to talking about nonshared experiences in that it models for the child what topics warrant discussion with others, what aspects of our experiences should be selected for the listener and which should not.

Discussions of the Nonpresent Within the INCA-A coding system, the prototypical case of making meaning for the listener is captured in discussions of the nonpresent (DNP). These social interchanges focus on events that do not occur in the here-and-now nor in the immediate past and involve topics that appear unrelated to the current discussion, activity, or visible objects. For example, Jamie's morn elicited the following discussion about a commute during fantasy play with hand puppets when he was 32 months old. Although the events themselves may be based on Jamie's experience with past shared events the make-believe commute was one that mother and child pretended was experienced by the hand puppet alone:

Mother:

did you ride on the trolley today?

Child:

yeah.

Mother:

you did?

Mother:

how many trolleys?

272

Imbens-Bailey and Snow Child:

one train.

Mother:

one train and one trolley?

Child:

yeah.

Mother:

very very good.

Mother:

did you pay any money?

Child:

yeah.

Mother:

yes.

The shift from discussing objects in the here-and-now to discussing a nonshared event that occurred or might have occurred in the past appears to be a transitional one. First parent-child discussion is predominantly in the here-andnow. Discussing events and objects related to the present and discussing recently occurring events require the child to take a removed stance from the immediate joint focus, sometimes involving nonshared knowledge. However, discussing events or objects related to the present still allows the child to have a reference point in the present. Discussing recent events may also be a discourse context that provides the child with the scaffold of a referent in the present. At the very least, it is a type of social interchange that does not require retrieval of knowledge from long-term memory. Discussing the nonpresent however requires a greater remove from the here-and-now. No object or event in the immediate context scaffolds the interaction, although parents can provide much support for their child at this early stage of pragmatic development when the discussion is about nonpresent, but shared events. These increasingly demanding contexts for discussion between parent and child are reflected in the proportion of parents who engage in these different interchanges. When the children were just 14 months all parents engaged their child in discussion about a joint focus of attention. Ninety percent of parents also discussed events and objects related to the present. Half of the parents discussed recently occurring events with their child. Just 29% attempted to engage their

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273

child in discussions about the nonpresent. At both the 20- and 32- month observations all parents continued to discuss joint focus of attention. Again about ninety percent of the parents diSCUssed events and objects related to the present. Sixty percent of parents were discussing recent events by the time children were 20 months. This increased to only 62% at 32 months. Discussion about the nonpresent increased substantially between 14 months and 20 months, with half of all parents engaging their child in this type of interchange. At 32 months, this increased slightly to 57% of parents discussing the nonpresent with their child. By this last observation many children were providing interpretable communicative attempts in response to the different types of social interchange. One hundred percent of children engaged in discussions of a joint focus, 49% engaged in discussions of events or objects related to the present, 41% engaged in discussions of recent events, and 51% engaged in discussions of the nonpresent. These proportions of children largely reflect the proportions of mothers who employed the four different types of discussion in their pragmatic repertoires.

P H A S E TWO: CONVERSATION ABOUT NONSHARED EVENTS

At American dinner tables there is a ritual about "telling one's day" (BlumKulka & Snow, 1992). Reports of the day's activities are often early cases of discussions of nonpresent events that were not shared by the listener, unlike those we considered above, which were mostly reminiscences of events both mother and child knew about. There is, though, always some ambiguity (for the child, as for the analyst) in figuring out how much mothers know about any specific nonshared event, given that much of the information conveyed (for example, about what happened at day care) is somewhat scripted and predictable. It is, thus, available at least as a basis for questioning (e.g., "what did you eat for snack?") by adults who have no specific knowledge of the day's events. An example of this comes from the Home School Study Corpus. The following conversation between four-year-old Mack and his grandfather is about an event

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the grandfather had not participated in. It is clear that Mack would have been less successful in telling the story without the helpful questions from Grampa:

Grampa:

you like the train ride today?

Child:

yeah. well u m # there was a town.

Grampa:

town?

Child:

I liked the town.

Grampa:

you went through one town on the way to Boston?

Child:

one two three four five six # [>]

Grampa:

<went through> [<] a whole bunch of them?

Child:

one two three four five six # uh five of them. six of them.

Grampa:

six of them?

Child:

uh four of them.

Grampa:

yeah?

Child:

yeah uh # seven.

Grampa:

did the m a n come around and get your ticket? hmm?

Child:

uh+/.

Gramma:

you buy it on the train don't you?

Mother:

yeah.

Grampa:

did he come around and say ["]?

Child:

he did-'nt xxx say ticket please.

Grampa:

he didn't? [//] he just come around and took the money?

Child:

come around!

Mack's grandfather signaled to Mack that a train trip was an event worth developing a story about, with his initiating question. The task of deciding what to tell is quite difficult for some children--thus their first response to "what happened at school today?" is often "nothing." Four-year-old Daniel had quite a

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well developed idea of what a reportable event should be, and launched unprompted into the following report:

Child:

mama.

Mother:

what hon?

Child:

Katrina in the six year old class?

Mother:

mmm?

Child:

she threw up today, last night.

Mother:

yeah? that's terrible.

Child:

from [/] orange, from [?] orange.

Mother:

she threw up orange? oh that's disgusting.

On the other hand, four-year-old Jake and his older brother Zach vied for maternal attention by telling increasingly improbable versions of their days:

Mother:

Jake what did you do in school today?

Jake:

I play.

Mother:

mmhm.

Jake:

mommy I did-'nt do any lesson.

Mother:

you didn't? well I'm sure you~ do lesson tomorrow.

Zach:

momma [/] all I did in my class <was> [/] was play and did art and have lunch and snack then we play-ed.

Zach:

then after snack <we play-ed> [/] we play-ed all day.

Mother:

you didn't do lesson today?

Zach:

no way! <we was> [//] they let us take out whatever we want.

Mother:

yeah?

Zach:

even in the rest time they let us play.

Mother:

really?

Zach:

[/] and we were going on a lion hunt.

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Imbens-Bailey and Snow Mother:

wow.

Jake:

xxx yeah I went apple pickin(g).

Mother:

you did?

Zach:

today?

Jake:

uhhuh.

Zach:

nuhuh.

Jake:

uhhuh!

Zach:

nuhuh.

Mother:

Zach.

Jake:

<we xxx> [>] +/.

Zach:

[<] he told a lie it-'is not even summer!

The examples of dinner table stories we have presented so far show r a t h e r sophisticated children. However, one typical characteristic of personal reports like this is t h a t the teller u n d e r e s t i m a t e s the needs of the listener, and gets back on track only with the help of clarification questions. In the following example, the teen-aged sister of one of the children in the study m a n a g e d to confuse her mother, leading her to ask a clarification question ("what town are you in?"):

Mother: Sister:

what'd you do today? um#

we um # we got potatoes and u m xxx um at

Wendy-'s and we drove over to Charles river and we ate over there xxx was packed and then we went and we saw um +/. Mother:

what town are you in?

Sister:

xxx falls river where the waterfall is.

Mother:

is there a Wendy's over there?

Sister:

no there-'is a Wendy-'s down <where McDonald-'s is>.

Mother:

[<] all the way over there oh I see.

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We argue, then, that the possibility of effective meaning making during this second phase rests powerfully on the interactive work done by the listener, through clarification questions, and through the inferences the listener can make by sharing much general, though not specifically event-related, background knowledge with the teller. Even quite young children, though, are already showing signs of the kind of abilities that underlie meaning making in the third phase, the ability to assess the listener's perspective on the event. In the final example in this section, fiveyear-old Brittany questioned her mother's knowledge about Brittany's experiences, revealing her sophisticated understanding of who should know what:

Mother:

so what'd you do in school today?

Child:

nothing. I color-ed.

Mother:

you colored?

Child:

yeah.

Mother:

what did you color?

Child:

a dinosaur.

Mother:

a dinosaur.

Child:

is that [= tape player?] on?

Mother:

yep. eat your food.

Child:

yes xx. am I hungry?

Mother:

are you hungry?

Child:

yeah.

Mother:

you tell me. how does your stomach feel?

Child:

xxx. xxx and I get <www [= noises]> [>]! (yelling)

Mother:

<well # aider you> [<] eat that you won't be hungry.

Child:

www [=! noises].

Mother:

what else you do in school today?

Child:

I-'m playing with playdough.

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Imbens-Bailey and Snow Mother:

oh is that the playdough that you made?

Child:

what playdough?

Mother:

did you make some playdough in school? huh?

Child:

when did I tell you this?

Mother:

no I saw the paper, no you didn't tell me. it was the paper t h a t you brought home. it tells you how to make the playdough.

Child:

yeah. that-'is the kind. I-'m full.

PHASE THREE: EXTENDED DISCOURSE ABOUT NONSHARED EVENTS In this section, we look specifically at three types of support that parents may give their children trying to make meaning of a nonshared event--in this case the d e w i n g of a movie by the child that the parent has not seen. Parents can give their children support in the retelling of the film at conversational, historical and psychological levels. Conversational supports help the child to predict the questions listeners might be asking themselves. Historical supports help the child to access the listener's background knowledge relevant for making sense of the narrative. Psychological supports help the child to understand that they cannot presuppose that the listener automatically understands their point of view. The examples used in this section are taken from parent-child interaction during a narrative retelling task conducted as part of a language assessment for school-age children with developmental language disorders (the School-Age Language and Literacy Corpus). In individual sessions, children viewed a five minute portion of the movie Frog Where Are You? with an adult examiner. Immediately following a retelling with the examiner, children retold the story of the boy and his frog to a parent who had not been present during the viewing of the movie. Parents were also instructed to help the child make a book of the movie using a cover page and paper from a story-telling pad provided. A frog was depicted on the cover page for the child to color with pens and crayons. The

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instructions to make a book were intentionally left open-ended so that parents and children could interpret the task as either an oral task (accompanied by artwork by the child) or a combined oral and literacy task (most appropriate with the more skilled children). However the task was interpreted by the different dyads, the children's story reteUings can be viewed as conversationally embedded narrative discourse. Although the activity is retelling a nonshared event, conversation between child and parent serves as an envelope for the activity. Parent and child work to co-construct the events so that the parent can extract meaning from the child's communicative attempt.

Conversational Supports The level and types of conversational support for extended discourse can vary enormously, from the occasional confirmation question used at the minimum level of support to the highly scaffolded exchange involving parental initiation of the topic, overt signaling to take a turn, and frequent requests for clarification and elaboration. While much of this variation will be dependent on the linguistic and pragmatic abilities of the child, it also largely depends on the interpretation of the task by the parent. If, for instance, the Frog Where Are You? retelling is interpreted as a performance by the parent then the single speaker rule will apply and conversational supports may be minimal. If, however, the retelling is interpreted as being embedded in more informal or conversational discourse the goal will be to have the child communicate the content and his/her perspective with parents using whatever forms of support it takes for them to get the meaning of the story. No parent in the corpus interpreted the task as a solo performance on the part of the child. Children and parents took turns giving and responding to information about the movie. Differences between the parent-child dyads in terms of the number of utterances between turns was largely due the child's ability to present information intelligibly and fluently, thus not requiring a parent to

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interrupt with clarification questions. Parents often enabled children to take a turn in the interaction by asking them questions t h a t provided alternative answers for the children to choose from. For example, Tracy's father provided a high level of support for her retelling. When six-year-old Tracy responded to his yes/no questions with simple affirmatives, he switched to asking questions t h a t required her to answer more extensively even if the answer was a partial repetition of his question:

Father:

did the dog, um, was he put in the jar did you say that he was put in the jar before the dog was gettin(g) him?

Child:

uhhuh.

Father:

he was?

Father:

and a grownup put him in a jar?

Father:

and it was a boy or a girl?

Child:

girl.

Father:

oh it's girl.

Once a turn-taking pattern has effectively been established, the issue of maintaining the turn arises. Holding the floor would seem to be a moot issue in the context of this explicit task about retelling a movie. The parent needs to play the role of listener to the child's role of storyteller and yet we find evidence of explicit child attempts to hold the floor, as well as surprising evidence of parents who take the opportunity of child pauses and dysfluencies to take the floor. The most common strategy used by children to hold the floor was the use of sentence initial and, or and then often used repetitively as the following example from Jill, an eight-year-old, illustrates:

Mother:

okay well <what did you> [//] what was the movie about?

Child:

[/] and it-'is about a frog.

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281

Mother:

uhhuh.

Child:

and [/] the frog [/] jump-ed.

Child:

[/] [N] the little boy saw the frog go [//] up [/] stairs in his pool down there.

Child:

and [/] then the frog just jump-ed in.

Child:

and then [//] he got the frog and put it [//] right here and then right on [/] the table and 'Is 'is like a pump(kin)>[//] [//] mother-'is making a pumpkin pie.

Child:

[//] and the frog just jump-ed right in.

Child:

and then he §

Mother:

jumped right in what?

Child:

in the pumpkin pie.

Child:

[/] and then she close up [/] something on there and she got to get the fork and go all over it.

Child:

and then she start-ed stabb-ing it xx then stab xx xx.

Peterson and McCabe (1987) have documented this strategy in somewhat younger typically developing children (four-year-olds) who signal that their turn is not yet complete by initiating a new syntactic unit with either and or and then. The fact that children go to these lengths to hold the floor in interactions with their parents who are among the child's most sympathetic listeners suggests that mazing features (e.g., false starts), and other dysfluencies (e.g., filled pauses), are severe enough that children anticipate parental interruptions to ask for clarification. While this explanation for floor-holding strategies is merely suggestive, and may be a characteristic of the children's language impairment, it has some support from parental behaviors. We found parents who were willing to interrupt

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during mazing and other dysfluencies in order to request clarification or confirmation. Kevin's mother interrupted his retelling to the point that Kevin, aged eight years, loses his place in the narrative stream:

Mother:

the boy got the frog out.

Child:

and he put him inside.

Mother:

inside what?

Child:

the [/] house.

Mother:

uhhuh.

Child:

and, [/] he [/] +...

Mother:

what happened next?

Child:

[/] I forgot.

Mother:

you forgot what happened inside the house?

Child:

I forgot where I was.

Conceivably parents competent in adult discourse situations may find it difficult to override the dysfluencies and pauses that usually act as the signals for a permissible transfer of speakers. Alternatively, parents of this group of children may have become sensitized to the language difficulties of their children and some may scaffold their children's extended discourse to such a great degree that the child is not given much opportunity to sequence a number of utterances without parent intervention. Backchannels by a listener signal to the speaker that they are following the meaning of the speaker's message. Backchannels (e.g., vocalizations such as "uhhuh," "oh," and full or partial repetition of a preceding speaker's utterance) function to maintain the child's retelling with a minimum of interruption to the flow of the narrative. Other features of conversation also can serve as supports to maintain a child's narrative. These include parental use of foUow-up questions requesting elaboration (both general prompts such as "what happened next?", and

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283

specific questions that can be open-ended or yes/no questions contingent on previous utterances). Parents also repaired breakdowns in discourse to maintain the movie retellings. Parents could explicitly give the floor to the child for him/her to attempt his/her utterance again (e.g., "Okay, go ahead" used by Kevin's mother after his preceding utterance was unintelligible). Parents rarely informed the child explicitly when a breakdown in their understanding had occurred, for example no parent explicitly told the child to repeat him/herself because they (the parents) did not hear or understand. Parents were most likely to supply a guess for the child to confirm or correct. The following example of this type of exchange shows how one child, Cory, a six-year-old, attempted to get his original meaning across to his mother, but eventually took her supplied alternative to maintain his movie retelling, although it led him into a completely invented account of events:

Mother:

then what happened?

Child:

he got in the pie.

Mother:

he went to play?

Child:

no he got in the §

Mother:

who did he play with?

Child:

no he got in the pie.

Mother:

he got in the what?

Child:

he got in the pie.

Mother:

he got in the potty?

Child:

yeah.

Mother:

and what did he do in there?

Child:

went peep.

Mother:

he went peep?

Child:

yeah.

Mother:

and then what did the frog do?

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Imbens-Bailey and Snow Child:

[/] he flush the toilet.

Repairs to the child's communicative attempts can be further classified for their level of specificity. Ninio & Snow (1996) have made the following distinctions: requests for global reruns have a relatively low level of support (e.g., "what?") because they do not narrow down what components of the child's utterance were unclear to the parent; demands for clarification (yes/no questions using full or partial repetition of the child's attempted utterance) are somewhat more informative about what was wrong with the child's utterance providing middle level support; direct demands for specific information, such as queries about word meaning (e.g., "did you say "light~.~), signaled ambiguity with substitution (yes/no questions with substitute new forms, e.g., child use of "this" to mean "light" replaced by "a light?"), and signaled missing components using either yes/no questions with new forms (e.g., "more light?" in response to the child's "more") or wh-questions (e.g., "more what?") all provide high levels of support from the parent because they make explicit to the child why the parent has failed to understand the meaning of the child's utterance. All levels of support but the lowest provide the child with additional linguistic support for restating his/her failed attempt at communicating meaning. For instance, asking the child a question that allows them to answer with "yes" or "no" or even with a repetition of the parent's question enables the child to respond more readily and thus also contribute successfully to the repair of the breakdown in meaning. The following segment from Jessica and her mother illustrates a high level of conversational support of the movie retelling. Using a series of signals of ambiguity and demands for clarification, Jessica's mother was able to both make meaning from Jessica's relatively unintelligible narrative and include Jessica as a successful participant in that process:

Mother:

tell me about the movie you watched.

Making Meaning in Parent-Child Interaction Mother:

I didn't get to see it at all, tell me about it.

Child:

[/] there was [/] this little boy, [/]

285

and then there was a frog <was> [//] jump-ing in the pool from a ladder. Child:

and then he fall in the pool and then [/] the little kid hat [/] put it [/] right on the table.

Child:

[/] and then jump in the pie.

Child:

and +...

Mother:

the frog jumped in the pie?

Child:

yep.

Child:

[/] and then [/] that mommy [/] pick a knife and he punch [//] one on he back, two on he back.

Child:

and jump-in(g), then she scream.

Mother:

the mom §

Child:

yep.

Mother:

picked a knife and got into the frog?

Child:

[/] two time then she §

Mother:

two times?

Child:

l~_huh, then she open, and then she scream.

Mother:

and then she screamed.

In the following exchange between Charlie, an eight-year-old, and his mother, his use of an indeterminate referent ("it") prompted his mother to ask for specific clarification of what the pronoun referred to, although Charlie was unable to provide her with a definitive answer:

Child:

then she just put it over the frog.

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Imbens-Bailey and Snow Child:

then, because she did-'nt know that the frog was there §

Mother:

she put what over the frog?

Child:

like this one shape thing like.

Parental discussion around clarification of the child's communication was prevalent in every dyad. Repairs to the child's attempt to convey meaning may be greater in frequency with this sample of children than with a sample of children who are developing language typically. The parents in this sample are faced not only with trying to help their child explain nonshared events, but also with combinations of other problematic factors such as articulation imprecisions, a lack of volume, utterance formulation and specific word-finding problems (witness the word-finding difficulty experienced by Charlie in the previous example), and perhaps the ungrammatical forms found in their children's speech. Conversational supports might best be thought of as the envelope in which the extended discourse task is contained. The requests for clarification, the explicit signals to take the floor, the repair work that parents do all serve the purpose of making meaning indirectly. They play an executive function to the historical and psychological types of support that we consider next.

Historical Supports Historical scaffolding is described by Ninio and Snow (1996) as parental use of shared knowledge of past events to enable the child to develop extended discourse. In this paper we expanded the notion of historical support to include both knowledge of specific past shared experiences and encyclopedic knowledge that covers shared knowledge of cultural and physical realities. An example of this latter script-like historical support can be found in the sorts of prompts and clarifications asked by Mack's grandfather in the Home School Study Corpus discussed in the previous section. In that example Mack and his Grampa had not shared a train ride together, but an adult member of American culture has

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sufficient information about train rides to ask questions about ticket-collecting and so on. In the Frog Where Are You? retelling, parents were not privy to specific events such as the frog jumping into an apple pie or the mother of the boyprotagonist requiring that the frog be kept in a glass jar. However, adult members of this culture have enough general knowledge about frogs to ask questions (e.g., 'qvVas it a pool or a pond?" "Was he catching the frog in a lake?"). These kinds of questions helped children maintain their retellings and signaled the need for orientation material, such as where events in the movie took place. Some parents also managed to use specific past experiences they had shared with their child to clarify or extend their child's narrative (for example, talk about 'Tloaties" used to clarify description of inflatable swimming aids viewed in the movie). Some children also used information related to the present to convey meaning to their parents, as with Kevin in the following example, in which he referred his mother to a store (Target) where they presumably had seen the type of child's swimming pool that was portrayed in the movie:

Child:

[/] I think [//] the frog was gonna [= go-ing to] jump in the pool.

Mother:

the frog was gonna jump in the pool.

Child:

with [/] those things like Target?

Mother:

like at Target?

Child:

[/] the tub thing-s that you can put outside.

Mother:

the little swimming pools?

Child:

uhhuh.

Once children had attempted an initial retelling all parents worked (with the material they had gotten from their child) to repeat the retelling, most often as the child worked with crayons to illustrate their retelling. Less often a

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Imbens-Bailey and Snow

subsequent retelling was in the form of dictation to the mother. Rarely did a child produce the text. These subsequent reteUings allowed the children to practice making meanings clear to the listener and also enabled historical support. Familiar from the first retelling with some of the main events of the story and the major characters, parents were in a much better position to provide historical support. They often restated the child's utterances asking for confirmation, as well as giving specific reminders of events in subsequent reteUings as Kevin's mother did in the following example, in which Kevin chose to dictate his second run-through of events in the movie:

Mother:

okay, then what?

Child:

the frog jump-ed in the pie.

Mother:

oh wait a minute.

Mother:

remember he brought it inside the house and didn't the morn do something?

Child:

the frog jump-ed in the pie.

Psychological Supports Psychological supports involve the parent using his/her adult capacity to take the child's perspective to scaffold expression of the child's own perspective on events. Conveying perspective on facts functions, in effect, as evaluation. Evaluation has been found to be a relatively early emerging component of narrative, somewhere around the child's third or fourth year (McCabe & Peterson, 1983; Miller & Sperry, 1988). Parental use of evaluation in narratives is, however, found to be related to inclusion of perspective in children's personal narratives (Peterson & McCabe, 1992). The majority of the children in the School-Age Language and Literacy Corpus never made evaluative comments on the events they had witnessed in the movie. Of the two children who did make evaluative comments, one did so only

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once and the other did so only in response to his mother's elicitations. While this lack of evaluation may be related to the children's language disorders (they are all older than the norm for inclusion of evaluative clauses in their narratives), other studies of narrative based on television and movie viewing also show an absence of evaluation (e.g., Labov, 1972). Few parents in this corpus attempted to make explicit evaluations of the frog's behavior and the movie mother's annoyed reaction to it (she has the frog kept in a glass jar). The one occasion that Jill, an eight-year-old, made an evaluative comment was when she speculated about what might happen al~er the frog escaped from the jar and not about the actual events she had viewed. The children had been asked to make up the next episode in the frog story and Jill said the frog had a "big problem" about being in the jar because she wanted to get out to lay her eggs. Only one parent demanded that her child tell how he thought the characters in the movie felt about events. Cory's mother provided a high level of psychological support for him to give motive to the characters' actions, using questions that provided him alternatives to choose from:

Mother:

all alone, was he [= the frog] happy or sad?

Mother:

how did he feel?

Child:

sad.

Mother:

why was he sad, Cor?

Child:

because he jump down.

The fact that psychological supports were so rare may be due to the vicarious nature of the retelling task as Labov (1972) has suggested of his own studies of television viewing. However, the parents of these children might be so focussed on getting the facts from their children in order to make sense of the nonshared events that they neglect the evaluative component of narrative. As we

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have mentioned already, these parents worked hard with conversational supports in order to effectively make meaning of their children's communicative attempts. If parents must make choices (consciously or not) from among the different types of support they can offer for extended discourse, then the parents of languageimpaired children may put their efforts primarily to the task of conveying events effectively rather than to conveying the myriad different perspectives one can take on experiences.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION In development, conversational contexts for the exchange of nonshared information support the development of children's abilities to create forms of extended discourse autonomously. Clearly there is progression from the oneutterance exchanges discussing the nonpresent at a young age, through witnessing and contributing to talk about nonshared events during the preschool years, to the supported task of reconstructing the events of a nonshared experience. In the New England Corpus and the Home School Study Corpus we found parental historical support in the form of knowledge about specific past shared experiences. With the youngest children we saw parents using a shared context to introduce talk about the past to their children. With four or five-year-olds, parents were using historical support to give their children ideas about what past events were reportable and what information was necessary for others to make sense of those events. By the time children were in school and experiencing nonshared events more frequently, parental historical support took on a new form--that of shared encyclopedic knowledge that enabled parents to ask appropriate clarification and elaboration questions. However, constant through the three phases of development of extended discourse is parental use of events or objects related to the present. The kinds of object-mediated discourse that parents use in the very early phases of their child's development of extended discourse (e.g., using a picture in a book to relate

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to a toy at home), surface at all subsequent phases as well. When children begin to hear narratives about nonshared events at the dinner table they are supported in their own attempts at extended discourse with the things they bring home from school (e.g., arts and crafts). These kinds of objects supply a topic for discussion and provide parents with cues for maintaining a child's attempt at conveying nonshared events. Even in the task of retelling the movie Frog Where Are You? parents were able to use the drawing of a frog provided, or, in some cases, the pictures of scenes from the movie that their child created in order to support the child's attempt to convey events in the movie. Also constant through these three phases of development is parental stress that the basic facts about who, what, when, and where have to get expressed. Through requests for clarification and elaboration parents signal to their child that for a listener to make sense of what they are saying, background material must be provided; that it cannot be assumed once they engage others in discourse about nonshared events. But with development there is more need for a motive/reason to tell about nonshared events, and perhaps more need to be explicit about motives of characters in the event as well. This aspect of extended discourse adds interest to any retelling or explanation of nonshared events. The children in the School-Age Language and Literacy Corpus were retelling the events in the movie because it was a task set for them by others and they were guaranteed their parents' attention. However, in less supportive settings children will be required to pique a listener's interest and keep it for as long as necessary for them to make meaning for the listener. Interestingly, Cory, a child who experienced severe developmental language impairment, gave perhaps the most engaging retelling of events in the movie. With high parental support he managed to convey a portrait of a sad and lonely frog afraid of monsters and pursued by bats, which, while fanciful, entertained both his mother and those who witnessed his work of making meaning.

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Imbens-Bailey and Snow ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Alison Imbens-Bailey acknowledges the support of postdoctoral training from US Department of Education Grant H029D50062 for which M. Jeanne Wilcox is Principal Investigator. The information contained in this article does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Department of Education and no official endorsement by that Department should be inferred. Catherine Snow acknowledges the support of NIH grant HD22338 for research on the New England Corpus and the Ford and Spencer Foundations for support of the Home School Study of Language and Literacy Development. We wish to thank Pamela Hadley, Charlotte Mandell and Allyssa McCabe for their helpful comments and suggestions, as well as the children and parents who comprised the various data sets.

ENDNOTES

1. A total of 21 different interchange types are distinguished using the INCA-A. Reliability was computed on 20 percent of the New England Corpus transcripts at each age period. Reliability expressed as simple percent agreement between two coders ranged from .79 to .90. Cohen's kappa, that takes account of chance agreement, was calculated for five transcripts chosen to represent a range of ages and levels of interpretability. The values of kappa ranged from .74 to .88. 2. Key to Transcription:

coding conventions are based on codes for Human

Analysis of Transcripts, CHILDES (MacWhinney, 1991).

Inflectional suffixes

and contractions used by the children are marked by hyphenation. The codes used for the purposes of this article are as follows: [//] retrace with correction; [/] retrace without correction; +...incompletion; [?] uncertain transcription; § interruption;// unfilled pause; [<], [>] direction of overlapping speech; ["] quotation; xx unintelligible word; xxx unintelligible utterance; www untranscribed utterance(s); () speech with parentheses denotes noncompleted segment of a word; <> speech within angled brackets denotes scope of speech affect by a subsequent code.

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narrative structure pose for multilingual literacy programs. New York: McGrawHill. Miller, P. J., & Sperry, L. L. (1988). Early talk about the past: The origins of conversational stories of personal experience. Journal of Child Language, 15, 293-315. Ninio, A., & Snow, C. E. (1996). Developmental pragmatics. Boulder, CO: Westview. Ninio, A., Snow, C. E. Pan, B. A., & Rollins, P. (1994). C l a s s ~ g

communicative

acts in children's interactions. Journal of Communications Disorders, 27, 157188. Ninio, A., & Wheeler, P. (1984). A manual for classifying verbal communicative acts in mother-infant interaction. Working Papers in Developmental Psycholo-

gy, No. 1. Jerusalem:The Martin and Vivian Levin Center, Hebrew University. Reprinted as Transcript Analysis, 1986, 3, 1-82. Pan B. A., Imbens-Bailey A. L., Winner K., & Snow, C. E. (1996). Communicative intents in Parents' interacting with their young children. Merrill-Palmer

Quarterly, 42, 72-90.

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Peterson, C., & McCabe, A. (1983). Developmental psycholinguistics: Three ways of

looking at a child's narrative. New York: Plenum. Peterson, C., & McCabe, A. (1987). The connective "and." First Language, 8, 19-28. Peterson, C., & McCabe, A. (1992). Parental styles of narrative elicitation: Effect on children's narrative structure and content. First Language, 12, 299-322. Scott, C. M. (1988). A perspective on the evaluation of school children's narratives.

Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 19, 67-82. Searle, J. (1969). Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Searle, J. (1976). A classification of illocutionary acts. Language in Society, 5, 123. Snow, C. E. (1991). The theoretical basis for relationships between language and literacy development. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 6, 5-10. Snow, C. E., Pan, B. A., Imbens-Bailey, A. L., & Herman, J. (1996).Learning how to say what one means: A longitudinal study of children's speech act use.

Social Development, 5, 56-84 Streeck, J. (1980). Speech acts in interaction: a critique of Searle. Discourse

Processes, 3, 133-154. Westby, C. E. (1989). Assessing and remediating text comprehension problems. In A.G. Kamhi & H. W. Catts (Eds.), Reading disabilities: A developmental

language perspective. Austin, TX: Pro-Ed.

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The Problem of Meaning: Behavioral and Cognitive Perspectives C. Mandell and A. McCabe (Editors) 9 1997 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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CHAPTER 8

Cultural Constructions of Meaning: Cross-Cultural Comparisons of Mother-Child Conversations About the Past

MASAHIKO MINAMI

University of Massachusetts, Lowell

INTRODUCTION People in any society share certain customs and values, which constitute a culture (Super & Harkness, 1980).

Following specific cultural norms, parents

socialize their children in order to make them effective members of society. It is through the process of socialization that parents transmit culture-specific representational forms and rules, especially culturally nurtured meaning-making, to their young children. In this chapter, I basically adopt Grice's (1971) characterization of"meaning," which relates to an interlocutor's communicative intentions. I also follow Bruner (1990), who defines meaning-making as a human being's self-construction of meaning. However, I argue that meaning-making involves not only self-construction but also co-construction in which an individual constructs meaning in the process of interaction with others in a culturally meaningful context such as narrative discourse. In other words, meaning in situated speech becomes social, cultural, and conventional, and an individual learns to interpret meanings and meaning-making in contexts such as narrative discourse in which specific meanings are created and transmitted. In this chapter I explore the acquisition of meaning from a cross-cultural

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perspective. I emphasize issues related to social psychology as well as ethnological and anthropological psychology.

Specifically, I advocate that psychologists

pay more attention to meaning-making in social interactions not only within a particular culture but also across different cultures. The metaphoric expression "Love is blind" might be universal or at least quasi-universal, whereas "Love is like a dayfly" (meaning ephemeral) might be more culturally constrained. Following Lakoff (1987), we have general metaphors, such as "He was fdled with anger" in which the body might be universally conceptualized as a container for emotions. Likewise, comparing life to a voyage is a general metaphor.

On the

other hand, a metaphoric expression, "the Earth, a spaceship" might need to be recognized from the slightly more complex perspective that we human beings are in the same boat named the Earth (Iwata, 1992).

Along similar lines, the

following metaphors that appeared in a newspaper article might require certain previous knowledge about a fairy tale: '~rhe Sox signed him as a free agent last winter in case Hosey, the Cinderella story of 1995, turned into a pumpkin" (Boston Globe, April 24, 1996, p. 39). In this chapter, I argue that human psychology should focus on meaning and its construction process under the influence of a specific culture. The acquisition of meaning, in general, requires a great deal of interaction with others. Conversational interactions with caregivers in earlier years and peers and teachers in later years seem to exert an important influence on children's growing sense of meaning. During the earlier years of the process of language acquisition, in which the construction of meaning-making is embedded, a child hears language used in socioculturally appropriate ways. In this regard, I would like to place particular emphasis on the relationship between cognition and social interaction. In the past, language acquisition theorists emphasized that humans are biologically endowed to acquire language (e.g., Chomsky, 1959, 1965). This paradigm directly linked the process of language acquisition to the nature of human cognition and viewed children as active, specialized language processors.

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According to Chomskyan theorists (e.g., Chomsky, 1986), language acquisition is autonomous, and children automatically move from the initial state to the steady state, as if by flipping a series of switches.

Chomsky's notion of language

acquisition, however, was entirely syntactic and had little to do with meaning-making. Vygotsky (1978), on the other hand, argued that language is at first a tool for a young child's social interaction; as the child internalizes linguistic forms, the role of language changes from a social tool to a private one. Following Vygotsky, in other words, children's cognitive skills first develop through interactions with more mature members of a society and are then internalized. A child thus hears language and meaning-making in a socially appropriate way rather than simply being exposed to a context-free flow of language.

In this sense,

Bruner (1990) hypothesizes that: (a) at an early stage of development the child, interacting with the caregiver, enters into the world of meaning construction; and (b) the meaning-creation process is closely related to specific forms of cultural representation.

Mother-child conversations thus seem to form the beginning of

children's developing culture-specific meaning-making.

These interactional

practices illustrate what Bruner (1977) has termed "scaffolding"--the temporary help that parents give children to perform a task, and, more specifically, the either explicit or implicit verbal means by which parents give this help. Claiming that '%y using language first for limited ends the child comes finally to recognize its more powerful, productive uses," Bruner (1983, p. 7) emphasizes that, in the process of interacting with others, individuals construct their own logic so that they can successfully communicate their intended meanings to others. Applying this social interaction paradigm across cultures, we can see that the primary agent of cultural transmission, usually the mother, provides the child with particular meaning-making styles.

Previous studies (e.g., Bruner, 1977,

1990; Bruner & Lucariello, 1989; Nelson, 1989) of children's early social interactions have identified the following hypotheses: (a) A particular caregiver's meaning-making style shapes the child's meaning-making style, contributing to

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differences in style between mother-child pairs; and (b) there are culture-specific patterns of social interactions in meaning-making. We can therefore infer that meaning-making starts early in life in mother-child interactions in which specific meanings are both created and transmitted in culturally specific ways. Conversely, maternal perceptions of meaning-making play an important role in the child's creation of meaning-making, reflecting the mothers' socioculturaUy constructed values and beliefs.

Interest in the Japanese Language and Psychosocial Development Japanese society and its people have attracted a great deal of attention in psychological research, both linguistically and socioculturally. First, primarily because of its syntactic peculiarities, Japanese provides potentially rich areas for linguistic studies. When considering the issue of meaning, we should not ignore syntactic constraints because "meaning itself is a culturally mediated phenomenon that depends upon the prior existence of a shared symbol system" (Bruner, 1990, p. 69). The issue of symbolic representation has a close connection with the understanding of cultural construction of meaning.

Typologically, Japanese

belongs to the Altaic language group, which, besides Japanese, includes such languages as Korean, Mongolian, Turkish, and Navaho (Kuno, 1973; Shibatani, 1990). Altaic languages are in marked contrast to English or other Indo-European languages. For example, Japanese is an SOV language, namely, a language in which the basic word order of the transitive sentence is subject-object-verb. Japanese is also an agglutinative language (e.g., the verb root is followed by a series of afFLxes, adjusted by voicing assimilation to fit the root and each other) (Yamada, 1992). Moreover, whereas the use of determiners is generally obligatory with nominals (at least singular ones) in English, no such functional category exists in Japanese (Shibatani, 1990). Also, in contrast to English, which is a head-initial (i.e., right branching) language, Japanese is a head-final (i.e., left-branching) language. For example, while in English a noun is a head of the

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phrase such as "the child who took a bus," in Japanese an adjectival clause comes before a noun such as '%asu ni notta kodomo [basu = bus, ni = object marker, n o t t a = took, k o d o m o = child])." Furthermore, neither a syntactic nor a morphological cue is available to distinguish the difference between a head-final NP with a relative clause (e.g., b a s u ni n o t t a k o d o m o : the child who took a bus) and a simple sentence (e.g., b a s u ni notta" o took a bus), except for the availability of the information after the verb (Yamashita, Stowe, & Nakayama, 1993). Because of this head-final structure, the listener cannot identify whether the sentence he or she hears is a relative clause or not, until the head NP becomes available at the very end.

In addition to these typological peculiarities, referential strategies,

such as the low frequency of pronouns and the extensive use of ellipsis, make the study of the acquisition of Japanese unique and of great potential interest for those who do research on crosslinguistic studies (e.g., Clancy, 1980, 1985, 1992; Hinds, 1984). We cannot be freed from such syntactic constraints. Sociocultural factors are

also considered important

contributors to

differences in linguistic style. As Bruner (1990) states, "Meaning depends not only upon a sign and a referent but also upon an interpretantma representation of the world in terms of which the sign-referent relationship is mediated" (p. 69). It is therefore critical to examine how the meaning-creation process conducted by an individual who lives in a specific culture reflects socioculturally accepted norms

and,

conversely,

meaning-making. share

some

how

the

social

norms

shape

an

individual's

For example, although speech acts and politeness arguably

universal

features

(Brown

&

Levinson,

1987),

cross-culturally as well as crosslinguistically (Matsumoto,

they

1993).

vary These

referential choices and issues of politeness are considered important because they are closely related to issues of subtlety and ambiguity not only in the Japanese language but also in Japanese society at large. That is, the Japanese language, which is often affected by a culturally meaningful context, is a highly contextualized language; the speaker must be fully aware of (a) whether the

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relationship with the listener is intimate, or (b) whether the communication is impersonal. In this regard, Hall (1989) writes:

In sharp contrast, high context peoples like the Pueblo, many of Africa's indigenous cultures, the Japanese, and apparently the R u s s i a n s . . . inhabit a "sea of information" that is widely s h a r e d . . .

The "sea of information"

group lives in a unified, very high context world in which all or most of the parts interrelate. (p. 39)

In a relatively homogeneous society like Japan, even if what the speaker talks about or the meaning the speaker wants to convey is not explicit but ambiguous, the similarity of background allows (or at least Japanese people believe it allows) for more accurate inferences on the part of the listener.

As

Azuma (1986) mentions, "In contrast to the West, where it is the sender's responsibility to produce a coherent, clear, and intelligible message, in Japan, it is the receiver's responsibility to make sense out of the message" (p. 9). Ambiguous utterances may thus result in successful communication in Japan because interlocutors believe that they have the shared experience necessary to make sense out of the ambiguous uses of the language. In many other areas, the Japanese also show behavioral patterns that differ greatly from those identified in Western cultures. For instance, the guiding principle of the Japanese can be characterized by social relativism, within which the individual is defined by the reference groups to which he or she belongs (Holloway & Minami, 1996; Lebra, 1976; Maynard, 1992).

Social relativism,

however, does not necessarily imply that the Japanese do not possess the notion of independence or individualism. Rather, they have traditionally defined each individual, and his or her function, on the basis of the human relationships within the society of which he or she is a part; each individual is thus allowed to enjoy individualism and independence within a certain framework of group.

In this

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way, therefore, while American culture is characterized by the guiding principle dominated by the pursuit of individual autonomy and self-interest (Lebra, 1976), it is somewhat difficult for an individual to nourish a Western sense of individuality in Japanese soil. As a reflection of these sociocultural dissimilarities, Japanese children are trained differently from their American counterparts. For example, while in the United States peer relations are conceptualized primarily as dyadic, in Japan the primary goal of parents (and teachers as well) is to encourage children to function harmoniously within the group (Lewis, 1995; Peak, 1991; Tobin, Wu, & Davidson, 1989).

Along similar lines, in the United States, primary focus is placed on

verbal interaction between teachers and children; verbal expressiveness is considered a vehicle for social and emotional development. In contrast, Japanese express a preference for verbal restraint rather than effusiveness (Lebra, 1976). This orientation is reflected in child-care settings, where there is correspondingly less emphasis on encouraging verbalization from children (Shigaki, 1987).

Previous Japanese Research Whorf (1956) hypothesized that the particular language one speaks affects the manner in which one perceives and thinks about the world.

According to

Berman and Slobin (1994), some of the strongest evidence to support the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis comes from studies of typological discourse analysis. Regardless of whether we accept the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, it seems true that language is a vehicle by which we bring our thoughts and meanings into order. In strong terms, we might claim that, from early childhood on, through mother-child interactions, children acquire a specific worldview as they acquire language. Even in weaker terms, we might be able to maintain that the mother and the child negotiate the meaning of the actions around them. In either case, in this paradigm, we might be able to state that because a child learns to speak a particular language with its culture-specific representational forms and rules of use,

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differences in early language socialization reflect cultural differences in meaningmaking. Therefore, we might claim that an individual's native language allows him or her to construct meaningful messages in socioculturally as well as linguistically constrained ways. As previously argued, despite the fact that both the Japanese and the Americans, in general, live in similar industrial societies and, in this sense, experience no major economic differences, these two nations differ greatly in their cultural beliefs of how to care for, socialize, and educate young children. Accordingly, their patterns of language socialization are different, and it seems natural to assume that meaning-making differs between these two cultures. Research on the role of maternal communication with children has been the focus of several studies in the last decades. CaudiU and Schooler (1973), for example, found that American children, at ages two-and-a-half and six years, used verbal expression to communicate positive as well as negative emotions more frequently than did Japanese children of the corresponding ages. Also, Caudill and Weinstein (1969) found that Japanese middle-class mothers talked far less frequently to their toddlers than did American middle-class mothers. Caudill's cultural transmission model tends to assume that cultural norms affect the parent's behavior, which in turn exert a (primarily unidirectional) influence on the child (Holloway & Minami, 1996). Therefore, in a characteristically individualistic society such as the United States, an individual should be verbally assertive and deliver meanings explicitly, whereas in a characteristically group-oriented society such as Japan, an individual should be verbally restrained and deliver meanings subtly. According to the cultural transmission model, therefore, the direction of language development in a given culture would depend on understanding how the adults who are representing a specific culture use language. Correspondingly, there are differences in ways in which parents ascribe intentionality to their children's early utterances. A study of verbal exchanges between Japanese and U.S. mothers and their three-month-old infants (Toda,

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Fogel, & Kawai, 1990) found that U.S. mothers used more information-oriented speech (i.e., fully propositional sentences used in adult conversations) than did Japanese mothers; in contrast, in comparison to U.S. mothers, Japanese mothers rarely used grammatically complete utterances, and spoke to their young infants in a more affect-salient manner (e.g., nonsense words, onomatopoeia, and songlike-utterances).

Bornstein, Azuma, Tamis-LeMonda, and Ogino (1990)

studied Japanese and U.S. mothers and their five-month-old infants and found that U.S. infants are more active than Japanese infants in many ways, including motor behavior and positive vocalization. Interestingly, these researchers found that in comparison to Japanese mothers, U.S. mothers made more referential statements and more frequently encouraged their babies to initiate physical exploration of their environment (e.g., attending to properties, objects, and events around them). In contrast, Japanese mothers tended to promote their children's visual attention to their environments rather than to facilitate children's vocalization (Bornstein, Tamis-LeMonda, Tal, Ludemann, Toda, Rahn, P~cheux, Azuma, & Vardi, 1992) [e.g., Japanese mothers verbally encouraged infants to look at something in their environment more frequently than U.S. mothers, such as un, ano inu kawaii ne (yeah, that dog is pretty, isn't it?)]. Thus, the results obtained from three- and five-month-old infants and their mothers already show significant differences between the two cultures. The results further illustrate that the two cultures evidently operate with different underlying belief systems and values about parenting. Differences in mother-infant interactions in earlier years relate to differences in later years.

U.S. thirteen-month-old toddlers tend to be more

advanced in language production and reception than Japanese toddlers of the same age (Tamis-LeMonda, Bornstein, Cyphers, Toda, & Ogino, 1992). Further comparing maternal speech to five- and thirteen-month-old infants in Argentina, France, Japan, and the United States, Bornstein, Tal, Rahn, Galperin, P~cheux, Lamour, Toda, Azuma, Ogino, & Tamis-LeMonda (1992) found that while

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affect-oriented speech appeared across these four different cultures, Japanese mothers were the most frequent users of affect-salient speech; this finding is in line with the characteristic aspect identified when Japanese babies are three months old (i.e., Japanese mothers of three-month-olds were more affect-oriented than U.S. mothers, using nonsense and onomatopoeic sounds). These findings moreover provide empirical support for the claim that, as far as Japanese mothers are concerned, the primary goal in early child rearing is to empathize

("omoiyar-u," the verb form of"omoiyari," which will be explained soon) with their children's needs and wants, and that, in contrast, Western cultures favor information-oriented speech and speech patterns that are characteristic of adult-adult conversation. The term "enculturation" refers to "the acquisition of cultural representations, including representations of self, by the human organism" (LeVine, 1990, p. 99). Previous studies on Japanese socialization (e.g., Doi, 1973; Lebra, 1976) suggest that, from an early age on, Japanese children go through the enculturation process of omoiyari (empathy), which is embedded in the larger context of Japanese culture. As Clancy (1986) argues, a Japanese individual who is truly empathic does not rely on explicit verbal cues to understand meanings that someone wishes to convey because these should be intuited through more subtle cues of gesture and tone. The elliptical, affect-oriented style favored by Japanese mothers, therefore, illustrates that they are sensitive to their children, and it also helps their children acquire this subtle communicative style (Azuma, 1986; Shigaki, 1987). According to Hess, Kashiwagi, Azuma, Price, and Dickson (1980), for example, in comparison to American mothers, Japanese adults, particularly mothers, tend to think that in the preschool period of development children mature emotionally and learn to be polite and obedient. In this way, Japanese mothers believe that even preschool children should be capable of reading the minds of others and put themselves in another person's position in order to understand that person's feelings. Based on this belief, mothers provide their

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307

children with a certain environment for learning important linguistic and sociocultural structures, and mothers convey corresponding culture-specific styles of meaning-making.

In summary, much has been written about the important

function of socialization in culture-specific settings.

From an early age on,

Japanese children go through the process of empathy training highly valued in their society. In other words, in Japanese society, mothers, as primary caregivers, induct their children into a subtle interactive communicative style and convey meanings accordingly.

Purpose of the Present Study

Age Considerations The present study compares young preschool children (aged four) from two different cultures:

Japanese and North American.

The rationale for studying

preschoolers' acquisition of meaning in a comparative perspective is manifold. One is to identify the developmental constraints associated with symbolic thoughts or representations (Fischer & Lazerson, 1984). Preschool age represents the period of extremely rapid progress in the child's developing knowledge of language, which includes various metalinguistic abilities, i.e., the abilities to reflect upon and make judgments about particular aspects of language (Wolf & Dickinson, 1985). The development of such metalinguistic abilities serves as a means to allow the child to deliver his or her images and impressions to others successfully and effectively, and metaphor is one of such metalinguistic abilities. Two-year-olds might pretend a broomstick were a horse, a push toy were a lawnmower, or a soda bottle were a racing car.

In such make-believe, two- or

three-year-olds might be able to use one object to verbally symbolize another, but these symbolic thoughts (or representations) are limited in many ways. example,

For

although young children use metaphor, they have not yet become

capable of using and interpreting other types of figurative language such as irony (Winner, 1988).

On the other hand, four- and five-year-olds are capable of

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symbolizing their physiological conditions, such as "I feel as if my mouth had been pasted up" after having bitten an astringent persimmon (a four-year-old) and "I feel hot as if I were burning" (a five-year-old) after running and playing hard with a ball (Iwata, 1992).

Moreover, they gradually become capable of

employing and understanding irony.

These metaphoric expressions might be

culturally constrained, and the development of such metalinguistic abilities in earlier years further leads to later developmental stages of much more advanced, humorous (and emotive at times) metaphoric expressions, such as a sevenyear-old child pointing to her chin and saying, "I had two mouths," meaning that her chin was cut open as if it were also a mouth (Minami & McCabe, 1991, 1995, 1996). Another rationale for this work is to show that individualism and groupism (or more precisely, social relativism) begin to coexist in preschool years and that such a coexistence inevitably influences an individual's meaning-making.

For

example, Japanese preschools usually hold up monthly goals that simultaneously state "learn that 'nothing can be accomplished alone" and "acquire a self-reliant attitude" (Peak, 1991, p. 71).

While stating that Japanese subscribe to

collectivism rather than to individualism poses a simplistic view, we cannot deny the fact that Japanese preschoolers are gradually molded into expressing their identification with the shared goal of the group to which they belong, such that '%he blue class and the yellow class [four- and five-year-olds] take good care of new friends in the pink class [three-year-olds]" (Peak, 1991, p. 85). Thus, I would like to stress the significance of preschool years for capturing the meaning-creation process in culture-specific environments. Finally, the purpose of this study is to understand how mothers verbally interact with their young children during mother-child conversations about the past. Storytelling in conversational interactions, talking about past experiences in particular, is both effective and vivid as a way to explore the meaning-creation process.

Past research (Minami & McCabe, 1995) has identified that: (a)

Cultural Constructions Of Meaning

309

Japanese mothers of five-year-olds not only support their children's talk about the past but also make sure that it begins to take the shape of narrative discourse that consequently leads to the meaning-making process valued in their culture; and (b) the production of short narratives in Japan is understood and valued differently from such productions in North America.

The objective of the

current study parallels that of the previous study, but focuses on younger children, because, as Bruner (1990) argues, we might be able to observe that "fouryear-olds may not know much about the culture, but they know what's canonical and are eager to provide a tale to account for what is not" (pp. 82-83), and that mothers support their children's socioculturally appropriate meaning-making in many ways. In other words, narrative discourse ~s a place where interlocutors contribute to each other's meaning-making. The child shapes his or her narrative discourse in response to the mother; through interactions with the mother. The child then makes sense out of the mother's narrative discourse and consequently internalizes the mother's meaning-making style. What I argue in this chapter is thus a social-interactionist account of meaning-making, which emphasizes that conversational interactions with other members of a society are important ways in which individualsmyoung children in particular--have

opportunities to

organize their past experiences and make sense of their lives in culturally appropriate ways.

METHODS Subjects Twenty mothers from two different cultures volunteered to participate in a study about culturally preferred discourse elicitation patterns:

(a) 10 four-

year-old middle-class Japanese children (5 boys and 5 girls, M= 4;3 years) and their mothers living in Japan (none of these mother-child pairs had experienced living overseas at the time of interview); and (b) 10 four-year-old Englishspeaking middle-class North American children (5 boys and 5 girls, M= 4;3 years)

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Minami

and their mothers.

Procedure

As part of a larger study of children's narrative discourse development, mothers who participated in this project were supplied with tape recorders and blank cassette tapes and asked to record at home occasions when their children liked to tell them "stories about personal experience, about real events that have happened in the past" (McCabe & Peterson, 1991, p. 226). Mothers were asked to do so in as natural a way as possible, "like you ordinarily behave when you ask your child to talk about past events" (McCabe & Peterson, 1991, p. 226). That is, mothers were asked to elicit interesting past events or experiences from their children in a situation that had every indication of having been relaxed and informal; no more specific instructions or requests were provided. Although talk about past experiences is invariably woven in with talk about the present and other types of discursive interactions, in this project I focused on talk about past eventsmwhether real or imaginary.

Further, some mother-child pairs talked

about more events than others. To establish a comparable data base, however, I decided to analyze only the initial three topics raised by each mother-child pair.

Contrastive Discourse Analysis '~ne usefulness of culture as an explanatory variable depends upon our ability to 'unpackage' the culture concept," argues Schwartz (1994, p. 85). In this sense, comparing styles of eliciting past events between Japanese mothers and North American mothers is interesting.

To begin with, by introducing the

paradigm of mother-child interactions, I would like to conceptualize parent and child as interactive partners in the creation of sociocultural meanings.

Con-

trastive discourse analysis allows us to perform this study because it clearly identifies discourse style differences between Japanese mother-child pairs and North American mother-child pairs. Moreover, the analysis brings to light the

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underlying values that a society holds concerning the proper socialization of its members. Comparison of culturally different discourse styles illustrates not only similarities but also differences in the processes whereby young children acquire the ability to recognize and interpret the sociocultural activities that are taking place in their specific environments.

RESULTS The results of the study are presented in two parts. First, descriptions of maternal styles of eliciting past events and subsequent meaning-making are provided from a cross-cultural perspective with examples. Second, data (including the examples presented in this section) are analyzed quantitatively.

Qualitative Analyses The following two dialogues--one between a four-year-old Japanese boy, Sho, and his mother, and the other one between a four-year-old North American girl, Cara, and her mothermillustrate discourse style differences: 1

Example 1 Sho and his mother's interaction Mother:

j a Sho kun wa nani iro no densha ga yokatta ka na?

1

~rhen, Sho, what color train did (you) like?' Sho:

eh tto, red.

2

'Vm, red.' Mother:

red?.

3

'Red?' Sho:

datte ne,

4

%ecause, you know,' (Mother:

un)

~th huh' Sho:

eh piano ranger ni noru mon.

5

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Minami

'Piano Ranger 2 gets on.' Mother:

huun. e W e l l .'

red no densha nanka notta koto aru?

'Did (you) ever get on a red train?' Sho:

an.

CYeah .'

Mother:

honto.

'Really.' Sho:

an.

10

v~lreah. ~

Mother:

huun.

11

~Vel]. ~

Sho:

notta koto nai?

12

'Didn't (you) get on (a red train)?' Mother:

nai yo, okaasan wa.

13

'No, I tell you, as far as Morn is concerned.' Sho:

boku aru.

14

'(I) did.' Mother:

hee.

15

'Dear.' Sho:

an.

16

~lreah. '

Mother:

doko iku toki ni notta no?

17

~ h e r e did (you) go by the red train?' Sho:

aka chan no toki.

18

~ r h e n (I) was a baby.' Mother:

notte nai yo.

'(You) didn't get on (a red train), I tell you.'

19

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Cultural Constructions O f Meaning

Sho:

aka chan no toki, notta.

20

~When (I) was a baby, (I) got on (a red train).' Mother:

notte nai yo.

21

'(You) didn't get on (a red train), I tell you.' Sho:

hitori de notta no.

22

'(I) got on (a red train) alone.' Mother:

hitori de aka chan no toki doo yatte noru no?

23

'How can a baby alone get on (a train)?' Sho:

eh tto ne,

24

~ m , you know,' (Mother:

un)

~ h huh' Sho:

eh tto,

25

un2~

Mother:

densha noru toki wa kippu ga iru no yo.

26

~ro get on a train, (you) need a ticket, I tell you.' Sho:

an soo.

'Uh really.'

Example 2

Cara and her mother's interaction

Cara:

And you know what? We even saw a bear track.

Mother:

Bear tracks?

Cara:

Yeah.

Mother:

Out behind the children's center?

Cara:

Yes.

Mother:

What did they look like?

Cara:

Big hairy footprints.

Mother:

Who found those?

27

314

Minami

Cara:

I me Joey Nicholas.

Mother:

Ohhh.

Cara:

And Frazer.

Mother:

Did you follow the tracks?

Cara:

Yes.

Mother:

And what did you find?

Cara:

A bear!

Mother:

Where?

Cara:

In the field.

Mother:

An d what was the bear doing in the field?

Cara:

It was eating our soup, our snack~honey and peanut butter.

Mother:

An d what did you say to that bear when you found that bear in the field?

Cara:

Said ~Go get your own honey."

Mother:

You wouldn't even share with the bear?

Cara:

I did.

Mother:

Was it a girl bear or a boy bear?

Cara:

A girl.

Mother:

Did you fmd out w h a t her name was?

Cara:

Yes xx.

Mother:

Pardon.

Cara:

XX.

Mother:

Oh that's a nice name for a bear. Was she friendly?

Cara:

No.

Mother:

W h a t did she do t h a t wasn't friendly?

Cara:

Scratch us.

Mother:

Scratched you? Oh dear.

Cultural Constructions Of Meaning

315

Were you a bit scared? Cara:

Me and Joey and Nick and Frazer.

Mother:

What did you and Joey and Nick do?

Sara:

Ran.

Mother:

Was there a teacher with you?

Cara:

Yes.

Mother:

Who went with you?

Cara:

Audrey.

Mother:

Audrey.

Cara:

For a bear hunt.

Mother:

Oh. Well, no wonder the bear wasn't friendly, if she thought you were hunting her.

Cara:

No. We weren't hunt. We were just looking for her.

Mother:

Oh, you weren't trying to kill her. Did you tell her that? And did she get more friendly then? No? What did she do?

Cara:

Still scratched. Eight times.

Mother:

And what did you do, after when she scratched you?

Cara:

I didn't. We looked all over the place for bears.

Mother:

You just kept looking for more bears? You didn't. Well, what about your scratches?

316

Minami

Cara:

We just went back to the children's center. I'm just joking. No bears live in St. John's right?

Mother:

It's a good story though.

Example 1 shows how a Japanese four-year-old and his mother use linguistic items and discursive devices for meaning construction.

Japanese

speakers, regardless of their age, try to communicate by frequently using the interactional/rapport particle ne (you know).

As seen in this example, this

particle probably emerges in early stages of language development and, moreover, comes to be used in the discourse context because of the mother's strong emphasis on a culturally preferred interactional style. That is, Japanese culture is characterized by interdependence, as seen in the reciprocal nature of amae, which means, following leading Japanese psychiatrist Takeo Doi's (1973) definition, the state of dependency on the indulgence or benevolence of another person, and omoiyari, an aspect describing consideration for others (i.e., empathizing with

someone else's needs and wants).

Because people tend to attach a significant

meaning to rapport and empathy in Japanese societymparticularly because amae sometimes describes a child's feelings and behavior toward a parent--(Doi, 1973; Lebra, 1976), it is understandable that young children use the rapport particle ne (you know) in their early interactions with others. Local linguistic markers signal relations within individual or across individual meaning-making processes in culturally appropriate ways. To explain why he likes a red train, the child in Example 1 uses datte (but, because) in line 4, which, according to Maynard (1992), "is often used by a child in an interaction with parents or people with whom the amae r

and emotional

dependence' relationship is established" (p. 115). Further, right after uttering datte, the child adds the rapport particle ne (you know), which is immediately

followed by the mother's brief acknowledgment un (uh huh), a sign of omoiyari.

Cultural Constructions Of Meaning

317

This interaction, which is very sensitive to a culturally meaningful context, shows one of the interpretive meaning-making processes I consider very important in conversational contexts.

Particularly, I would like to connect this meaning-

making process with the maxims of conversation that were originally established by the philosopher H. P. Grice (1975): (a) maxim of quantity (saying only as much as is necessary), (b) maxim of quality (saying only the truth), (c) maxim of relevance (saying only what is to the point), and (d) maxim of manner (saying perspicuously but unambiguously).

The Gricean maxims identify general

cooperative principles and have contributed to research on pragmatics (Sperber & Wilson, 1986). Interlocutors establish and maintain common ground in communication. In this case, the notion of grounding is evidenced in the brief acknowledgment un (uh huh) through which the mother and the child construct common frameworks.

That is, brief acknowledgments, which effectively signal that the

receiver (i.e., the mother) shares the ground on which the sender (i.e., the child) is standing, serve as a contextualization cue.

Brief but economical acknowledg-

ments in this example, either implicitly or explicitly, enhance common ground in conversations; they also delineate the Gricean framework of maxims of quantity in a particular setting. Furthermore, in this example, the mother and the child try to construct mutually shared frameworks by negotiating the meaning of a past event through the amae-omoiyari exchange, which is, in fact, in line with the cooperative principles proposed by Grice (1975). Sho's mother's attitude, however, is much more complex than the child originally anticipates. Her initial huun (well) prefaces her leading question, "red no densha ni notta koto aru?: Did (you) ever get on a red train?" which takes the

form of a closed-ended (yes/no) question (line 7). In fact, "un: yes" from the child is not the answer that the mother expects. Because of this, although she utters the second huun (well) as simple acknowledgment, later using the assertive/emphatic particle yo (I tell you) and the thematic/topic marker wa for a contrastive 3 purpose, the mother says, "nai yo okaasan wa: No, I tell you, as far as the mother

318

Minami

is concerned" (line 13). This action taken by the mother alludes to the fact that the child's memory of the past is false. The question that still remains, however, is whether the young child is capable of assigning multiple meanings to the mother's utterance: namely, (a) the mother has not got on a red train; (b) a young child cannot get on a train on his or her own; and, therefore, (c) the child has not got on it, either. Is the four-year-old capable of capturing this complex meaning attribution process? Is he able to deconstruct meanings into their components? If not, why doesn't the mother say outright (perspicuously) that a baby cannot get on the train alone? The mother's utterance "I haven't got on a red train" urges the use of implicatures to increase discourse tension, and the utterance can easily lose its meaning unless the implications are understood. Yet such an utterance provides the means for the kind of indirect talk that forces "meaning performance" upon the listener. The answer seems to lie in the Japanese preference for self-control or self-attribution in meaning-making, which I will discuss later in detail. While both Japanese and North American mothers are similar in that they try to extend discourse topics, they differ greatly in how and what directions they extend their child's productions of the past. These differences become clear when we examine conversations in light of the Gricean maxims (Grice, 1975). Sho's mother is particularly concerned about whether what her child has stated is true or not, which is related to the maxim of quality. Using the assertive/emphatic particle yo (I tell you), she sticks to simple factual statements and tries to inform him that what he has stated is not true (lines 19 and 21). elicitation strategy stands in contrast to that of Sho's mother.

Cara's mother's Cara's mother

allows her to take the floor for longer periods of time, and even encourages this by asking her many more descriptive questions than does Sho's mother, which in part represents the general Western value of independence and individual expression in meaning-making. For Cara's mother, even an imaginary bear must be described in terms of how friendly it was, what its name was, and its gender.

Cultural Constructions Of Meaning

319

Further, Cara responds to her mother's request by describing the bear in detail. Thus, this North American mother-child interaction is predicated upon the maxim of manner. Moreover, unlike Sho's mother, Cara's mother does not provide brief vocalizations of acknowledgment.

Thus, North American mothers may

encourage their children to provide an explicit context even if it is an imaginary story; in Japanese families, on the other hand, parent-controlled conversations and factual representation may be their linguistic norms. Both Japanese and North American mother-child interactions adhere to the maxim of relevance but in different ways. From early childhood on, therefore, children seem to be exposed to culturally valued meaning-making skills through interactions with their mothers. Although children come to internalize meaning-making and gain performance competencies through mother-child interactions, children's attitudes are obviously influenced by their mothers' strategies. Over the years, developmental psychologists have studied different types of parenting techniques.

Baumrind

(1971), for example, has tried to identify the link between children's social competence and parental styles of child rearing. She particularly maintains that parental "firm control" promotes effective socialization of children, particularly children's internalization of values and meanings.

If Baumrind's notion is

applied to meaning-making in conversational contexts, we might be able to claim that the mother who gives many evaluative comments promotes her child's internalization of meaning-making.

As Example 3 below indicates, however,

while talking about catching goldfishes in a local festival,-a Japanese mother does not give any evaluative comments to her child Akira (boy, age 4;6); instead, she simply deploys topic-extension strategies and tries to draw some kinds of evaluative comments from him.

Example 3 Akira and his mothers interaction Akira:

tsukamae tara, kawaisoo?

320

Minami 'If (I) catch (them), do (goldfishes) feel sad?'

Mother:

kawaisoo? 'do (they) feel sad?'

Akira:

an. ~Veah.'

Mother:

kawaisoo ya no? 'Do (they) feel sad?'

Akira:

an.

rVeah~

Mother:

huun. r

~

demo iteru yan kingyo ie ni. 'But (you have) goldfishes in (our) house.'

As seen above, while the influence of fnma control might hold true in North American contexts, it might not be true in other cultures. Whether exerting firm control is the most effective strategy in meaning-making seems to be left to the discretion of an individual who lives in a specific culture. While North American mothers might regard giving evaluative comments as the best strategy for meaning-making, Japanese mothers may not consider it an effective way. As can be seen in this example, the Japanese mother, who tries to elicit evaluative comments from her child, can be regarded as giving him the least external control in meaning-making.

Without any external pressure, however, the child still

seems to be able to internalize omoiyari (empathy) [with goldfishes, in this case]. The example thus supports Lewis's (1995) and Vogel's (1979) general claim that Japanese adults--mothers and teachers alike--do not make explicit demands on children, who nevertheless internalize parental, group, and institutional values and meanings. The Japanese mother's attitude is further consonant with another line of

Cultural Constructions Of Meaning

321

research showing that children are likely to internalize socioculturally preferred meanings, values, and judgments when they receive little external control (Lepper, 1984; Lewis, 1984). We assume that the mother's behavior reflects an indigenous folk psychologymthe shaping of culturally appropriate understandings of others' behaviors and meanings by individuals interacting with each other. Interestingly, this indigenous folk psychology in the East is in line with the modern attribution theory developed in the West. At the same time, however, the notion of self-attribution and its resultant self-control should still be considered within a particular sociocultural framework. Peak (1991) writes:

Japanese society eventually expects a high degree of self-control and suppression of personal desires and feelings in public social situations. But the wish to assume this control must be initiated and sustained by the child himself, or else, it is believed, the long-term effectiveness of the child's social adjustment will be impaired. (p. 85)

To summarize, therefore, as far as child rearing is concerned, Japanese seem to believe that less salient external control will result in more internalization of socioculturally appropriate behavioral standards by the child.

What is also

important is that unlike the Western notion of individualism, the Japanese philosophy holds that an individual can only claim his or her meanings, which are inevitably related to his or her own will and personality, within the framework of groupism (or more precisely, social relativism). We are thus impressed by the profundity of ethnopsychology in which alternative explanations are possible, from culture to culture, of why children behave in certain ways in meaning-making processes and how adults should respond to them. Thus far I have discussed individual mother-child interactions in meaningmaking. I now turn the discussion to the question of whether the characteristic differences in these samples are true of other mother-child interactions.

322

Minami

Measures

All audio-tapes that had recorded mother-child conversational interactions were transcribed into computer files following the guidelines of Codes for the Human Analysis of Transcripts (CHAT) conventions for analysis by the Child Language Analysis (CLAN) soitware available through the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES, MacWhinney & Snow, 1985, 1990). The unit of coding was the utterance, which is usually defined as a "physically definable, behavioral unit," more specifically, "a stretch of speech preceded and followed by silence or a change of speaker" (Crystal, 1985, p. 322).

This definition also

means that a high degree of correspondence between sentences and utterances is not necessarily assumed (Lyons, 1968) [I will later give an explicit definition of the term in this study]. Speech was broken into utterances, and transcripts of all parents' speech were scored according to a speech act coding system designed to assess mother-child conversational interactions in previous studies (e.g., McCabe & Peterson, 1991; Minami & McCabe, 1995). Figure 1 gives a visual representation of coding rules for parental speech; transcripts of all parents' speech were scored according to these coding rules. Parental utterances were coded as one of three types: (I) topic-initiation (or topic-switch), (II) topic-extension, and (III) conversational strategies that simply show attention, such as "un" (uh huh) and

"huun" (well) [i.e., brief vocal acknowledgments]. topic-extension were further categorized into:

Utterances categorized as

(A) descriptive statements that

describe or request description of a scene, a condition, or a state, (B) statements about or requests for statements that, accompanied by an action verb, describe a specific action, (C) the mother's evaluative comments, and (D) the mother's request for child's evaluative comments. Detailed guidelines for these categorizations are explained below:

(I)

Topic-Initiation (Switching)

Cultural Constructions Of Meaning

1.

323

Open-ended questions initiating a new topic (e.g., "kyoo yoochien de nani shita no.~: "What did [you] do in preschool today?").

2.

Closed-ended questions initiating a new topic (e.g., "suuji awase yatta.~: "Did [you] play matching numbers?").

3.

Statements initiating a new topic (e.g., "kono mae Disneyland e itta de sho.': "The other day [we] went to Disneyland.').

(II)

Topic-Extension

4.

Open-ended questions extending topics (e.g., "nani ga ichiban suki datta.~: ~What did [you] like best?").

5.

Closed-ended questions extending topics (e.g., "tanoshi katta.~: "Did [you] enjoy it?").

6.

Statements extending a topic (e.g., "nani ka itteta de sho.': "[You] were saying something.").

7.

Clarifying questions (e.g., "nani.~': "what?").

8.

Clarif~ring questions that were partial echoes (e.g., "dare ga chuu shite kuretan?':

"Who gave [you] smacks?"

after the child said,

"chuu chuu chutte yatte.': "Smack, smack, smacked [me].").

9.

Echoes (e.g., "shiranakatta no.": "[You] didn't know" after the child said, "shiranakatta.': "[I] didn't know.").

(III)

Other Conversational Strategies

10.

Statements showing attention, such as brief acknowledgment (e.g., "un.": "Yeah.') and prefacing utterances (e.g., "huun.': '~Well.').

Speech patterns that are categorized into topic-extension are further categorized into: A.

Descriptive statements (which describe or request description of a scene, a condition, or a state) "ato Momotaro no hon mo atta de sho.': "Besides there was a book

about the Peach Boy."

324

Minami "denki ga tsuiteta ne.": '~rhere were electric lights, you know." '~]ibun de unten suru kuruma?~: "Is (it) a car that you drive on your

0W'117" So

Statements about or requests for information about actions (which, accompanied by an action verb, describe a specific action) "janken de saisho kimeta.':

"(We) tossed first by scissors, paper,

and rock." "banana mo tabetan.': "(You) also ate a banana." "umi ni ittetan.~': "Did (you) go to the sea?" "Yuki chan ga arattan.": '~Yuki washed." "nan te kaita no Yukari chan wa typewriter de.~: %Vhat did (you)

~Tite with the typewriter, Yukari?" Co

Mother's evaluative comments "sore ii ne.': '~rhat's good, you know."

DO

Mother's request for child's evaluative comments "sore doo omou.~': "What do (you) think about it?"

"u chan no doko ga kawaii no?": "What do (you) think makes the bunny cute?" "oishi kattan.~: "Did (it) taste good?"

Once all the transcripts were coded, a series of CLAN programs were employed to analyze frequencies of different parental speech patterns.

Reliability All transcripts were coded by an individual who is bilingual in Japanese and English. Two full transcripts of Japanese and two full transcripts of English were independently coded by individuals fluent in each of those languages, respectively. Cohen's kappa, an estimate of reliability that corrects for chance rates of agreement, was 0.97 for the first level (topic-initiation, topic-extension,

Cultural Constructions Of Meaning

325

Initiation (Switching)

Description Prompts

Action Prompts Topic

Extension Mother's Evaluative Comments Mother's Request for Child's Evaluative Comments Statements Showing Attention

Figure 1. Coding rules for parental speech.

and statements showing attention) of the Japanese coding; it was 0.87 for the second level (descriptive statements, statements about actions, mother's evaluative comments, and mother's request for child's evaluative comments). Likewise, Cohen's kappa was 1.00 for the first level of the English coding, and 0.88 for the second level. Thus, all estimates of reliability in this case fall into the range of "almost perfect" agreement (Bakeman & Gottman, 1986; Landis & Koch, 1977).

Quantitative analyses In the following quantitative analyses proportions were used because they

326

Minami

Percentage of maternal r&luests for evaluation. 30.

27.5.

n ....... ..............

ii o

IIIIIIiiiiI IIIIIIIIl|lllllll

25.

Japanese Mother~ North American Mothe~

IIIIIiiiii 22.5.

IIIIIIIIIIiiiiiiiiI IIIIlllllt in

20.

17.5.

15

12.5.

10

7.5

i Boys

Girls

Figure 2. Maternal request for evaluation by group and child's gender (percentage)

correct for differences in length and allow us to see differing relative emphasis on components of narration.4

To test for the effects of group and gender, multi-

variate analyses of variance (MANOVA) were conducted for the major coding categories:

1) maternal requests for descriptions, actions, and evaluations, 2)

maternal evaluations, 3) statements showing attention (i.e., brief acknowledgments), and 4) initiation. There was a significant multivariate effect of group, Wilks' lambda = .48, approximate F (5, 12) = 11.76, p < .001.

A subsequent series of analyses of

variance (ANOVA) accompanied by Bonferroni Post Hoc tests were conducted.

Cultural Constructions

327

Of Meaning

The effect of group was largely attributable to significant univariate effects on maternal requests for descriptions, F (1, 16) = 18.54, p < .001, maternal requests for evaluations, F (1, 16) = 6.37, p < .05, maternal evaluations, F (1, 16) = 6.15,p < .05, statements showing attention, F (1, 16) = 5.35, p < .05, and initiation, F (1, 16) = 15.54, p < .01. 5 As can be seen in Table 1, in comparison to the North American mothers (M = 23.94,

SD

=

6.72), the Japanese mothers requested

proportionately less description (M = 13.36, North American mothers (M = 14.00,

SD =

SD

=

3.46). In comparison to the

9.82), however, the Japanese mothers

requested proportionately more evaluation from their children (M = 24.64,

SD =

10.49). Furthermore, the Japanese mothers gave proportionately less evaluation (M = 14.96,

SD =

6.12) and showed proportionately more attention (M = 24.22,

= 17.36) than North American mothers (M = 23.14,

SD =

12.51; M = 10.26,

SD

SD=

6.06). There was, however, also a significant interaction effect of group and gender on the proportion of maternal requests for evaluations, F (1, 16)= 4.58, p < .05. As described above, compared to the Japanese mothers, the North American mothers requested proportionately less evaluation from their children. The North American mothers of sons, however, requested proportionately even less evaluation (M = 8.27, = 19.73,

SD

SD = =

4.09) than did the North American mothers of daughters (M

10.88).

Furthermore, the mean of the proportion of maternal

requests for evaluations was substantially higher for the Japanese mothers who have sons (M = 27.94, daughters

(M=

SD =

21.35,

SD =

10.94) than for the Japanese mothers who have 10.05) (see Figure 2).

While the overall multivariate test did not approach statistical significance, there was a significant univariate effect of gender on maternal evaluations, F (1, 16) = 8.34, p = .05. A Bonferroni Post Hoc test revealed that mothers of sons gave proportionately more evaluation than did mothers of daughters. 6 This effect of gender, however, differs by group; there was a significant interaction of group and gender on the proportion of maternal evaluations.

That is, the propor-

Minami

328

P e r c e n t of evaluative comnlents provided by m o t h e r

32 30

~

m Japanese

28 261 24 22, 20, 18,

16

~

iio||,,|i,|i,,|a,,l,,,|,|,,|ii,,|,|||,|i|,i,,|,||,|,,oia|i,,||,|||,,,,i|,,||,|,i|,|,,|,,,|,,,,ii,,e,|,,|

i

~

14, 12

Figure 3.

Evaluations provided by mother herself by group and child's gender

tionately higher level of maternal evaluation came solely from the North American mothers.

As seen in Figure 3, the difference in the mean of the

proportion of maternal evaluations between the North American mothers who have sons (M = 32.50, daughters (M = 13.78,

SD SD

= =

7.72) and the North American mothers who have 8.58) is very pronounced, compared to the difference

between the Japanese mothers who have sons (M = 15.12, Japanese mothers who have daughters (M = 14.80,

SD

=

SD

=

4.28) and the

8.12). Therefore, while

the North American mothers of daughters gave proportionately similar evaluation to the Japanese mothers of sons and daughters, North American mothers of sons gave a substantially larger proportion of evaluation than any other (sub) group. 7

Cultural Constructions Of Meaning

329

TABLE 1 Mean Proportional Frequencies (Standard Deviations) of Mothers' Prompts to Children about Past Events

Japanese Mothers of four-year-olds

English-speaking

Fa values for main Mothers of four-year-olds effect of

GROUP

M

(SD)

M

(SD)

Requests for descriptions Percentages 13.36% (3.46)

23.94% (6.72)

Requests for actions Percentages 20.23% (8.89)

23.22%(12.65)

0.36

Requests for evaluations Percentages 24.64e/d10.49)

14.00% (9.82)

6.37*

Evaluations by mother herself Percentages 14.96% (6.12)

23.14%(12.51)

6.15"

Statements showing attention Percentages 24.22e/~17.36)

10.26% (6.06)

5.35*

Initiation Percentages 2.59% (1.46) *p < 0.05 **p < 0.01 ***p < 0.001 a Degrees of freedom = 1, 16

5.44% (1.89)

18.54,**

15.54"*

330

Minami

Utterances o v e r T u r n s 2.8 2.6 2.58 2.4 2.2 2 9

1.84

1.8 1.82

1.6 1.4 1.2

I

I

1 ~O 1.04

I 1.00

1

.8

|

Japanese four-year-olds

u

North A m e r i c a n f o u r - y e a r - o l d s

F i g u r e 4. Children's ratio of u t t e r a n c e s over turns.

L e n g t h of T u r n s In addition to the frequencies of the coded behaviors, the child's utterances over turns (i.e., the number of utterances produced by a speaker per turn) were examined. To resolve issues of equivalence between the two languages (Japanese and English), the information unit 8 was used for segmenting discourse.

For

example, tonde tonde ([I] flew and flew) is simple repetition/emphasis of one particular action and thus one information unit, while ie o de basu ni notta ([I] left the house and caught the bus) consists of two separate actions and is thus considered two pieces of information. In other words, the definition of"utterance" in this study is equivalent to the information unit. By defining utterance in this manner, the same phenomena observed in two different language groups were equated. Furthermore, a turn was defined in both Japanese and English data as statements occurring before a listener responded. Japanese mothers effectively kept their children from talking at length by

Cultural Constructions O f M e a n i n g

frequently showing attention.

331

At four years, Japanese children are producing

approximately 1.30 utterances on the average ( S D = .23), while North American children are producing 1.84 utterances per turn on the average (SD = .52), F (1, 16) = 8.30, p = .01, (see Figure 4). Thus, while North American mothers allow their four-year-olds to take long monologic turns, and give many evaluative comments, Japanese mothers simultaneously pay considerable attention to their fouryear-olds' stories and, at the same time, facilitate frequent turn exchanges.

DISCUSSION

In this chapter, I have tried to stress the importance of paying more attention to social interaction in order to understand each individual's meaningmaking process in a culturally meaningful context. This orientation is based on my belief that the meaning-creation process in discursive interactions is closely related to a specific style of cultural representation. Particularly, by comparing mother-child interactions between different cultures, I have tried to unravel certain aspects of meaning-making, both qualitatively and quantitatively. That is, the mother and the child, interacting with each other, shape culturally specific forms of conveying and interpreting meaning. A specific discourse style reflects not only general aspects of human interaction (which naturally requires meaningmaking),

but

Overall,

also

the

although

culturally Japanese

nurtured and

style

of

meaning-making.

North American

English-speaking

mothers both support their four-year-olds' talk about the past, their guidance ensures it taking the shape of meaning-making valued by their culture. Comparison of mothers from the two cultures yielded the following salient contrasts: In comparison to the North American mothers, the Japanese mothers (a) requested proportionately less description from their children; (b) gave proportionately less evaluation; (c) requested proportionately more evaluation from their children; and (d) showed proportionately more verbal attention.

These findings from the

quantitative analyses support the interpretations derived from the qualitative

332

Minami

analyses.

The first and second findings, which are related to the contrast we

observed in Examples 1 and 2, seem to indicate what is socioculturaUy preferred in terms of meaning-making. That is, in Japanese society where social relativism is the norm, meaning-making needs to be implicit; in North American society where individualism prevails, on the other hand, meaning-making needs to be explicit. Mothers utilized conversational interactions as a forum for, implicitly or not, instructing children to behave in culturally appropriate ways.

The fist,

second and fourth findings support the previous research findings by Minami and McCabe (1995), who focused on conversations between mothers and their fiveyear-old children.

The third finding, however, was not present in Minami and

McCabe's (1995) analysis of mothers of five-year-olds. The difference between the previous study and the current one seems attributable to the increased support provided by Japanese mothers to their younger children (i.e., four-year-olds versus five-year-olds). Japanese mothers seem to believe that the more evaluation they elicit from their four-year-old children (particularly boys), the sooner the children can pick up the nuances of meaning and correct their assumptions (see Example 1). The third finding also seems related to attribution theory as discussed in Example 3; regardless of the child's gender, Japanese mothers try to provide their children with opportunities to reflect upon the meaning of an action without salient external pressure. The fourth finding also confirms previous researchers' (e.g., LoCastro, 1987; Maynard, 1989; White, 1989; Yamada, 1992) claims that Japanese speakers use verbal acknowledgment more frequently (M = 24.22, 17.36) than English speakers (M = 10.26,

SD

=

6.06).

SD =

The result likewise

corresponds to Hayashi's (1988) claim that Japanese speakers use "sync talk" (which means overlapping speech) much more frequently than English speakers, in the sense that the use of frequent verbal attention by Japanese mothers thus supports a collaborative message as well as a discourse construction highly valued by Japanese speakers. The North American English-speaking mothers of daughters requested

Cultural Constructions Of Meaning

333

proportionately more evaluation than did the North American mothers of sons. The gender-of-child differences are, at least in part, in line with previous research findings; Reese and Fivush (1993), for example, found that parents of daughters were generally more elaborative than parents of sons; these researchers further identified that daughters participated in the conversations to a greater extent than sons. In contrast, the Japanese mothers of sons requested proportionately more evaluation than did the Japanese mothers of daughters.

These results

might reflect differences in developing discourse skills and, more specifically, differences in meaning-making capabilities between boys and girls. The genderof-child differences, however, must be understood in terms of culture. Unlike the North American case, the Japanese case might not simply imply that the four-year-old males participated in the conversations to a greater extent than did their female counterparts. Rather, based on the Japanese folk psychology that is in line with attribution theory, we might prefer to interpret the Japanese case as reflecting the fact that because boys were less capable of encoding evaluation than girls, mothers might have tried to elicit much evaluation from their sons. Therefore, while North American and Japanese mothers equally provide their children with scaffolding, which is defined as a transmission of knowledge, values, and meaning-making by those who know more to those who know less (Bruner, 1977, 1986), the direction of scaffolding seems different between these two culturally distinct groups.

That is, North American mothers help to mold a

child's cognitive development by actively giving evaluations to a child who is almost ready to perform with a little help (i.e., particularly girls). On the other hand, Japanese mothers help to mold a child's cognitive development by actively facilitating frequent turn exchanges as well as by eliciting evaluations from a child who is not necessarily ready to perform even with parental support (i.e., particularly boys) (Minami, 1996a, 1996b, 1996c, 1996d).

As the maxim of

quantity suggests, for example, the utterances should be only as informative as is required for the purpose of the conversational exchange (Grice, 1975). Implemen-

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tation of such Gricean maxims, however, is left to each culture's discretion.

Implications One of the implications in the study I presented in this chapter relates to differences in transition from home to school between Japan and the United States.

From babyhood, an individual is socialized in culturally specific ways,

with the primary agent of socialization being the family. However, once a child has started schooling, which is widespread in modern societies, the main agent of socialization changes from the primary speech community, namely, the family and local community where the child was raised, to the secondary speech community, namely, the school, in which the child's discourse style and subsequent meaning-creation process might be reshaped. Regarding this point, Olson (1977) argues that meaning-making in language always necessitates an act of disambiguation. He further maintains that, as far as Western societies are concerned, procedures for an act of disambiguation exist from the earliest speech; thus, oral language skills at home are necessary precursors to later skills in an educational context. The study presented in this chapter seems to confirm this hypothesis. The use of ne (you know), for example, is strongly recommended in Japanese elementary-school settings (Uchida, 1986) because a certain type of ne helps the child's meaning-creation process; by uttering he, he or she pauses and searches for what to say next. Another continuity between home and school can be identified in textbooks. In contrast to American elementary-school textbooks, which tend to instruct the child to take an objective and analytical view of a story, a situation, and the actions of the characters in order to evaluate the effectiveness of their actions, Japanese elementary-school language textbooks tend to encourage "the child to imagine the feelings of another and merge his or her identity with that of the character, even if that character should happen to be an animal 9" (Gerbert, 1993, p. 161). Japanese teachers as well as textbooks ask their students to do some

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empathic reading, such as "What do you think Character X really felt like at this point?" Throughout all grade levels Japanese education encourages children to empathize with others (and personification is sometimes used for this empathy training). Recall Akira's mother's attitude in Example 3; the school's emphasis parallels the strategy taken by Japanese mothers who, providing their young children with explicit training in empathy, appeal to the feelings of animals in meaning-making. In these respects, therefore, educational theories are in line with the folk psychology reflected in Japanese mothers' concern. Finally, one of the major differences in mother-child interactions between Japanese and North Americans relates to imagination and creativity. Japanese children tend to just state facts presumably because in group-oriented Japanese culture, explicit/logical articulation leans toward too much individual focus and is thus generally discouraged. On the other hand, North American children tend to go beyond simply stating facts; in a society in which individualism prevails, individual topic delivery or simply being verbally assertive--including an individual's imagination and creativity--is understood and, moreover, respected. Recall Sho's mother (Example 1) who discouraged her son's imaginative train-boarding story with repeated "notte nai yd' ([you] didn't get on [a red train], I tell you). One of the features that is frequently observed among primary graders' oral stories is reported speech. representation.

The use of reported speech is, in a sense, related to factual In Japanese classrooms, moreover, such factual representation

has traditionally been strongly recommended lest children tell made-up stories. In these respects, therefore, we might be able to claim that a certain continuity exists between home and school. Overall, one derives one's primary identity from the school one attends when one is young; when one is older, one identifies with the company for which one works. In Japanese culture, being unique (too creative/imaginative) might be considered equivalent to being weird and, consequently, unacceptable. Under such social relativism, therefore, individualism and creativity are vulnerable to suppression, and meaning-making would take a

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different pattern.

More important, we might be able to maintain that this

contrast continues from home to school.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Carole Peterson, Memorial University of Newfoundland, and Allyssa McCabe for providing the data that were collected as part of a research project supported by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada grant OGP0000513.

ENDNOTES 1. All proper names are pseudonyms. 2. Piano Ranger appears in a TV children's show similar to "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers," which is originally a product of Japan. 3. The treatment of contrastive

wa

differs among linguists. Kuno (1973) claims

that there are two distinct types of w a , the "thematic/topic" one and the "contrastive" one. Shibatani (1990), however, insists that "one and the same

wa

has

the effect of emphasizing the contrast when the discourse environment provides a background for contrast" (p. 265). Paying attention to a suprasegmental aspect in discourse (i.e., prosodic cues in this case), Maynard (1990) gives further concrete explanations: "when a wa-marked phrase together with

wa

is pronounced with

phonological prominence, it implies contrast, regardless of whether the contrastive item is specified or not" (p. 58). However, given that the discussion of whether there exist two categorically different types of w a is beyond the scope of the present study, I do not argue this issue further. 4. In other words, using frequencies was judged to be inappropriate for this case because the frequency of Japanese mothers' coded utterances (M= 141.80,

SD=

58.23) was substantially higher than those of the English-speaking mothers (M= 58.10,

SD

= 26.12),

t (18) -

4.17, p < .001.

5. A significant effect on initiation seems to be an artifact of the difference in the

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337

frequency of coded utterances between the Japanese mothers and the Englishspeaking mothers. To establish a comparable data base, the initial three narrative productions were used; thus the number of narrative productions was controlled. However, since one North American mother prompted very little [i.e., she did not elicit extensive narratives from her child], the proportional frequency for initiation was much higher (9.68%) than any other mother. In fact, when frequencies were analyzed, the difference in this category between these two groups did not approach statistical significance. 6. For all the mothers of sons, the category of "evaluations by the mother herself" accounts for 23.81 percent (SD = 10.89) of maternal narrative elicitation, whereas for the mothers of daughters the same category accounts for 14.29 percent (SD = 7.90). 7. Although the North American mothers of sons requested proportionately less evaluation than did the North American mothers of daughters, they actually gave proportionately more evaluation. 8. The information unit roughly corresponds to what Stein and Glenn (1979) call the propositional/informational unit. According to these researchers, "A proposition is defined as a predicator or relational word, usually the verb, and one or more arguments which stand in some specific relation to the predicator, e.g., the actor of a verb" (Stein & Glenn, 1979, p. 55). Thus, a proposition roughly corresponds to a simple sentence/clause including a subject and/or predicate (Hudson & Shapiro, 1991; Reilly, 1992). In addition, unlike the terminable unit (T-unit) (Scott, 1988), which can contain a main clause with all subordinate clauses or nonclausal structure attached to or embedded within, the information unit does not contain more than one clause. 9. As Gerbert (1993) aptly points out, in the story "Gon the Fox" (Ishimori, Inoue, Kurihara, & Hida, 1992), children are encouraged to empathize with not only a human character (a farmer) but also an animal character (a fox). While personification is also prevalent in Western tales for children, Japanese textbooks differ

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CHAPTER 9

Narrative Threads Of Metaphor ALLYSSA MCCABE

University of Massachusetts Lowell

INTRODUCTION Metaphor is a rhetorical device by which we use words to refer to concepts that may never have been called by that name before and, as such, is problematic for many theories of meaning. How is it that we come to understand and even enjoy such anomalous communication?

Some (e.g., Chandler, 1991; Pollio &

Burns, 1977) have argued that research on metaphor interpretation demonstrates a need for a model of word meaning that is more detailed, flexible, and/or open-ended than most existing models in the psycholinguistic or cognitive science literature.

A number of researchers have focused on whether the process of

interpreting metaphors is similar to or different from that of interpreting literal utterances. (As this long-standing debate is comprehensively reviewed by Dews and Winner in this volume, it will not be treated further in this chapter.) Much research has studied aspects of the comprehension of metaphors in isolated sentences (e.g., Malgady & Johnson, 1976; Marschark et al., 1983; Tourangeau & Sternberg, 1982; Tourangeau & Rips, 1991, Experiments 1 and 2, but see Experiment 3 for an exceptional consideration of metaphors found in published poems).

Instead, this chapter will address aspects of the interpretation of

metaphors in lengthier contexts, specifically those found in passages of published fiction, where metaphors are numerous and important.

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Treatments of Interpretation To interpret a metaphor is to clarify or represent its meaning (see The

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, p.685).

Scholars have

frequently used the word interpretation to denote a brief statement of understanding (e.g., Malgady & Johnson, 1976) or a "paraphrase" (e.g., Fowler, 1969; Harris, 1976; Pollio & Burns, 1977; Richards, 1929).

Some scholars also use

interpretation to mean, roughly, "putting something into words" (see Butters, 1969, for a discussion of Chomsky's tendency to do this, for example), but it is quite possible that subjects could claim to understand a line of poetry, for example, though they could also find it difficult to write down what exactly they understand. As Dews and Winner (this volume) point out, requiring individuals to paraphrase metaphors in order to indicate comprehension assesses the ability of an individual to explain what s/he understands rather than an individual's understanding per se. Alternatively, a related term comprehension often signifies a simple rating or matching process (e.g., Butters, 1969; Ortony, Schallert, Reynolds, & Antos, 1978; Tourangeau & Sternberg, 1982). In the present chapter, I will discuss a much more demanding kind of explanation of comprehension; I use interpretation to refer to comprehension plus the active reconstruction of that understanding in written form, or, in other words, paraphrasing plus specifying important symbolic devices, deleting insignificant detail, and articulating important implications of a metaphor in a literary contextmtruly explaining and clarifying the meaning of that metaphor. Current theories about how we understand metaphors and other figurative language largely concern themselves with speculation about how exactly features or predicates of the metaphorical term determine the meaning of the metaphor (see Tourangeau & Rips, 1991), rather than with understanding how individuals interpret a metaphor in an extended context.

That is to say, theories are

preoccupied with explaining how aspects of our understanding of tears determine our understanding of the metaphor the sky's tears rather than with what that

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metaphor might mean in a passage about a ship at sea during a storm versus one about a depressed housewife. The present article proposes to address this gap.

Relationship of Interpretation to Metaphoric Quality, Imagery, Similarity, and Memory Interpretation might well be related to such aspects of a metaphor as its quality, the ease with which readers form an image of it, the preexisting similarity of the concepts it compares, or its memorability.

Some (e.g.,

Marschark, Katz, & Paivio, 1983; Tourangeau & Rips, 1991) have found that rated comprehensibility or ease of interpretation is highly intercorrelated with rated aptness or goodness of metaphors, while others (e.g., Gerrig & Healy, 1983; McCabe, 1980) found a dissociation between the evaluation and comprehension of a metaphor.

The rated comprehensibility or ease of interpreting metaphors is

highly correlated with the rated ease of forming an image of those same metaphors, as well as with the semantic relatedness (or similarity) of the concepts compared (e.g., Marschark et al., 1983). When participants were asked to rate how m a n y interpretations a metaphor had, that rated number of interpretations of a metaphor was found to be a potent predictor of recall (Marschark & Hunt, 1985), though exactly what ratings of the number of interpretations mean in the absence of requirements for subjects to articulate those interpretations is unclear (Milius, 1990).

Insofar as comprehension is

indexed by written interpretation of metaphors in the context of published fiction, no consistent pattern emerged between that measure and the extent to which individuals remembered the metaphor (McCabe, 1980, 1988). Thus, interpretation of metaphors, at least in some past work, has been found to relate to metaphoric quality, imageability, and conceptual similarity, if not to memory.

Individual Differences in the Interpretation of Metaphor One aspect of the context in which metaphors occur is to be found in the

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interpretive sets of individuals who encounter them.

Dews and Winner (this

volume) review research on the development of metaphor comprehension, an ability that can be shown to emerge early so long as children are presented with metaphors in a narrative context and those metaphors involve determining perceptual similarities between tenors (literal referents) and vehicles (metaphorical terms).

For example, children are capable of comprehending the physical

resemblance between clouds (tenor) and cotton wads (vehicle) in a metaphor like "Clouds are cotton wads" (Dews & Winner, this volume).

Appreciating such

attributes of compared objects does not change from four years to college age, although appreciating metaphorical play with relational structure has been found to increase over that time span (Gentner, 1988).

While adolescents whose

language development is typical for their age, then, are very well-equipped to interpret metaphors, adolescents who are diagnosed as learning disabled struggle to do so, interpreting significantly fewer metaphors in brief narrative contexts accurately than did their peers with normal language (Jones & Stone, 1989). If and when an individual develops a mature ability to interpret metaphor, however, this ability is maintained across the life span (Szuchman & Erber, 1990). Special training can sensitize an individual to metaphor in different ways; graduate students of psychology interpret significantly more conventionalized (or "dead") psychological metaphors (e.g., "Martin had been studying all week for his exam, and pressures were building up in him till he had thrown a slipper at his cat when she had sneezed.") as metaphors than do graduate students of English, for whom novelty is an essential criterion for metaphor, unless the latter are specifically instructed to look for metaphors (McCabe, 1977).

Linguistic Contexts Context has long been known to affect many aspects of meaning

How

similar one item is to another item depends upon the other pairs of items rated at the same time (e.g., Fillenbaum & Rapoport, 1971; Tversky, 1977). Context

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affects the metaphoricity of a term or sentence (e.g., Harwood & Verbrugge, 1977; Honeck et al., 1980; Loewenberg, 1973; Ortony, Reynolds, & Arter, 1978). Fraser (1993) found that, beyond generally sensing a positive or negative valence of a metaphoric comparison, subjects who interpret metaphors in isolated sentences do not interpret them with any consistency. He takes such inconsistency as an indication that a metaphorical interpretation is determined by the context in which it is uttered, with extended context being a requirement for minimizing idiosyncrasy of interpretation.

However, even single sentence contexts provide

some kind of context and prompt the recognition of emergent features, features not previously recognized as characteristic of either tenor or vehicle concepts (Tourangeau & Rips, 1991). When subjects were presented with more extensive context--namely, metaphors in the context of published poems--they overwhelmingly preferred interpretations based on such emergent features rather than shared decontextualized features of tenor and vehicle concepts.

In a similar ap-

proach, literary fictional contexts have been found to create similarity between concepts compared; metaphors in published short stories and novels do not depend upon preexisting similarity between the concepts involved (McCabe, 1983). For example, consider two metaphors. One is Gilman's (1899) comparison of wallpaper curves to suicides in The Yellow Wallpaper. Those two concepts were rated the most dissimilar of all concepts when encountered out of context, yet the metaphor encountered in the context Gilman created was well-liked by undergraduates and graduate students of English alike.

On the other hand, the

concepts in Asimov's (1974) comparison of a star cluster to a giant conglomeration of fireflies were rated quite similar out of context, but readers did not appreciate his metaphorical use of them. What a skillful author does, then, is to create meaningful connections between previously unrelated concepts in the context of his or her literary work, and the present project attempts to delineate individual's perceptions of such connections with considerably more specificity than any global ratings of similarity can capture.

The question remains, how

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exactly is this alteration of concepts perceived? Will subjects be able to articulate this alteration in the course of interpreting novel constructions?

METHOD

Subjects Forty undergraduate and two English graduate students participated in this project in order to examine a range of expertise in interpreting metaphors.

Materials a n d P r o c e d u r e

Passages ranging from one paragraph to one page in length were selected from a number of reputable works of prose fiction (See Appendix A for an example).

The fiction was all originally written in English, mostly by American

writers. Passages were usually character or landscape descriptions. No authors of the passages were identified, but some could have been inferred from the fame of the works from which the passages were excerpted and no effort was made to disguise the author's identity. There is some evidence that an author's reputation makes no difference in people's aesthetic judgments (see Lindauer, 1974, p. 156), although subjects are quicker and better at finding meaningful comparisons ostensibly written by poetg than ones composed randomly by a computer (Gibbs, Kushner, & Mills, 1991). The relevant metaphor was underlined in the passages presented to students. These passages were used in past research examining the relationship between metaphoric quality and conceptual similarity (McCabe, 1983) and the effect of different contexts on memory for metaphor (McCabe, 1988), so the measures in the present study could also be related to those collected for prior ones. The two graduate students of English interpreted all 80 metaphors. Undergraduate participants interpreted randomly selected subsets of 16 passages because the task of interpretation was considered to be such a strenuous, time-consuming one.

Each passage received eight interpretations from under-

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graduates and two from graduate students. All subjects received the following instructions:

You will receive a set of passages t a k e n from a n u m b e r of works of prose fiction, both novels and short stories.

I want you to interpret these

passages as a whole, focusing on the metaphors you see underlined in the passages. passage.

Do not simply p a r a p h r a s e the underlined metaphor or the I want a reconstruction of w h a t the passage means.

That is, I

want you to tell me what the author is trying to say and how s/he says it, namely, what symbols or contrasts, etc., s/he used.

You need not be

preoccupied with evaluating the text; t h a t is, I do not want you to concentrate on telling me how good or bad you think the text is, though you may mention what you think of how well the author accomplished what you think he or she was trying to say.

In short, reconstruct the passage,

focusing on the metaphor underlined in it.

Scoring The idea t h a t some interpretations are valid, while others are not is a much debated point (see Eagleton, 1983, for a review).

Many modern thinkers

argue t h a t all interpretation of literary texts is shaped and constrained by the historically relative criteria of a particular culture.

However, critics such as

Hirsch (1967) wish to counteract such complete relativism by positing t h a t a valid interpretation is one in which the author's intentions play a role and a text has been understood on its own terms quite a p a r t from any possible subsequent historical revisionism.

The relevance of this debate for the present project is

somewhat limited; interpretations t h a t seemed ruled out by aspects of the literary text or t h a t seemed irrelevant to t h a t text were t e r m e d invalid. I developed a scoring system for interpretations, categorizing t h e m first with respect to whether they were valid or invalid interpretations or a mixture of

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valid and invalid interpretation of the original passages and then with respect to what sort of valid or invalid transformation of the text they were. In arriving at these summary evaluative categories, I first split the particular task of interpretation I had required into two parts: (1) solving the metaphor (i.e., enunciating the relationship between tenor and vehicle), and (2) connecting the metaphor with its context.

The particular relationships---both between tenor and vehicle and

between metaphor and context--were further categorized according to form (e.g., physical characteristics, characteristic actions, or attitude) and direction (i.e., similarity or disparity; congruence or contrast) of relationship. Multiple connections of the same type (e.g., multiple physical characteristics) were treated as only one type of connection. This scoring system was a product both of deduction based on the extensive rhetorical literature on figttrative language and of induction from the actual data, when gaps in the deductive system became evident. Invalid interpretations or parts of interpretations were categorized following Richards (1929), with a few revisions of his categories.

See Appendix B for a

complete specification of this scoring system. One graduate student was responsible for scoring all interpretations. However, another graduate student of psychology independently scored the validity of 295 (36.9%) of the 800 total interpretations. Agreement between the two was estimated at 70.5%. (By way of comparison, Educational Testing Service reports that reliability on a comparable interpretive scoring system was less than 79%) Finally, the valid formal and directional categories both of metaphor solution and connection to context were summarized from all 10 interpretations, noting equivalences in content.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Many years ago, the literary critic I.A. Richards (1929) undertook the study of what his students actually did when asked to interpret poems of widely varying

Narrative Threads of Metaphor quality.

355

Even though he gave his students virtually unlimited time and made

their effort entirely voluntary, they produced so much misunderstanding, so much invalid interpretation that his work shifted from a study of (valid) interpretation to a study of misunderstanding. There were several important differences between my project and that of Richards long ago. I selected fiction, not poetry, for one thing, and that may have made the task somewhat easier for students.

Also, I selected fiction that was

generally good. (Richards, on the other hand, had a side interest in what made bad poems bad.)

Still, however, appreciation of literary metaphors does not

necessarily translate into a sophisticated ability to articulate an interpretation of them. In particular, the astonishing variety of novel dimensions of connection to be found in important metaphors embedded in literary context (see Table 1 below) makes interpreting them a somewhat fragile enterprise. Consider the interpretations of one particular metaphor.

Appendix A

contains Hawthorne's metaphoric comparison of beauty to a halo, taken from his well-known novel, The Scarlet Letter. Of all eighty metaphors examined in the present project, this one was the most well-liked by both graduate students of English (both rated its quality as 6 out of 6), and it was one of the seven metaphors best liked by undergraduates.

The comparison was among the five best

remembered and was rated quite easy to picture (i.e., form an image of it). Yet this metaphor was often misinterpreted (7 of 10 interpretations were judged invalid in some way. Here are (valid) interpretations by the graduate students of English:

"Hester's physical beauty, striking as it is, evokes the old view that beauty and wickedness are contrary and incompatible. So her beauty stands aloft, as a halo, above the abstract realization of her sin and shame." '"this is one of the most beautiful passages of English prose I know. Hester Prynne radiates with the alleged exuberance suffering brings, without the

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asceticism of religious sacrifice.

Hawthorne is pursuing the Romantic

dream of infusing secular values with religious energy, so the metaphor is precise, and not a mere sentimental effusion reminiscent of courtly love. Desperate and reckless, wild, picturesque, and particular: St. Sebastian without the arrows."

Composite portraits of the eighty metaphoric passages revealed a remarkable variety of types of connections; students perceive authors of the passages to mean many things by using metaphors.

The types and frequency (i.e., total

metaphors from set of 80) of the kinds of valid perceived dimensions of connection are listed in Table 1.

TABLE 1 Types of Valid Responses Types of Valid Dimensions Identified in Composite Portraits

Number of Metaphors Perceived to Display Such a Dimension

Dimensions of Relationship Between Tenor and Vehicle: Similarity: Physical characteristics Characteristic actions Association in past experience Feelings, attitude, tone Membership in abstract category Cultural notions *Zeugma Disparity: Physical characteristics Characteristic actions Association in past experience Feelings, attitude, tone

60 43 12 40 34 11 31

12 2 0 9

Narrative Threads of Metaphor Table 1 (cont.) Dimensions of Relationship Between Tenor and Vehicle Disparity: Membership in abstract category Cultural notions Zeugma Other: Hyperbole *Polysemy

Dimensions of Relationship Between Metaphor & Context: Congruence: Physical characteristics Characteristic actions Associations Feelings, attitudes, tones Abstract category Cultural notions Zeugma *Tropes

11 10 33 17 2 11 10 23

Contrast: Physical characteristics Characteristic actions Associations Feelings, attitudes, tone Abstract category Cultural notions Zeugma Tropes

18 7 3 19 7 3 3 7

Other connections: Analogy *Synecdoche Main point

13 22 39

*Definitions can be found in Appendix B

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Propensity for Valid and Invalid Interpretation Fortunately, the present study of metaphors in published fiction did not generally replicate Richards' results.

In contrast to the ubiquity of misunder-

standing he found, validity prevailed in the interpretations of the 80 metaphors studied in the present project.

Fifty-eight percent of all interpretations were

deemed valid. Over half of all interpreters were usually valid. While no one was completely consistent (i.e., either never composing any valid interpretations or always composing valid interpretations), most people showed a strong propensity for one or the other. The interpretations of the two English graduate students were overwhelmingly valid, with 91% and 74% of their interpretations scored as valid. Twenty-two undergraduates had over half of their sixteen interpretations scored as valid; 4 had half scored valid, half somewhat invalid; 14 had most of their responses scored as invalid. The types and frequency of invalid responses are listed in Table 2.

TABLE 2 Types and Frequency of Invalidity

Types of Invalidity

Mishandled imagery Misreading Careless Language Distortion Stock Responses Technical Presuppositions & Critical Preconceptions Sentimentality Irrelevant Memories

Number of interpretations

114 106 66 56 33 27 4 4

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Connections Identified in Composite Interpretations Combining the valid interpretive points made by all ten students, Hawthorne's comparison of beauty to a halo was perceived to display thirteen different kinds of connections (8 between tenor and vehicle, 5 between the metaphor and the larger context of the passage.); only one of the other 79 metaphors was perceived to display a greater variety of connections.

Among other things, the

metaphoric solution depended upon cultural notions (e.g., "the old view that beauty

and

wickedness

are

contrary

and

incompatible"),

cause-and-effect

associations (e.g., "...incompatible so her beauty..."), similarity of abstract categories (e.g., beauty and halos are angelic entities), disparity of abstract categories (e.g., "Hester wasn't saintly by any means"), similarity of characteristic actions (e.g., '%eauty stands aloft, as a halo, above..."), and similarity and disparity of tone (e.g., "without the asceticism of religious sacrifice...").

The

metaphor was also found to connect with its context in many ways: interpreters noted congruence of characteristic actions (e.g., "demands respect"), associations and cultural notions ("[Hester] radiates with alleged exuberance"), and that the metaphor conveyed the main point of the passage--the surprising, ironically angelic appearance of Hester Prynne. When experimenters (e.g., Malgady & Johnson, 1976; Tourangeau & Rips, 1991) look simply at metaphors in isolated sentences, they look literally at only half of the story of metaphor. The average number of valid connections between the tenor and the vehicle in a metaphor identified by students is 3.7 (SD = 1.6), ranging from 1 to 8 valid kinds of connections in any given metaphor. But note that the average number of valid connections identified between the two terms and their extended context is also 3.7 ( S D - 2.0), ranging from O to 11 valid connections in any given metaphor; only one metaphor had no valid connection between its terms and their extended context. Thus the connections between a metaphor and its context are generally as plentiful as those between its tenor and vehicle in published fiction. That both types of connections are quite varied, as

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well as common, can be seen in Table 1. Not only are good metaphors deeply embedded in their fictional contexts, they should be so embedded. The novelist John Gardner (1983, p.145) points out, "The symbol that stands out too sharply from its matrix may distract the reader's eye from the fictional dream, with the unpleasing effect of making the writer seem frigid and his story disingenuous, more sermon than honest presentation of imagined eventsma work, in short, in which the reader feels manipulated, pushed toward some opinion or view of the world not inherent in the fictional materials but imposed from above." Many scholars (e.g., Jakobsen & Halle, 1971; Ricoeur, 1975; Tourangeau & Sternberg, #11, 1978) reduce rhetorical categories to two supposedly antithetical ones: metaphor (figures based on physical resemblance) and metonymy (figures based on some kind of association in past experience).

Some scholars have

limited their study primarily to one or the other of these rhetorical devices; in general, cognitive psychologists have paid most attention to the former, while behaviorists have emphasized the latter, perhaps using different labels (e.g., Hayes, this volume, focusses on derived stimulus relations as an explanation for metaphor). However, the aesthetic advice Gardner offered above that a metaphor should not stand out from its literary context means that many authors compose metaphors that both involve some physical resemblance between two concepts and that employ vehicles associated (in the experience of many) with the general landscape being described in the text. In All the King's Men, for example, Robert Penn Warren (1946) composed such a metaphor ("..the faded white decent house itself...is like nothing so much as a respectable, middle-aged woman"), which was interpreted by one under-graduate to mean, "He is describing the house as being plain, peaceful, and tidy just as the 'respectable, middle-aged woman' would be who would probably live in it."

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Relationship of Validity to Other Dimensions of Metaphor Two measures of the interpretations focussed on in the present article were correlated with various ratings collected in past research (McCabe, 1983, 1988). The number of connections identified in the composite interpretations did not correlate significantly with (1) preexisting conceptual similarity between tenor and vehicle concepts, (2) average ratings of the quality of the metaphor in extended literary context, (3) average ratings of the imageability of the metaphor in extended literary context, (4) the number of valid interpretations produced by subjects, or (5) total recall of tenors and vehicles by all 40 subjects who read the metaphor in extended literary context. Table 3 presents the relationship between the second measuremthe number of valid interpretations a metaphor received from the 10 students who read it in its extended literary context--and other dimensions of metaphor, most of which are highly intercorrelated.

The number of valid interpretations corre-

lates only with the total recall measure.

TABLE 3 Relationship Among Various Dimensions of Metaphor

Imageability In Context

Number of Valid Interpretations Imageability In Context Conceptual Similarity (Out of Context) Quality in Context *p < .05 **p < .01 ***p < .001

.12 ---

Conceptual Similarity

.04 .42*** ---

Quality In Context

.09 .61"** .29**

Total Recall

.22* .34** .30** .15

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Although conceptual (especially physical) similarity has received considerable attention as it plays a role in metaphoric comparison (see Dews & Winner, this volume, and McCabe, 1983, for review) and although it was the most common type of connection (present in 75% of the metaphors) noted by at least some students, it is worthwhile noting that many students did not mention any physical resemblance between tenor and vehicle. Sometimes this reticence was unanimous even when physical resemblance was there to be noted. For example, no one mentioned the fact that both a laugh and a curse are similar in that both are abrupt, vehement ejaculations.

Neither did anyone mention the physical

resemblance in length, rectangularity, and possible color between orange steel beams and straws in another metaphor. Not only is physical similarity unnecessary for a good metaphor (recall the two comparisons in the introduction of this chapter), then, but it may seem the least important connection--literally unremarkable--even when it is. The important meaning of a metaphor does not often lie in a priori or even emergent physical resemblance between tenor and vehicle concepts. Instead, the view of meaning that is illuminated by the present project is primarily a constructive, open-ended one. Authors use a great many devices to craft literary metaphors in larger contexts; they can count on readers with the sophistication of college students to perceive and articulate many such devices. Consideration of texts that proved troublesome for many readers sheds even more light on successful literary performances. First, consider the findings from global measures of what might be termed the interpretability of a text. The present project did not corroborate past research that found a relationship between comprehensibility and judgements of the quality of metaphors (Marschark et al., 1983), finding, as did Gerrig and Healy (1983), that there was no relationship between evaluation and comprehension of a metaphor. Nor did the present project replicate work finding that the rated comprehensibility or ease of interpreting metaphors is highly correlated with the rated ease of forming an

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image of those same metaphors or with the conceptual similarity of those metaphors (Marschark et al., 1983). Differences between our results and others (especially Marschark, et al., 1983) are probably best explained on the basis of the difference between our materials;

the present project studied various

dimensions of metaphor in literary contexts, while the others used metaphors constructed specifically for their research, all in the form "(noun phrase) is/are (noun phrase)." We did find, congruent with Marschark and Hunt (1985), that the number of valid interpretations was significantly, if only weakly, related to a measure of recall. Students had a tendency to remember better the more readily interpretable metaphoric passages. Metaphors that prompted consistent misinterpretation generally fell into five camps. (a) Compound metaphors sometimes detracted from each other. For example, a comparison of smoke to a ghost finger

foundered because while

"finger" accented the visibility of the smoke, "ghost" accented its invisibility. (b) Comparisons that involved contrasts between tenor and vehicle or between metaphor and context or between aspects of context that had some bearing on the metaphor were hard for many individuals to incorporate with simultaneous resemblances. For example, in Laughing Boy, Oliver LaFarge writes,

Behind [the town of Los Palos] was a strip of irrigated green like a backdrop, alfalfa, corn, beans, cottonwoods, a mile long and a few hundred yards wide. Rich, deep, cool green was not part of the desert landscape; it was something apart that the sands held prisoner. The mean little town was a parasite on the goodness of the water; here water and earth and man made beauty; there man and mud and boards created squalor.

He contrasts the ugly town with the beauty of a man-made, irrigated oasis in this passage, yet most people mistook his point to contrast the man-made town with a

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natural desert. What seemed to compromise the success of this comparison was the stereotypical notion t h a t m a n violates and destroys the beauty of nature by merely taking from it and not returning anything--a notion irrelevant to the contrasting aesthetic quality of two man-made structures.

(c) Although good

writers can thoroughly revamp an idiom or develop a new use of a common metaphor, they risk being unappreciated because the old idiom may mask their inventions.

For example, while in one metaphor the author explicitly used the

stiffness of tin to comment on the nature of a man's ears, many people were evidently reminded of the cliche '2in ears" and concluded t h a t the m a n was insensitive to his audience, when there was no evidence in the text that this was the case. (d) Comparisons that were precariously close to inappropriate stock responses were problematic. A comparison of a tent to a tuft of grass caused m a n y students to assume that the author was portraying "man at one with nature." (e) Comparisons between concepts with highly salient irrelevant attributes were likely to be misinterpreted. For example, in a comparison of rhinos to 'two very big angular stones" (Dinesen, 1938), students inappropriately fastened onto the crossing of the border between animate and inanimate. While this was a fault of the readers rather than the writer, she did undercut her description of the 'Trolicking" rhinos by choosing an image as conspicuously stolid as a stone, especially given her choice of adjectives that played up the already salient attributes of stones. In other words, metaphors in context were likely to fail to convey their meaning if the author was too original (a and b) or not original enough (c, d, and e). The latter phenomenon is especially interesting because unoriginal, somewhat conventional meanings should result in relatively auto-matic, easy interpretations; interpretations that any computer program could compute. That they do not highlights the fact that the interpretation of novel metaphors in fictional narratives is constructed by both writer and reader, not prefabricated from a fLxed set of unchanging concepts or words already available to both parties. In the context of a fictional narrative, metaphors are woven from many

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diverse threads. Authors put together passages in which they invite subjects, as did Twain, for example, to remember their past experiences that rags are colorful and varied, while rejecting past notions that rags are shameful clothing (a sure sign of miserable poverty) in favor of imagining the delightful feeling of freedom from constraint they might conjure in a boy like Tom Sawyer if worn by a "romantic outcast" like Huck Finn: "Tom was like the rest of the respectable boys, in that he envied Huckleberry his gaudy outcast condition, and was under strict orders not to play with him. So he played with him every time he got a chance. Huckleberry was always dressed in the cast-off clothes of full-grown men, and they were in perennial bloom and fluttering with rags." What readers have learned from past experiences with certain words or what they have perceived to be similarities between any two objects they have encountered in some way before can be adjusted by what they can imagine about characters, circumstances, and actions. To extend readers' preconceptions is the writer's task. Such extensions are to be found in the small, local metaphors that are so common in fiction and that transform discrete objects to such an extent as we have explored in this chapter. In the larger sense, the whole work can transform readers' preconceptions of even something as monstrous as premeditated murder (e.g., Dreiser's American

Tragedy). In fact, it might be said that transformation of preconceptions, both large and small, is the mission of great fiction, and one that rather ordinary readers have endorsed over the centuries.

Our capacity to interpret novel

figurative language has been consistently underestimated in standard psycholinguistic and cognitive accounts of meaning, which is a shame because it is a powerful, fascinating h u m a n ability.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This article is based on part of my dissertation, entitled A Rhetoric of

Metaphor, submitted to the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, 1980, in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the doctoral degree.

That

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dissertation was directed by James Deese, who always encouraged me to pursue my own ideas. I wold further like to acknowledge the careful editing provided by Charlotte Mandell.

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APPENDIX A

Beauty-halo On the threshold of the prison-door, she repelled him, by an action marked with natural dignity and force of character, and stepped into the open air, as if by her own free will.

She bore in her arms a child, a baby of some three

months old, who winked and turned aside its little face from the too vivid light of day; because its existence, heretofore, had brought it acquainted only with the gray twilight of a dungeon, or other darksome apartment of the prison. When the young womanmthe mother of this child--stood fully revealed before the crowd, it seemed to be her first impulse to clasp the infant closely to her bosom; not so much by an impulse of motherly affection, as that she might thereby conceal a certain token, which was wrought or fastened into her dress. In a moment, however, wisely judging that one token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide another, she took the baby on her arm, and, with a burning blush, and yet a haughty smile, and a glance that would not be abashed,

370

McCabe looked around at her townspeople and neighbors. On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold-thread, appeared the letter A. It was so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and fitting decoration to the apparel which she wore; and which was of a splendor in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony. The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance on a large scale. She had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam, and a face which, besides being beautiful from regularity of feature and richness of complexion, had the impressiveness belong to a marked brow and deep black eyes. She was lady-like, too, aider the manner of the feminine gentility of those days; characterized by a certain state and dignity, rather than by the delicate, evanescent, and indescribable grace, which is now recognized as its indication.

And never had Hester Pryrme appeared more

lady-like, in the antique interpretation of the term, than as she issued from the prison. Those who had before known her, and had expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even startled to perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped.

It may be true, that, to a

sensitive observer, there was something exquisitely painful in it. Her attire, which, indeed, she had wrought for the occasion, in prison, and had modelled much aider her own fancy, seemed to express the attitude of her spirit, the desperate recklessness of her mood, by its wild and picturesque peculiarity. But the point which drew all eyes, and, as it were, transfigured the wearer,--so that both men and women, who had been familiarly acquainted with Hester Pryrme, were now impressed as ff they beheld her for the first time--was that

SCARLET LETTER, so fantastically embroidered and

illuminated upon her bosom. It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the

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ordinary relations with humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere by herself. (from Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter.)

APPENDIX B

Direction and nature of valid p e r c e i v e d c o n n e c t i o n s

All valid interpretations are scored as one or more of the following categories. These categories concern the directions and types of relationship among the parts of a passage--as cited by a particular interpretation. (Note that invalid connections were scored using a different system for the purposes of this article.) The following categories were adapted from Abrams (1957), unless otherwise noted, although the examples are mine. I. Formal categories of relationship between tenor and vehicle: A. Similarity: positive comparison; that is, two things are alike in one of the following ways: 1. Physical resemblance, e.g., star clusters look like fireflies, a laugh sounds

like a curse. This connection involves concrete, nonjudgmental sense

impres-

sions. 2. Characteristic actions, e.g., a flea characteristically hops, as do some

people's eyes. This also includes actions done to things, such as puzzle pieces, which are typically fitted together, and characteristics of actions (e.g., restlessness). 3.

Association in past experience, elsewhere considered the basis of metonymy

(e.g., Abrams, 1957, p. 62). For example, churches and ministers, white frame houses and respectable middle-aged ladles are two pairs of things that have existed together in time and space in our common past experience. 4. Feelings, attitudes, or tone, e.g., in Twain's comparison, rags, like flowers,

are viewed as beautiful, attractive, desirable by neighborhood boys.

This

category includes abstract sense impressions (e.g., warm things are perceived

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McCabe as comfortable be they sun, stove, or person), and synesthesia, where two percepts of different senses are metaphorically compared because they affect us similarly, e.g., "The red dress blared in the dark room."

5. Membership in an abstract category, e.g., the white frame house and the respectable middle-aged woman are both stereotypes. Other such perceived abstractions: dangerous, plant, not alive.

6. Cultural notions, e.g., a fox is considered to be sly in European American culture.

7. Zeugma (adapted from Abrams, 1957, p.150) involves "expressions in which a single word stands in the same grammatical relationship to two or more other words, but with some alteration in its meaning from one instance to the next." Here it refers to a similarity that is a cross of, say, physical characteristics on the part of one term with, say, feeling on the part of another term; one such interpretation held that the characters in the metaphor "they were drowning in a kaleidoscope of their own shattered impressions" were "overwhelmed by their feelings, as a drowning person would [be overwhelmed by water]." Note that while this superficially resembles similarity in terms of feelings, the crossing here is less conventional than is such similarity. B. Disparity: negative comparison; that is, two things are different in one of the aforementioned seven ways. Richards (1936, p. 119) pointed this out, saying that when Hamlet compares men to vermin "crawling between earth and heaven," the implication in context is that they should not so crawl.

A

comparison can meaningfully highlight both similarities and disparities. C. Other things at play between tenor and vehicle include:

1. Hyperbole, which is an extravagant exaggeration, e.g., a man is described not merely as a whale but as a huge blue whale, the biggest of the lot.

2. Polysemy, where different meanings of at least one of the two metaphoric terms are at play, as in comparison of a cheerleader's rotating arm to a window fan in the context of a description of fans at a basketball game.

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(Note that we looked for such connections as oxymoron, understatement, allusions to classic literature,

and phonological resemblances such as

alliteration, but found none). II. Formal categories of relationships between the metaphoric comparison and its context: A. Congruence: the counterpart of similarity between tenor and vehicle. This is positive comparison in one of the 7 ways listed under similarity above. But this category also includes congruence of tropes, where a metaphor picks up on themes of its passage, relates to a series of similar comparisons, e.g., "March winds like wild cavalry" ties in with a military theme of its context. B. Contrast, the counterpart of disparity between tenor and vehicle.

This is

negative comparison either in one of the 7 ways listed under "similarity" above or in tropes, the opposite of congruence of tropes described above. For example, in one comparison a white frame house and a middle-aged lady are described as colorless, which stands in contrast to the "dazzling," "brilliant" zinnias also mentioned in the same passage. Or the vehemence of the "March winds like a wild cavalry" contrasts to natives of the areas, who are described as sluggish elsewhere. C. Other things at play between metaphor and context include all those listed under I.C. above, only in this case perceived to exist between a metaphor and its context. Specific to the relationship between a metaphor and its context are the following additional categories:

1.

Analogy, where two things are similarly related to two other things, e.g.,

'%ones are nature's sculpture," where bones are to all of nature what sculpture is to all of art.

2. Synecdoche, or the relationship of part to whole or whole to part, e.g., "her voice prevailed,": meaning someone's influence was felt.

3. Main point, such as comedy, euphemism, irony, foreshadowing, summary; this is the succinct effect a good metaphor is perceived to aim for, to "mean" in

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Types of Invalid Responses: A. Simple misreading:

The person fails to "make out the plain sense" of a

passage (Richards, 1929, p. 12), as when the person neglects to notice that a secretary's voice is described as not being of a certain sort and the interpreter states outright that it is of that sort. B. Mishandling of imagery (i.e., invalid physical characteristics or invalid characteristic actions):

This principally involves visual imagery, and the

difficulties "arise in part from the incurable fact that we differ immensely in our capacity to visualize, and to produce imagery of the other senses" (Richards, 1929, p.13). Images often tend to be idiosyncratic; even though there are many ways of transforming the two things metaphorically compared in a passage,

such transformations

are

invalid when they are

tangential,

irrelevant to the text's concerns. C. Irrelevant personal memories are another way in which interpretation veers off the path intended by the author and specified by his/her text. D. Sentimentality: Gushing, false recognitions of emotions referred to by the passage (e.g., "And you know what it's like to look in the eyes of someone you lovemit's the most wonderful thing on earth" as a response to the comparison of eyes to the tip of a pistol). E. Stock responses (i.e., inapplicable cultural notions): Something in a passage triggers an unexamined response from the reader.

Many responses to the

comparison, "the earth has torn away like flesh," in Paton's Cry, the Beloved

Country, plug into the current ecology slogans and cliches and reveal no further consideration of the actual passage. F. Technical presuppositions and general critical preconceptions: When a reader expresses distaste for metaphor as an unnatural way of talking or for certain metaphors because they compare certain things, the first category is applicable. A general preconception is to blame when people feel that a poem [or

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fictional] text should have some sort of message and t h e n proceed to evaluate the poem or passage on the basis of w h e t h e r they like the message or not. G. Distortion of context/word: I found this p h e n o m e n o n to be r a t h e r common and distinct from aforementioned categories.

In distortion, a person focusses on

some aspects of interpretation at the expense of other equally or even more important aspects. This often happens w h e n the context involves a contrast, either between m e t a p h o r and context or between various aspects of the wider context itself.

This category also includes (significant) description of either

tenor or vehicle with no mention of the other term. H. Careless language: I also added this category and included in it are simple incorrect uses of words, such as enormity for enormous-ness. Also included are descriptions of, say, tone t h a t are imprecise enough to be in error. I. Other problems include nonsensical interpretations t h a t cannot be described by any of the aforementioned categories.

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The Problem of Meaning: Behavioral and Cognitive Perspectives C. Mandell and A. McCabe(Editors) 9 1997 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER 10 Attributing M e a n i n g to Deliberately False Utterances: The Case of Irony

SHELLY DEWS

Pure Speech and ELLEN WINNER

Boston College

While we can now p r o g r a m computers to u n d e r s t a n d

some n a t u r a l

language, no one has yet created a p r o g r a m t h a t can u n d e r s t a n d nonliteral utterances. Computers r e m a i n literal minded, while even young children can readily go beyond the literal and distinguish among false u t t e r a n c e s t h a t are mistakes or lies, and false u t t e r a n c e s t h a t are only false on a literal level but true on a nonliteral level, such as metaphoric or ironic remarks.

The t a s k of m a k i n g

sense of nonliteral language is a d a u n t i n g one, as it requires taking into account m a n y aspects of the context.

Most importantly, m a k i n g sense of nonliteral

language requires m a k i n g inferences about the speaker's beliefs, and t h e n using this information as the basis of inferring the speaker's intentions. The two major forms of nonliteral language are m e t a p h o r and irony. Such a s t a t e m e n t of course presupposes a distinction b e t w e e n literal and nonliteral language, a distinction t h a t has been heatedly contested. It has been argued t h a t all language is metaphoric (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), and t h a t t h e r e is no such

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thing as context-free literal meaning (Gibbs, 1984, 1994; Rumelhart, 1979). We have argued, in contrast, that a distinction between literal and nonliteral language can and should be made (Dews & Winner, in press; Winner, 1988; Winner & Gardner, 1993).

T H E D I S T I N C T I O N B E T W E E N L I T E R A L AND N O N L I T E R A L LANGUAGE In order to clarify the distinction between literal and nonliteral language, a distinction must first be drawn between two forms of meaning: sentence meaning and speaker meaning.

Sentence meaning has traditionally been defined as the

context-free, literal meaning of the words themselves (Katz, 1977), while speaker meaning is used to characterize the meaning that the speaker intends to convey (Searle, 1979b). Searle (1979b) argues that in literal utterances, speakers mean what they say, but also mean more. When a speaker says, "It's going to be a hot day," to someone walking out the door wearing a winter coat, the hearer will realize that the speaker means not only that it will be hot, but also that a coat is unnecessary. Thus, the speaker has meant more than what was said. In nonliteral utterances, in contrast, speakers do not mean more than what they say, but actually mean something other than what they say. When a speaker describes someone's words as "razor sharp," the hearer knows that the speaker is talking about psychological, not physical sharpness. And when a speaker says to a rude cab driver, "You're certainly pleasant," the cabby knows full well that the speaker does not mean this at all, but rather means he has been quite unpleasant. (We recognize, however, that some metaphoric and ironic utterances are in fact literally true. For example, one can say "I love drivers who signal;" this can be literally true as well as ironic [i.e., a criticism of a driver who did not signal]. And one could say, "The murderer is a butcher;" this can be literally true [butcher

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by profession] as well as metaphoric [a crazed murdered]. Nonliteral utterances that are true on a literal level are, however, aytpical.) In a literal utterance, the relation between what is said ("It is hot") and what is meant ("You don't need your coat") is one of consonance.

In nonliteral

language, this relationship is one of dissonance (Winner & Gardner, 1993).

The

relationship between razors and unkind words is dissonant because razors and words come from entirely unrelated categories.

And the relationship between

pleasant and rude is dissonant because they are opposite in evaluative tone. Thus, all forms of language require the listener to go beyond the literal meaning of what is explicitly said. Speakers always mean more t h a n what they say, and listeners always take more meaning away than just what was said.

However,

nonliteral language does something more: it requires the hearer to reject the sentence meaning, and it implies a speaker meaning that clashes with the sentence meaning. The distinction that we propose here between literal and nonliteral meaning need not mean that the processes of comprehending nonliteral and literal language must differ.

For in both literal and nonliteral understanding,

listeners must go beyond the literal. Any process powerful enough to account for literal language understanding should be powerful enough to account for nonliteral language understanding (Rumelhart, 1979). Yet there remains a distinction between literal and nonliteral language, based on the relation between two aspects of meaning: what the utterance means literally and whether the speaker intends to convey that meaning. In sum, in literal language, the literal meaning is accepted, and the listener makes further inferences, ones that are consonant with the literal meaning. In nonliteral language, the literal meaning is rejected and the listener makes further inferences, ones that are dissonant with the rejected meaning. In this chapter we focus on how children and adults make sense of irony, and how the problem of attributing meaning to ironic language differs from the

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problem of making sense of metaphor. We also consider the puzzling question of why we bother to speak ironically rather than simply saying directly what it is we mean. We try to show that the reasons for using irony are tied to the way in which irony is processed.

METAPHOR AND IRONY COMPARED Metaphors function to describe and clarify by making us see similarities not typically noticed. The speaker who says, "His words are razor-edged," wants the hearer to see a similarity between the physical sharpness of a razor and the psychological sharpness of cruel words. The function is to show what the words are like by comparing them to razors. The speaker may also wish to show her attitude towards what she is describing (in this case, a negative attitude), but if a metaphor also serves to evaluate, it does so only because of the way it describes. In contrast, the primary function of ironic utterances is not to reveal what things are like, but instead to reveal the speaker's evaluative attitude towards something. The speaker who says, "You're certainly pleasant," to the rude cab driver shows his irritation at the cabby's rudeness. We have called this form of irony an ironic insult. People also use irony to convey a positive evaluation, as for instance, when one says to a colleague about to embark on a Caribbean vacation, 'You sure have a tough life." Such remarks, which we have called ironic compliments, seem like "left-handed compliments" (Winner, 1988; Winner & Gardner, 1993). Here, the speaker may mean "you have things too easy." However, ironic compliments are a far rarer form of irony than ironic insults. For instance, while irony is commonly used on popular television shows, we found that only 6% of these ironic remarks were ironic compliments, while all the rest were ironic insults (Dews, Winner, Nicolaides & Hunt, 1995). Metaphor, thus, is primarily descriptive and explanatory; irony is primarily evaluative and social. Metaphor and irony differ not only in primary function and intent but also in structure. Metaphor is built upon a relation of similarity, irony

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upon a relation of opposition. The relation between what is said and what is meant in a metaphor is one of similarity in dissimilarity: words and razors belong to completely different categories but are also similar in some respects. The relation between what is said and meant in irony is one of opposition, usually between positive words (what is said) and a negative meaning (what is meant). The passenger in the cab says something positive ('~pleasant') to mean something negative ("rude").

L E A R N I N G TO MAKE S E N S E OF M E T A P H O R

Given that metaphor and irony differ in both structure and function, it is not surprising that the developmental course of their comprehension differs considerably.

To understand the metaphor about razors and words, one must

know both about razors (that they are sharp) and about words (that they can be nasty). To understand the irony addressed to the cab driver, one must understand something about the speaker's beliefs (that he believes the cab driver to be rude), attitudes (that he is irritated by the rudeness), and intentions (that he intends to convey this belief to the cab driver). Thus, understanding metaphor calls upon the logical task of recognizing a match between two divergent aspects of experience while understanding irony calls upon the social task of inferring a speaker's beliefs, attitudes, and intentions. To understand a metaphor, all that is needed is enough knowledge about the two domains being linked to recognize a similarity between them. As soon as a child has knowledge of the domains being linked in a particular metaphor, the child has the capacity to understand that metaphor (Keil, 1986).

Thus, children

can understand metaphors at a very young age. The only thing that constrains their ability to comprehend is the lack of relevant domain knowledge. This view of metaphor comprehension as early runs counter to the traditional view of metaphor comprehension as a late acquisition. For instance, Piaget (1974) noted that proverb understanding did not emerge until early adolescence.

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Studies conducted in the 1960s and 1970s reported that children did not understand metaphor until middle or late childhood (Asch & Nerlove, 1960; Winner, Rosenstiel, & Gardner, 1976).

However, in these early studies of metaphor

understanding, unfair demands were placed upon the child. Consider, for instance, the initial metaphor task used by one of us, in which children were asked to paraphrase the following metaphorical sentence: "After many years of working at the jail, the prison guard had become a hard rock that could not be moved" (Winner, Rosenstiel, & Gardner, 1976).

There were three serious problems with

this task as a measure of metaphor comprehension ability. First, the sentences presented were devoid of situational context. Second, the children were asked to generate verbal paraphrases. And finally, the metaphors assumed knowledge of the psychological domain of lack of feeling. Let us consider each of these potential difficulties. First, the problem of lack of context. When we try to make sense of a metaphor out of context, we must create a similarity. When a metaphor arises in a natural context, we only need to recognize a similarity. Thus, when researchers went on to present metaphors within a narrative, situational context, children were able to show comprehension at a younger age (Ortony, Reynolds, & Arter, 1978; Winner, Wapner, Cicone, & Gardner, 1979). And of course, in the "real world," we typically encounter metaphors in context. Second, the problem of the comprehension measure of paraphrase. When comprehension is assessed by paraphrase, we are really assessing the ability to explain what one understands, rather than one's understanding per se. When researchers went on to use either multiple choice or nonverbal picture matching measures, again, even very young children showed the ability to understand metaphor (Dent, 1984; Gardner, 1974; Kogan, Connor, Gross, & Fava, 1980; Marks, Hammeal, & Bornstein, 1987; Vosniadou, Ortony, Reynolds, & Wilson, 1984; Winner, McCarthy, & Gardner, 1980; Winner, Wapner, Cicone, & Gardner, 1979).

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And finally, the problem of the kinds of metaphors used. Metaphors can be based on two major kinds of similarity: a perceptual, surface kind of similarity, or a nonperceptual, deep, structural kind of similarity (Gentner, 1988; Winner & Gardner, 1993). For instance, "Clouds are cotton wads" is a metaphor that links two kinds of objects that share the properties of color, shape and perceived texture. This is a perceptual similarity. But "My memory for that day is cloudy" is a metaphor based on a nonperceptual kind of similarity. Here, memory and clouds are linked because they both may be opaque, unclear, and blocking access to something. The metaphors used in the early studies were oi~en of the nonperceptual form. The prison guard metaphor, cited above, was such a metaphor, in which a psychological property was likened to a physical object because both could be unyielding. We now know that children can understand perceptual metaphors at a significantly younger age than they can grasp nonperceptual ones. For instance, Gentner and Stuart (1983) showed that five-year-olds had no difficulty with perceptual metaphors linking, for example, clouds with marshmallows, but had considerably more difficulty with nonperceptual ones linking, for example, tree bark with skin. Similar kinds of findings were reported by Mendelsohn, Gardner, & Winner (1981), who found that perceptually grounded similes were easier for six-year-olds to understand than nonperceptually grounded similes.

And

Shantiris (1983) found that kindergarten age children could distinguish anomalies from perceptual metaphors, but not from nonperceptual metaphors. Thus, had the early studies of metaphor comprehension used perceptually grounded metaphors, preschoolers would have revealed the ability to understand. Children's difficulty with nonperceptual metaphors is due to lack of knowledge of the internal workings of things. Perceptual metaphors do not require such knowledge since they are based on surface properties such as shape or color. But nonperceptual metaphors require knowledge that cannot be gleaned through perception. To understand how memory can be like a cloud, for instance, one must

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know that memories can be unclear and inaccessible. This kind of understanding can only come through experience and through having thought (metacognitively) about the nature of memory. In sum, young children do not lack the ability to understand nonperceptual metaphors. Rather, they typically lack knowledge of the nonperceptual domain involved in the metaphor. When knowledge deficits are not a problem, children readily understand nonperceptual metaphors. For example, Keil (1986) showed that while five-year-olds could not understand nonperceptual metaphors ascribing physical properties to ideas (as in "The idea bloomed"), they easily understood nonperceptual metaphors ascribing animate properties to objects (as in "The car was thirsty"). Moreover, the types of domain knowledge that children had directly predicted the types of metaphor they could understand. For example, we know that children master the distinction between animate and inanimate objects long before that between abstract and physical objects (Carey, 1985; Gelman & Spelke, 1981; Keil, 1979). This earlier mastery is consistent with the fact that children understand "The car is thirsty" long before they understand "The idea bloomed."

The former metaphor is based on the earlier-mastered distinction

between animate/inanimate, while the latter metaphor is based on the latemastered distinction between abstract and physical objects. In short, the problem that children face with a metaphor is to figure out the kind of similarity linking the domains being compared. Put another way, the problem is to find the kind of similarity that links the sentence and speaker meaning. The ability to perceive similarity is surely present from birth.

But

children need to acquire knowledge about domains so that they can understand metaphors based on similarities between domains. strains metaphor understanding.

Domain knowledge con-

When children lack sufficient domain know-

ledge, they misinterpret the metaphor. The typical misinterpretation is one in which children find the wrong kind of similarity. Thus, a six-year-old typically interprets the prison guard metaphor to mean that the guard had hard muscles

Attributing Meaning to Deliberately False Utterances (Winner, Rosenstiel, & Gardner, 1976).

385

This kind of misinterpretation shows

that the child realizes t h a t the speaker means something different from what was said, and t h a t the meaning is based on a similarity relationship to what was said. The child has merely failed to zero in on the particular kind of similarity involved, and has failed due to limited domain knowledge rather than to any lack of metaphoric capacity per se.

L E A R N I N G TO MAKE S E N S E OF IRONY

The problems confronting the child faced with an ironic utterance are very different from those posed by metaphor. Unlike metaphor, an ironic utterance is readily confusable with a mistake or a lie. In order to avoid such misinterpretations, the hearer must be able to make two determinations.

The hearer must

determine the speaker's belief about the truth value of the situation being commented on. And the hearer must determine the speaker's belief about the listener's knowledge of the truth of the situation. Imagine that the person behind you in an unbearably slow supermarket line says to you, "Our checkout person certainly knows how to keep a line moving right along." You know the statement is false. The checkout person is showing gross incompetence. But does the speaker know this? You must determine that the speaker does not believe what she is saying in order to avoid taking this remark as a mistake. We refer to this kind of attribution as a 'Tlrst-order belief attribution" (Astington, 1995; Astington, Olson, & Harris, 1988; Perner, 1991). Here the hearer must make an attribution about what the speaker believes about the world. Does the speaker think you also believe the checkout person to be incompetent? You must also determine that this is so in order to take the statement as irony. If you wrongly determine that the speaker thinks you believe the checkout person is doing a fine job, or that the speaker wants you to think this, you will be likely to interpret this statement as a polite lie. We refer to this kind of attribu-

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tion as a "second-order belief attribution" (Astington, 1995; Astington, Olson, & Harris, 1988; Perner, 1991). Here the hearer must make an attribution about what the speaker believes about the hearer's beliefs. Irony comprehension in children is thus logically constrained by their ability to make inferences about first- and second-order beliefs. In other words, irony comprehension is constrained by the child's '%heory of mind." There are three kinds of empirical reasons as well to support this claim.

Error Patterns First of all, the kinds of errors children make in interpreting irony show us that they have failed to make either a correct first- or a second-order belief attribution. The typical error is to recognize the ~onic utterance as false but to take it as a mistake or as a lie (Demorest et al, 1984). When children take irony as a mistake, they have made an incorrect attribution of the speaker's first-order belief. When children take irony as a lie, they have correctly inferred the speaker's first-order belief (the speaker knows what she is saying is false) but have made an incorrect second-order attribution. They wrongly think that the speaker believes the hearer does not know the truth. These kinds of errors indicate that understanding irony depends on the ability to infer the speaker's actual beliefs (to avoid taking the remark as a mistake) and the ability to infer the speaker's beliefs about the listener's beliefs (to avoid taking the remark as a lie).

Parallels in Age of Emergence Second, irony comprehension emerges at about the same time as does the ability to make second-order belief attributions. While children as young as three or four can attribute first-order beliefs to others, including beliefs that they know to be false, it is not until sometime between four and six that children can attribute second-order beliefs to others (Astington, 1995; Perner & Wimmer,

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1985; Sullivan, Zaitchik, & Tager-Flusberg, 1993). And irony comprehension seems to emerge at six but not before. For example, we showed children clips of television cartoons containing very obvious forms of ironic insults (Dews et al., in press). In one clip from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, one of the turtles remarks, "Helpful, isn't he" about a person who walks away when asked to help. The fiveyear-olds in our study showed no understanding that these kinds of utterances were ironic. In sharp contrast, most of the six-year-olds did understand. Thus, the ability to understand irony seems to emerge fairly abruptly between five and six. This finding is consistent with other studies of irony comprehension, none of which have found comprehension before six (Ackerman, 1981; Andrews, Rosenblatt, Malkus, Gardner, & Winner, 1988; Demorest et al., 1983; Demorest et a1.,1984; Winner, Windmueller, Rosenblatt, Bosco, Best, & Gardner, 1987).

Relationship between Theory of Mind and Irony Comprehension The third piece of evidence that the child's theory of mind constrains irony comprehension comes from four studies showing that second-order belief ability is necessary (though not sufficient) for irony comprehension. First, Leekam (1991) found a lag between the age at which children attribute second-order belief (as measured by a question about whether the speaker thinks the hearer believes what he says) and second-order intention (as measured by a question about whether the speaker wants the hearer to know the truth), and the age at which they can determine whether the speaker has told a joke (irony) or a lie. In a follow-up study, Winner and Leekam (1991) presented children with stories ending in lies or in ironic utterances.

Children were asked whether the

remark was meant to be nasty (irony) or nice (a polite lie); this was the measure of irony comprehension. Children were also asked whether the speaker wanted the listener to know the truth (irony) or not (lie); this was the measure of secondorder mental state attribution. A clear relationship between these two measures

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was found. Almost no children showed comprehension of irony if they did not also reply correctly to the second-order question. Deliverance of the irony in mocking, sarcastic intonation made no difference. Even with this seemingly obvious cue to the speaker's intentions towards the listener, children could not reliably determine that the ironist was being nasty unless they could also determine that the ironist wanted the listener to know the truth. There is certainly evidence that children are more likely to interpret an ironic utterance as ironic if it is presented in mocking intonation (Capelli, Nakagawa, & Madden, 1990). Our studies show, nonetheless, that without second-order understanding, the clue of intonation goes unused. In a third study, this time with autistic subjects, Happ~ (1993) found that success on a second-order false belief task predicted the ability to understand irony. The ability to attribute first-order beliefs predicted metaphoric understanding, presumably because this allows subjects to determine when the speaker believes and thus to avoid taking the metaphor literally. The ability to attribute second-order beliefs predicted the ability to interpret irony, presumably because subjects had to be able to determine what the speaker wanted the listener to believe, and what the speaker thought the listener already believed. Finally, in a fourtl~ study, Sullivan, Winner, & Hopfield (1995) again showed that children cannot distinguish lies from ironic jokes unless they can also make appropriate attributions about what the speaker believes about what the listener believes. Children only succeeded in recognizing lies as lies if they also realized that the speaker believed the listener did not know the truth, and hence was likely to be taken in by the utterance.

Children only succeeded in

recognizing ironic jokes as jokes if they also realized that the speaker believed the listener did know the truth, and hence would not be taken in by the utterance. And once again, the presence of intonation had no effect on children's ability to distinguish joking from lying.

What seems necessary is not the presence of

intonation, but the ability to figure out what the speaker believes about what the

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listener believes. Because the ability to make such second-order attributions is not present until somewhere between ages four and six, it is not surprising that irony comprehension emerges considerably later than metaphor comprehension.

CONTEXTS OF IRONY USAGE Irony is not just a literary device, but also pervades ordinary conversation. When we examined irony usage on popular television shows, we were struck by how often it crops up (Dews, Winner, Nicolaides & Hunt, 1995). In our study, we looked at popular television shows for children and for adults to determine not only the frequency of irony usage, but also the forms that ironic utterances take, and the emotions that seem to be associated with such usage. Two types of situation comedies were studied, ones directed at children (e.g., The Cosby Show) and ones directed at adults (e.g., Murphy Brown). Two types of comedy shows were studied, again, ones directed at children (cartoons such as Garfield and Friends) and ones for adults (late night stand-up talk shows such as The Tonight Show).

Frequency of Irony Though we do not know the frequency of ironic discourse in spontaneous conversation, estimates can be gleaned from our research. Thirty-minute segments of television shows with primarily adult audiences averaged 4.25 instances of irony each, while the children's shows averaged 2.75 instances of irony. Almost all (94%) instances of irony were ironic insults (e.g., putting someone down who has blundered by saying, "Oh, that was very impressive" from an episode of the sitcom, "Murphy Brown"). The few ironic compliments that we noted were quite subtle.

For example, a rock star who had clearly "made it" referred to his

millionaire mansion as "a ghetto shack." On the literal, sentence-meaning level, the comment is negative (ghetto shack); on the speaker-meaning level, the comment is positive (a mansion).

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Extrapolating from our results, a child who watches TV three hours per day will be exposed to approximately 6,000 ironic utterances per year from television alone. An adult watching the same amount of TV will be exposed to approximately 9,000 ironic utterances! Clearly, these figures underestimate actual exposure because they do not take into account the amount of verbal irony heard in everyday conversation.

Cues that Signal Irony Detecting irony is particularly difficult because the literal meaning of an ironic statement is plausible in some contexts, though not in the context in which it is presented. This is in contrast to metaphor, where the utterance often does not constitute an acceptable literal statement. Take, for example, the statement, "The prison guard was a rock." Guards can be rocks only in a metaphorical sense; a literal reading of this sentence is anomalous.

Contrast this utterance to "Nice

move, " said when someone slips. This utterance is not anomalous, and makes perfect literal sense in another context. Although semantic anomaly cannot serve as a cue t h a t an utterance is ironic, both intonation and facial expression can serve to signal irony. Irony is typically uttered in a negative or mocking intonation, but it may also be spoken in a deadpan or mock-sincere intonation (Winner, 1988).

The negative, mocking

intonation, which includes heavy stress, slow speaking rate, and nasalization, is the typical ironic intonation (Cutler, 1974).

Intonation no doubt oi~en helps

listeners detect ironic intent, though adults can detect and comprehend irony without relying on intonation when the context provides sufficient information to support the hearer's interpretation (e.g., Gibbs, 1986b; Kreuz & Glucksberg, 1989). As discussed below, the cues of negative intonation and negative facial expression were found more often when the irony was directed at children (i.e., heard on a children's television program) t h a n when it was directed at adults.

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Intonation Our television study confirmed that irony is typically associated with an ironic tone of voice. About half of the ironic utterances (52%) coded were delivered in the typical negative, mocking ironic intonation.

Deadpan and mock-sincere

intonations were recorded only half as often (24% and 23% respectively). The type of intonation used was also related to the situation in which the irony was used. When speakers were annoyed, they used a negative, mocking intonation; when speakers were in a playful mood, or were trying to seem superior, they used either deadpan or mock-sincere intonations. And the intonations used also differed depending on whether the irony was meant for children or adults. Negative intonation was more commonly heard on children's shows than adult shows; the more subtle deadpan and mock-sincere intonations were most often heard on adult late night comedy shows (in fact, this intonation characterized half of the irony on such shows).

Facial expression Mirroring the findings about intonation, the obvious facial cues (expressions of annoyance, anger) were more oi~en seen on children's shows. On adult shows, ironic speakers ofLen had positive facial expressions. Intonation and facial expression were typically used in parallel fashion. That is, negative intonation was typically associated with negative facial expression;

mock-sincere intonation with a friendly face,

with a deadpan face.

deadpan intonation

And the irony heard on children's shows typically was

spoken both with negative intonation and with negative facial expression. Thus, irony for children was signalled by two parallel types of cues, making it easier to detect.

Irony directed at adults was more subtle, and was often signalled by

neither negative intonation nor by negative facial expression. Since ironic comments are typically criticisms or insults, speaker anger also serves as a cue that the speaker is being ironic. We found that the ironic

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speaker was much more likely to be angry when the irony was directed at children: 77% of the ironic utterances on children's shows were spoken by clearly angry speakers; only 46% of the ironic utterances on adult shows were spoken by angry speakers.

A typical instance occurred on a children's situation comedy

when an angry person said, "Oh, fine, if that's the way you feel" to a character who refused to be helpfttl. A typical non-angry instance occurred on an adult comedy show when the speaker (Jay Leno) said something that got no laughs and then said to the audience, "Once again, the band is so stunned by my monologue."

Paralinguistic cues as signals to the speaker's feelings and goals We found a systematic relationship between paralinguistic cues and speaker feelings and goals. Negative intonation and facial expression were used by speakers who were annoyed, angry, trying to convey a point of view, or trying to appear not upset. Sincere intonation and facial expression were used by speakers who were feeling playfifl, superior, or trying to be funny. Deadpan intonation was also used by playful speakers. Presumably the discrepancy between a deadpan or sincere intonation and the conveyed negative meaning is part of what makes irony funny. Hence, when speakers want to be funny or playful, they use such discrepant cues. These results show that the kind of irony directed at children differs from the kind intended for adults. Irony for adults comes with subtle paralinguistic cues--sincere or deadpan intonations and expressions. Irony for children comes with obvious cuesMnegative intonation, angry expressions.

In addition, the

reasons for using irony differ depending on whether the irony is for children or adults to hear. Adult irony is used to be funny or playful, while child irony is used to insult and mock. In general, then, irony that children hear (if we can extrapolate from our television study) is obvious irony, wrapped in clear negative mocking cues, while the irony that adults hear is subtle, playful, and funny.

At least this

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seems to be the case in our culture. Unfortunately, we know nothing about the forms and functions of irony in other cultures.

WHY NOT SAY IT D I R E C T L Y ? Thus far we have proposed distinctions between literal and nonliteral language, and between metaphor and irony, and have discussed how metaphor and irony are understood and used in the course of development. We now take up the question of why. Why do we use nonliteral forms of discourse? What are the communicative functions served by metaphor and irony? The functions of metaphor seem clearer t h a n those of irony.

We use

metaphor to clarify by describing something new in terms of something old, and to make vivid what we mean (Ortony, 1975, Winner & Gardner, 1993). It is far less clear why speakers should use irony. In short, why should people say one thing when they mean something that is roughly the opposite in evaluative tone from what they say? Why not just say directly what one means?

Irony Serves a Muting Function One reason why people use irony seems to be to soften, or mute, the evaluative force of what is intended (Dews, Kaplan, & Winner, 1995; Dews & Winner, 1995).

This claim is a counter-intuitive one, as it contradicts the

prevailing notion that irony is a particularly biting form of criticism. We compared subjects' ratings of ironic criticisms such as '~rou're just in time to help" to literal insults such as 'Tou're too late to help". We found, to our initial surprise, that ironic criticisms were seen as less biting t h a n literal insults.

Similarly,

ratings of ironic compliments such as %Vhat a lousy worker you are." spoken to a super-productive employee, were seen as less positive t h a n ratings of literal compliments such as ' ~ h a t a good worker you are." Thus, the literal meaning of ironic remarks seems to mute the speaker's intended meaning.

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Children, too, appear to be sensitive to the muting function of irony. In our research on children's use of irony, we found that children as young as 5- to 6years of age rated ironic criticism as less mean than literal criticism. This demonstrates that as soon as children can understand irony, they recognize it as less insulting, and hence more muted, than direct, literal criticism. In fact, adults in our study more often judged irony to be mean than did the children.

This

suggests that the children's interpretations relied more heavily on the speaker's literal meaning than did those of the adults'. We explain this effect with the Tinge Hypothesis, and argue that the literal meaning of the ironic utterance '%inges" or rubs off on the conveyed meaning. If the literal meaning is positive, the conveyed (negative) meaning is rendered somewhat more positive; if the literal meaning is negative, the conveyed (positive) meaning is rendered somewhat more negative.

According to the Tinge

Hypothesis, aspects of both the literal and intended meanings of irony must be processed, and later in this chapter we present evidence that this is so. Processing of multiple meanings can account for the muting of irony: the tone of the literal meaning of ironic utterances automatically "colors" the hearer's perception of the intended meaning. That is, traces of the literal meaning remain activated momentarily and color the listener's interpretation of the intended meaning. In the case of ironic insults, the positive literal meaning "tinges" the negative intended meaning, resulting in a less critical evaluation. Similarly, the negative literal meaning of ironic compliments tinges the positive intended meaning resulting in a more critical evaluation.

This argument does not imply that a

complete compositional analysis of the literal meaning of ironic utterances is performed.

Rather, it suggests that some aspects of the literal meaning are

processed, and that these aspects are noted and color the hearer's interpretation.

Irony Serves a Humor Function

A second reason for using irony is that irony imparts humor to what is said

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(Kreuz, Long, & Church, 1991; Long & Graesser, 1988; Roberts & Kreuz, 1994). Our studies show that adults rate ironic comments as simply funnier than the same message conveyed literally (Dews, Kaplan, & Winner 1995; Dews & Winner, 1995; Dews, et al., in press). Irony seems to be particularly humorous when it is directed at a situation, rather than at another person (Dews, Winner & Kaplan, 1995). We also noted this in our study of the kind of irony heard on television shows (Dews et al., 1995).

As mentioned, ironic remarks used on late night

stand-up comedy television shows are typically of this humorous, playful variety, while irony heard on situation comedies often consists of remarks intended to criticize. Thus, irony can be used to be funny or to criticize. Unlike sensitivity to the muting function of irony, sensitivity to the humor function of irony develops with age.

We found that 5-6-year-olds rated ironic

insults as no more funny than literal insults (Dews et al, in press). While 8-9year-olds rated ironic insults as funnier than literal ones, they did not rate the ironic utterances as funny as often as did adults. It appears that for children as young as 5- and 6-years of age, both literal and ironic criticisms are equally funny (or not); however, with age, ironic criticism gains in humor. It has been argued that the humor of irony is due to the discrepancy between the literal and ironic meanings (Long & Graesser, 1988; Suls, 1977). According to Suls' (1977) incongruity-resolution theory of humor, irony may be perceived as funny because of the discrepancy between what was expected (the intended meaning) and what occurred (the literal meaning). Adults may be more aware of this discrepancy than are children, which could account for the finding that adults find irony funnier than do children. Such an explanation is consistent with our finding that adults were more likely than children to rank indirect irony as funniest (given a choice between direct irony, indirect irony, and a literal paraphrase), while children were more likely to rank direct irony as funniest. Indirect irony is more subtle than direct irony. An example of indirect irony used in this study was "These cookies will be perfect for the party." said to a child who

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had added salt instead of sugar to the cookies she baked. Contrast this to an example of direct irony ("You always bake great cookies.") used in the same situation.

In the indirect irony, the listener must reverse the sentence (these

cookies are not right for the party) and then infer t h a t the addressee has not baked edible cookies, while in the direct irony, the listener need only infer that the speaker means something close to the opposite of what was said.

Irony Shows the Speaker to Be Detached Irony may also be used by the speaker to demonstrate emotional control (J. Levy, personal communication). A person who expresses his or her anger ironically displays some measure of control by virtue of having made a "joking," indirect remark.

Dews et al. (1995) found that when the topic of remark was offensive be-

havior, subjects rated speakers who uttered ironic insults as less angry and more in control than speakers who uttered literal insults. In addition, our ironic speakers on television were often trying to appear not to be upset (Dews et al., 1995). In both cases, irony provided a way to express anger in a controlled manner, which may be more socially acceptable than expressing that anger directly.

Irony May Be Used to Express Multiple Goals Irony may often be used to express multiple goals simultaneously (Kreuz, Long, & Church, 1991; Glucksberg, & Kumon-Nakamura, 1995). That is, irony may be intended both to be funny and to strengthen relationship bonds, or to criticize and to demonstrate what type of person the speaker is. Our study of the developmental functions of irony (Dews et al., in press) suggests that children are less likely to perceive multiple goals simultaneously than are adults. For example, the appreciation that a mean remark can also be funny appears to develop with age. We found that for young children, ironic remarks are primarily mean or funny but not both; for adults, ironic remarks can fulfill both functions simultaneously.

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Effect of I n t o n a t i o n on Social F u n c t i o n s

Our research also demonstrated the communicative effects of intonation. Ironic utterances in a mock-sincere intonation were most likely to be heard as muted criticism, and also to be heard as funny. In addition, we found that the use of a negative intonation signaled annoyance, while the use of deadpan and sincere intonations signaled playfulness or superiority (Dews, et al., 1995).

Summary

While sensitivity to the humor function of irony increases with age, even 5to 6-year-olds distinguish between ironic and literal criticism in terms of meanness, and recognize irony as a less mean (though equally funny) form of insult. Together with the results of our study of irony on television, these results suggest that children may use irony for different purposes t h a n adults. Children may use irony primarily to criticize, and to do so in a muted, face-saving way. Adults may use irony both to criticize in a muted form, and to be funny.

P R O C E S S I N G IRONY

There are two aspects to comprehending irony: interpreting the speaker's intended meaning and recognizing the discrepancy between the speaker's words and the speaker's meaning.

Olson (1988) argues that full comprehension of

nonliteral utterances requires understanding not only the speaker's intended meaning, but also recognizing the contrast between what is said and what is meant. Without recognition of the discrepancy, nonliteral utterances function in the same way as do literal utterances (Winner & Gardner, 1993). This does not necessarily mean that nonliteral language is processed by different mechanisms than literal language.

Rather, it means that in order to be credited with full

understanding, listeners must understand both the speaker's intended meaning and hear the contrast between what is said and what is meant (Olson, 1988). Hence, deriving both the intended meaning and recognizing the discrepancy are

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obligatory for interpreting the speaker's full meaning. The processes by which nonliteral utterances are comprehended during natural language understanding have been much debated.

Three theories of

nonliteral language processing have been proposed: the three-stage model, the multiple meaning model, and the conventional meaning model.

We briefly

discuss each below, and then present some evidence which we will argue supports a version of the multiple meaning model.

Competing Models The three-stage model Perhaps the most debated model of nonliteral language processing is one which states that the literal meaning of all utterances must be analyzed in order to determine meaning. According to the three-stage model, nonliteral utterances are processed in a serial manner in which the literal meanings of utterances must first be derived (Clark & Lucy, 1975; Searle, 1975). According to this model, the interpretation of nonliteral utterances involves three stages: 1. Derive the literal meaning 2. Test this meaning against the context 3. If the literal meaning fails to make sense, seek an alternative nonliteral meaning. According to this model, people comprehend the ironic insult, "Great game!" by first analyzing the positive literal meaning of the ironic utterance. Realizing that the literal meaning is not appropriate in the context, listeners go on to seek an alternative meaning.

Searle (1979a) argues that listeners then

compute the nonliteral meaning by inferring the opposite of the literal interpretation.

The multiple meaning model The multiple meaning model of nonliteral language processing also

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assumes that the literal meaning of all utterances must be derived, but this model does not make assumptions about the order in which meanings are derived. According to the multiple meaning model, both literal and nonliteral meanings are derived, either simultaneously or in either order, and processing the conveyed meaning of nonliteral language is obligatory rather than optional (Clark & Schunk, 1980; Gildea & Glucksberg, 1983; Glucksberg, 1991; Glucksberg, Gildea, & Bookin, 1982; Swinney & Cutler, 1979). Hence, according to this model, people should not be able ignore either the literal or the nonliteral meanings of utterances. In Glucksberg's view of the multiple meaning process, we routinely and automatically activate word meanings and parse phrases and sentences.

We

then use the products of these linguistic analyses, along with contextual information, to determine speaker meaning. While literal meanings are used to construct figurative meanings, comprehension of the entire literal meaning is not necessary. Thus, literal meanings are used directly to arrive at the figurative intentions of speakers. Long and Graesser (1988) have proposed a multiple meaning model specific to irony, called the parallel-race model. The parallel-race model is an adaptation of Suls' (1977) incongruity-resolution theory of humor in which humor is seen as arising from the discrepancy between what was expected and what actually occurred. In the case of irony, what is expected is the intended meaning and what occurs is the literal meaning.

In Suls' model, the comprehension of

humorous utterances proceeds serially, with the literal meaning processed prior to the figurative meaning. In order to account for the possibility of simultaneous processing of multiple meanings, Long and Graesser (1988) proposed a revision of the incongruity-resolution theory in which the order of processing is not specified. The parallel-race model allows linguistic, conversational, and social context to exert an influence on comprehension by allowing comprehension to occur either after recognition of the incongruity or simultaneously, in a dual-processing

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manner. Listeners may access an intended meaning before recognizing that the literal meaning is incongruous.

The conventional meaning model The conventional meaning model posits that the conventional meaning of any utterance is derived automatically, but that processing nonconventional meanings is optional (Gibbs, 1982). According to this model, people are biased toward the conventional interpretation of utterances.

Hence, for conventional

forms of nonliteral language (such as the idiom, "Let the cat out of the bag") people should be biased toward a nonliteral interpretation.

While the model

acknowledges that people can also make a literal interpretation, it proposes that this happens only aider the most common meaning has been derived.

For

conventional forms of literal language, the model says that people are biased toward literal interpretations.

If a conventionally literal form is used non-

literally, as is the case with novel metaphors such as "Sam is an elephant," people first compute the conventional, literal meaning, followed by the less conventional nonliteral meaning.

Thus, deriving the nonliteral meaning is

obligatory if the nonliteral meaning is conventionally used. If the literal meaning is conventionally associated with an utterance, deriving the literal meaning is obligatory and deriving the nonliteral meaning is optional. One of the main features of the conventional meaning model is that people do not necessarily have to analyze the literal interpretation of conventional nonliteral utterances at any time during comprehension. Intuitively, this model is appealing because it seems consistent with the apparent ease of comprehension of conventional forms and the prevalence of their use.

Because language

processing is a resource-intensive task and humans have a finite amount of time to process speech, it seems likely that people would be biased toward the most common, and therefore easiest-to-comprehend, meaning of an utterance. However, there is one major problem with this model, and that is its

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inability to explain how novel nonliteral utterances with nonsensical literal meanings are processed. For example, the metaphor "A tree is a factory" does not have a plausible literal meaning, so it could not conventionally be interpreted literally.

What Is the Role of the Literal Meaning?. The role of the literal meaning in nonliteral language processing has been much debated. Of most interest has been the three-stage model's claim that the entire literal meaning of nonliteral utterances is processed before the non]iteral meaning. One implication of this claim is that nonliteral language should take longer to comprehend than literal language. A second implication is that deriving nonliteral meanings should be optional. That is, hearers should be able to stop processing after the literal meaning has been derived.

Comprehension Time The three-stage model's claim that nonliteral meanings are processed only after literal meanings has been tested using metaphors, idioms, indirect requests and irony. The procedure has been to compare the time taken to comprehend literal uses of phrases to nonliteral uses of the same phrases. For example, the time needed to comprehend the metaphoric phrase "The troops marched on" used literally was compared to the time needed when it was used metaphorically (Ortony, et al., 1978). This study demonstrated that, given appropriate contextual support, comprehending the most common forms of nonliteral language takes no longer than comprehending literal language. However, similar studies focusing on irony have yielded conflicting results. Gibbs (1986a,b) has compared the time it takes to interpret sarcastic comments with the time taken to interpret the same comments used literally, or to matched "equivalent" literal paraphrases. For instance, Gibbs (1986a) compared times to comprehend statements such as "Sure is nice and warm in here" in contexts in

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which they were intended literally and in contexts in which they were intended as sarcastic indirect requests. He found that subjects took less time to read these statements when they were intended as sarcastic indirect requests than when they were intended as literal comments. He also found that it took less time to read sarcastic indirect requests than it did to read nonsarcastic indirect requests. Thus, the finding cannot be due to indirect requests being faster to process than literal ones. Gibbs further explored irony processing in a series of experiments in which he used both ironic insults and ironic compliments (1986b). Subjects read stories that were either about a positive or a negative event. For the negative stories, the final remarks were either sarcastic (e.g., 'You're a big help" to someone who had provided no help) or "equivalent" literal remarks (e.g., "You have not helped"). For the positive stories, the final remarks were identical to the sarcastic remarks used in the negative context, but now had literal, positive meanings (e.g., "You're a big help") or were simple acknowledgments (e.g., "Thanks for your help").

In

Gibbs' first experiment, subjects were quicker to comprehend the sarcastic sentences than to comprehend the equivalent literal sentences.

These results

suggest that the intended meaning of the more commonly used form of irony (ironic insults) is not processed after the literal meaning. Gibbs' results rely on comparisons between ironic utterances and their literal paraphrases.

We suggest that a direct comparison between the same

remarks presented in a literal-biasing vs an irony-biasing context is a cleaner measure of comprehension. The most noticeable problem in Gibbs' method is that he compares sentences with similar, but not identical, words. This may result in an effect that is simply due to differing amounts of time needed to process different words.

Comparing the same words used in two different contexts

eliminates this problem. negative remarks.

A second confound concerns the tone of positive and

Literal insults may take longer to comprehend than ironic

insults simply because they are phrased negatively, since negative utterances

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typically take longer to process than positive ones (Clark, 1973). A close look at Gibbs' items (1986b, experiment 3) shows that ironic insults ("You're a fine friend" to someone who isn't actually) took 162 milliseconds longer to comprehend than did the same expression used as a literal compliment ("You're a fine friend" to someone who is). Similarly, ironic compliments ('You're a terrible friend" to someone who isn't) took 266 milliseconds longer to comprehend t h a n did the same expression used as a literal insult ("You're a terrible friend" to someone who is). These data contradict those of previous experiments, in which irony either took less time to process t h a n literal uses (1986a), or took the same amount of time (Gibbs, 1986b, experiment 1). The problems introduced by evaluative tone, and by comparing remarks that are similar, but not identical, are eliminated when response times to the same remarks presented in different contexts are compared. In a recent study, we used a Stroop-like interference paradigm described by Glucksberg and his colleagues (Gildea & Glucksberg, 1983; Glucksberg, Gildea, & Bookin 1982) to test the hypothesis that some form of the literal meaning of ironic remarks is processed automatically, along with the intended nonliteral meaning.

We asked subjects to judge the intended rather than the literal

meaning of ironic utterances. Then we used reaction time to determine whether the literal meaning of an ironic remark interferes with a judgment of its intended meaning. Subjects read on a computer screen a series of short descriptions of a positive or a negative event. After reading each story, they pressed the spacebar to display a concluding remark by one of the characters.

For example, in one

study, a character tells a joke that is either in poor taste or that is very amusing. The final remark was, "That's really funny." In the former context, this remark is ironic; in the latter, it is literal. Subjects were told that their task was to judge whether the speaker meant something positive or something negative, and to do so as quickly and as accu-

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rately as possible. Subjects heard both ironic criticisms and ironic compliments. Thus, both ironic and literal remarks were judged sometimes as positive, sometimes as negative. We found that utterances used ironically took significantly longer to judge as positive (M= 3327 msec vs. 2866 msec for ironic compliments and literal insults, respectively; F [1, 34] = 9.08, MSE=409702.56, p<.001), or negative (M= 2383 msec vs. 1716 msec for ironic insults and literal compliments, respectively; F [1, 38] = 26.89, MSE=321762.00, p<.0001), than their literal counterparts. This shows that the literal meaning of the ironic remarks interfered with judgments of intended meaning. This was true both for ironic remarks used to point out something negative (e.g., '~rhat was really funny" about a mean joke) and for ironic remarks used to point out something positive (e.g., "It's a tough life" to someone on vacation). We concluded from this study that the literal meaning of ironic remarks must at some level be processed. These results contrast with those of Gibbs, who found that subjects understand ironic utterances as rapidly as literal ones, and who concluded that processing of the literal meaning of irony is bypassed. Our results suggest that some aspects of the literal meaning are processed. This does not imply that the entire literal meaning of the phrase is processed. Rather, some portions of the literal meaning must be processed and this processing interfered with subjects' judgments. One explanation for the difference between our results and those of Gibbs is methodological. Gibbs examined the total time needed to comprehend ironic and literal remarks (1986a, 1986b).

It is possible that literal processing is a

brief and localized phenomenon that is not detectable by total sentence reading time. This is the case for both metaphors and idioms, in which processing of the literal meaning can only be detected by examining processing that occurs at the word(s) that identify the phrase as nonliteral (Blasko & Connine, 1993; Cacciari & Tabossi, 1988; Janus & Bever, 1985). The interference paradigm used here

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provides a means of detecting on-line, localized processing of literal meanings. Using the same Stroop-like interference paradigm and materials described above, we also tested the hypothesis that processing the ironic meaning of an ironic utterance is just as obligatory as processing the literal meaning of an ironic utterance. We asked subjects to judge whether the literal meaning of ironic insults and ironic compliments was positive or negative. Judging the literal meaning of ironic insults took longer than judging the same words used literally, F (1, 41)--4.37, MSE=58137.17, p<.05. Thus, in the case of ironic criticism, the ironic meaning was automatically accessed and interfered with judgments of literal meaning.

However, the same was not found for Ironic compliments. Here we

found that judging the literal meaning of ironic compliments actually took less time than judging the same words used literally, F(1, 40)=-4.74, MSE= 165508.54,

p<.05. Our finding that the nonliteral meanings of ironic insults are obligatorily accessed is consistent with Glucksberg et al.'s (1982) finding that accessing the nonliteral meanings of metaphors is an obligatory process. Our subjects were not able to ignore the nonliteral meanings of ironic criticisms, just as Glucksberg et al.'s subjects were not able to ignore the nonliteral meanings of metaphors. Our studies thus support a multiple meaning model of nonliteral language processing. The parallel-race model provides such a model in which the order of processing is not specified (Long & Graesser, 1988). Irony is processed in a dualprocessing manner in which comprehension may occur aider the recognition of an incongruity or simultaneously.

If primed by a figurative context, alternative

meanings may be accessed before recognition of the incongruity. This model relies on the notion that deriving an ironic interpretation involves some recognition (conscious or unconscious) of the discrepancy between the evaluation implied by the literal meaning and the evaluation intended. Hearers who recognize the intended meaning (e.g., a negative evaluation) without comprehending what was said literally (e.g., a positive evaluation) cannot be said to have interpreted the

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phrase ironically. While they may understand aspects of the speaker's intent, they cannot be said to have grasped the speaker's communicative intent.

Hence,

deriving both the intended meaning and aspects of the literal meaning is obligatory for interpreting a speaker's ironic intent (Olson, 1988; Winner & Gardner, 1993). Like the parallel-race model, the Tinge Hypothesis makes no assumptions about the order in which meanings are derived, and assumes that processing the intended meaning is obligatory. This model posits that while aspects of the literal meaning must be derived, deriving the entire literal meaning is optional. In other words, the conflict between the tone of the literal and intended evaluations must be processed in order for the speaker's ironic intent to be recognized. However, once that discrepancy is recognized, the hearer need not process the entire literal meaning (though it seems likely that the literal meanings of the remaining words are used in the process of inferring the speaker's intended meaning). The order of literal/nonliteral processing most likely depends on contextual support. Since the hearer often has no way of knowing in advance that the ironic speaker's words and meaning will conflict, it is most likely that ironic utterances are initially processed as if they were literal. There is simply no reason to expect that the manner in which hearers process ironic remarks differs from the manner in which they process literal remarks, at least until a discrepancy in evaluative tone is noted. In some cases, the contextual support is such that the speaker's true evaluation is immediately apparent. In the case of evaluative remarks, the hearer may know the speaker's actual attitude toward the topic of remark, and may expect the speaker to adhere to principles governing cooperative conversations and state it directly (Grice, 1975). This means that a person who hears an ironic insult may automatically derive the intended critical evaluation before realizing that it conflicts with the positive literal meaning. In fact, the literal and intended meanings often coincide until some words or actions on the part of the speaker suggest they actually differ.

Hence, the exact sequence of processing

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depends on contextual support. Only once the two levels of meaning are recognized is it reasonable to argue that irony processing differs in any way from literal processing. The literal and intended meanings must be integrated in a way that results in a coherent interpretation.

As we have demonstrated, one result of this integration is that

the meaning of irony is muted. Even given this requirement for the integration of the two meanings, it seems unlikely that irony requires different processing mechanisms from those required for literal processing.

Literal comprehension

most likely requires the same kinds of inferences, decisions, and context that nonliteral comprehension does (Gildea & Glucksberg, 1983; Rumelhart, 1979). Faced with either a literal or nonliteral utterance, listeners must go beyond the literal. The difference is only that in the case of literal utterances, listeners retain the literal meaning, while in the case of nonliteral utterances, listeners know to reject the literal meaning.

The fact that the processing mechanisms for irony must

generate inferences that are in opposition in tone to the words uttered does not mean that they must differ from those needed to generate inferences that are congruent in tone (as in the case of literal utterances). We suggest, rather, that nonliteral language is one source of ambiguity, and mechanisms t h a t resolve literally intended ambiguities should work equally well for nonliteral language. If irony does not differ from literal language in the processes needed to make sense of it, these two forms of language may differ in the '~roduct" of comprehension--that is, in the final understanding of the utterance (Gibbs & Gerrig, 1989). The ambiguity of irony may result in more simultaneously active interpretations t h a n is typically the case with literal language.

In some cases,

the listener may ultimately select out one meaning. But in other cases, multiple meanings may remain active simultaneously, without any one meaning ever being decided upon. The fact that one may remain unsure of what the speaker meant or that one may realize that the speaker meant to convey a number of meanings simultaneously may account in part for the fact t h a t irony seems "special."

408

Dews and Winner CONCLUSIONS

We have tried to cover a great deal of ground in this chapter. We first set forth a principled distinction between literal and nonliteral language, and between the two major forms of nonliteral language, metaphor and irony. We then discussed the very different comprehension demands posed by metaphor and irony. These different comprehension demands can account for the diverging developmental courses of metaphor and irony comprehension. We then focused for the rest of the chapter on irony, considering the forms that irony takes in every day usage, and the social payoffs for using an ironic rather than a literal form of discourse.

Finally, we discussed some recent evidence from our laboratory

showing that, contrary to the prevailing view, the literal meaning of irony must, at some level, be accessed. It is because speakers access the literal meaning of irony that irony is a muted form of criticism or a muted form of praise. Thus, the way in which irony is processed can help us to make sense of the vexing question of why speakers choose to use irony rather than direct speech. Given the highly contextual nature of both metaphor and irony, it seems unlikely to us that computers will ever be programmed to understand these forms of discourse in the way that adults seem so effortlessly and accurately to do.

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Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, 10, 1, 3-19. Dews, S., & Winner, E. (in press). Obligatory processing of nonliteral utterances.

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ning and functions of verbal irony. Child Development. Dews, S., Winner, E., Nicolaides, N., & Hunt, M. (1995, August). Forms and functions of verbal irony found in children's and adults' television shows. Paper presented at American Psychological Association, New York, NY. Gardner, H. (1974). Metaphors and modalities: How children project polar adjectives onto diverse domains. Child Development, 45, 84-91. Gelman, R., & Spelke, E. (1981). The development of thoughts about animate and

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Experimental Psychology: General, 124, 3-21. Glucksberg, S., Gildea, P., & Bookin, H.B. (1982). On understanding nonliteral speech: Can people ignore metaphors? Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal

Behavior, 21, 85-98. Grice, H.P. (1975). Logic and conversation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Happ6, F. (1993). Communicative competence and theory of mind in autism: A test of relevance theory. Cognition, 48, 101-119. Janus, R.A., & Bever, T.G. (1985).

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Research in Child Development, 45, 1. Kreuz, R.J., & Glucksberg, S. (1989). How to be sarcastic: The echoic reminder theory of verbal irony. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 118, 374386. Kreuz, R.J., Long, D.L., & Church, M.B. (1991). On being ironic: Pragmatic and mnemonic implications. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, 6, 149-162. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Leekam, S. (1991). Jokes and lies: Children's understanding of intentional falsehood. In A. Whiten (Ed.), Natural theories of minck Evolution, development

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for Research in Child Development. Mendelsohn, E., Gardner, H., & Winner, E. (1981). A study of children's perception of metaphoric grounds. Unpublished research. Olson, D. (1988). On what's a metaphor for? Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, 3, 215-222. Ortony, A. (1975). Why metaphors are necessary and not just nice. Educational

Theory, 25, 45-53. Ortony~ A., Reynolds, R., & Arter, J. (1978). Metaphor: Theoretical and empirical research. Psychological Bulletin, 85, 919-943.

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Ortony, A., Schallert, D.L., Reynolds, R.E., & Antos, S.J. (1978). Interpreting metaphors and idioms: Some effects of context on comprehension. Journal of

Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 17, 465-477. Perner, J. (1991). Understanding the representational mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Perner, J., & Wimmer, H. (1985). "John thinks that Mary thinks that...": Attributions of second-order beliefs by 5- to 10-year-old children. Journal of Experi-

mental Child Psychology, 39, 437-471. Piaget, J. (1974). The language and thought of the child. New York: New American Library. Roberts, R.M., & Kreuz, R.J. (1994). Why do people use figurative language?

Psychological Science, 5, 159-163. Rumelhart, D.E. (1979). Some problems with the notion of literal meanings. A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and Thought (pp.78-90).

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and semantics. Volume 3. Speech acts (pp. 59-82). New York: Academic Press. Searle, J.R (1979a). Expression and meaning. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Searle, J.R (1979b). Metaphor.

In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (pp.92-

123). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Shantiris, K. (1983). Developmental changes in metaphor comprehension: It's not all uphill. Paper presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Detroit. Sullivan, K., Winner, E., & Hopfield, N. (1995). How children tell a lie from a joke: The role of second-order mental state attributions. British Journal of

Developmental Psychology, 13, 191-204. Sullivan, K., Zaitchik, D., & Tager-Flusberg, H. (1993). Preschoolers can attribute second-order beliefs. Developmental Psychology, 30, 3, 395-402.

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Suls, J.M. (1977). Cognitive and disparagement theories of humor: A theoretical and empirical synthesis. In A.J. Chapman & H.C. Foot (Eds.), It's a funny

thing, humor. Oxford: Pergamon. Swinney, D.A., & Cutler, A. (1979). The access and processing of idiomatic expressions. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 18, 523-534. Vosniadou, S., Ortony, A., Reynolds, R., & Wilson, P. (1984). Sources of difficulty in children's understanding of metaphorical language. Child Development, 55, 1588-1606. Winner, E. (1988). The point of words: Children's understanding of metaphor and

irony. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Winner, E., & Gardner, H. (1993). Metaphor and irony: Two levels of understanding. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (2nd edition) (pp. 425-446). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Winner, E., & Leekam, S. (1991). Distinguishing irony from deception: Understanding the speaker's second-order intention. British Journal of Developmen-

tal Psychology, 9, 257-270. Winner, E., McCarthy, M., & Gardner, H. (1980). The ontogenesis of metaphor. In R. Honeck & R. Hoffman (Eds.), Cognition and figurative language. HiUsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum. Winner, E., Rosenstiel, A., & Gardner, H., (1976). The development of metaphoric understanding. Developmental Psychology, 12, 289-297. Winner, E., Wapner, W., Cicone, M., & Gardner, H. (1979). Measures of metaphor.

New Directions for Child Development, 6, 67-75. Winner, E., Windmueller, G., Rosenblatt, E., Bosco, L., Best, E., & Gardner, H. (1987). Making sense of literal and nonliteral falsehood.

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Metaphor and

The Problem of Meaning: Behavioral and Cognitive Perspectives C. Mandell and A. McCabe (Editors) 9 1997 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

415

CHAPTER 11 The P r o b l e m of M e a n i n g in G e n e r a t i v e G r a m m a r

MASSIMO PIATTELLI-PALMARINI and CARLO CECCHETTO

Department of Cognitive Science, San Raffaele University Milan, Italy

INTRODUCTION We have been asked by the editors of this volume to write an overview of the problem of meaning in the generative tradition, that is, the one that goes back to the pioneering work of Noam Chomsky

in the mid-Fifties and for which

Chomsky is still the most important exponent. We have found this task entirely congenial, since we believe that the Chomskyan approach to linguistics opened the way to a highly successful research program, one that shed light on many important aspects of the language faculty, notably including our '~nowledge of meaning" (Larson & Segal, 1996). However, the present review has simultaneously a broad and a more limited objective. On the one hand, we will try to present the reader with a broad geography of the issue, as long as it can be

reconstructed adopting a specific point of view, that of the generative tradition. On the other hand, we do not intend to address ourselves uniquely, or even primarily, to generative scholars. We do believe, in fact, that adopting this particular approach to reconstruct the discussion on meaning in linguistics can offer interesting general insights. It is a fact that generative grammar, in the last 40

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years of the history of linguistics, has been in competition with several other important approaches. From the analysis of this competition (and many ensuing interactions) we can learn more about these other approaches as well, notably about their weak and their strong points.

LEXICAL SEMANTICS AND COMPOSITIONAL SEMANTICS A traditional claim about the generative tradition, and about Chomsky's work in particular, is that it focuses primarily on syntax and phonology, whereas semantics, another traditional sub-component of linguistics, is given a secondary, if not negligible, role. Even if this claim contains a part of truth, it stands in need of various qualifications and a major restriction. Let us begin from the latter. There are two distinct, though strictly related, aspects that a theory of meaning has to deal with: One is lexical semantics, the other the rules of composition of simple meanings into complex (sentential) ones. The central question of the former is: what is the meaning of a single word and how can the theory represent it? A typical controversy that arises at this level is the following: Is a word associated with a specific lexical entry in the mental lexicon, one that contains a specification of its semantic features, or is the meaning of the word to be captured by a list of meaning postulates (that is, restrictions on the domain of interpretation)? The central question at the second (composite) level of semantic analysis is: How does the meaning of a single word contribute to the meaning of the sentence in which it occurs? A typical controversy that arises at this level concerns the primacy of syntax versus the primacy of semantics. Do the syntactic rules (those governing the composition of words into well-formed sequences) simply mirror the composition rules that operate on meanings, or is it the other way around? Or are syntax and semantics to a significant extent autonomous with respect to each other?

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It may seem obvious t h a t lexical semantics and compositional semantics must be strictly related, but this is not an innocuous claim, t There are in fact research traditions t h a t consider only compositional semantics worth pursuing (arguably, the Montagovian tradition 2) and other that consider only lexical semantics worth pursuing (arguably, Chomsky at some periods of his theorizing3). For the sake of clarity, we will consider the relation between Chomskyan linguistics and lexical semantics first, and then deal with compositional semantics.

LEXICAL S E M A N T I C S Chomsky has always manifested a clear interest in lexical semantics and an optimistic attitude towards the success of such a theory. In this section we will first focus on some of Chomsky's general considerations on the topic and then offer an illustration of the role that a certain portion of lexical semantics plays in the generative theory of syntax.

General Considerations Chomsky observes t h a t the so-caUed argument of "the poverty of the stimulus" (in essence, given the richness, the complexity and the intricacy of linguistic competence, it is next to impossible t h a t such competence results from the child's haphazard exposure to the typical occasional fragments of the local language), quite central to a re-conceptualization of the acquisition of syntax by the child, also applies to the acquisition of the lexicon: Children acquire lexical items at an extraordinary rate, even if, apart from a small group of technical terms, explicit definitions are rare, or even impossible. Moreover, as is the case with syntactic rules and principles, this acquisition takes place on the basis of occasional, unsystematic, and casual fragments of conversation. Not even the best dictionaries are able to offer noncircular definitions for most of the ordinary words we use. Nonetheless, children acquire, at an average, more than a dozen new words per day at the peak period of language growth (rightly called "lexical

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explosion") (Miller, 1986; Miller & Gildea, 1987). The practically inevitable conclusion that is to be drawn from these data, analogous to the one drawn in the domain of syntax, is that the acquisition of the lexicon reflects, to a very substantial extent, internal causation rather than a simple absorption of the external inputs. The child possesses, owing to his/her internal biological constitution, a complex set of dispositions that are crucial to complete this task successfully, in a relatively short time, without the aid of definitions, and without the aid of elaborate explicit meaning-specifications by adults. Well-designed specific experiments, carried out in several languages, have consistently shown that powerful internal constraints drastically restrict the candidate meanings for each new word that the child encounters for the first time. 4 So, the different lexical items do not simply form a list, but rather are integrated into a highly structured system. The nodes in the grid that gives structure to this system - for example notions like goal, source, agent, patient, cause, intention, event, § stative, §

animate, §

artefact and so on- must be already present in the mind of the child to

be actively used in the acquisition process. Acquiring a new lexical item, as a consequence, is something like filling in an open slot in a pre-structured space of possible meanings or, more extremely, as proposed by Jerry Fodor, lexical acquisition is nothing else than acquiring labels for concept we already (innately) possess (Fodor's arguments for the strong innatism of ~mentalese" are to be found in Fodor, 1975; and Fodor, 1980. Chomsky's thoughts on this topic can be found, among other places, in Chomsky, 1991, pp. 28-29). Lexical semantics, therefore, plays an important role in the generative framework. Many researchers belonging to this tradition have actively tried to elaborate a theory of the lexicon. An example of such a theory is the theory of semantic markers (also called decompositionalist theory). In the generativist tradition (then called transformational grammar - a notion about which we shall have more to say in a moment) the central idea, originally presented by Katz and Fodor (1963), was that the meaning of a word consists of a structured set of

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semantic markers into which it can be decomposed. These markers being a limited, innate and universal set of features, every lexical meaning was conceived as exactly decomposable into a specific choice for the (binary) values that each of these basic components can assume. Let us give an example. A simple lexical item such as man is literally identified with the amalgamation of three (innate) features: +HUMAN, +ADULT and +MALE. The word girl, by contrast, would be the amalgamation of +HUMAN, -ADULT and -MALE, and so on in a straightforward way. According to the theory, a specific distribution of binary values assigned to a proper subset of such lexical semantic "markers" corresponded to (and was in an important sense identical with) a certain lexical entry. Quite a number of semantic inferences and presuppositions were thus explained, in ingenious ways, lending some initial success to this theory (soon to be abandoned by its very proponents). Developments of this idea were also known under the name of "generative semantics", enjoying for a while a certain popularity in the profession (for a historical presentation see Newmeyer, 1986). We will not go beyond this rather sketchy summary of the theory of semantic markers, because it soon encountered major problems, some of them unsolvable within the theory itself. It embodied, however, an important insight, that remains valid until this day: The idea that some sort of decomposition is involved in determining the meaning of a word. This is now considered common wisdom, in spite of the fact that hardly anyone today would subscribe to the strong version of the theory, according to which the semantic markers can exhaust the content of the lexical item. The main problems with this view can be succinctly described. For example a psycholinguistically oriented measurement of reaction times in comprehension (a technique that was not to be pursued much farther in the generative tradition proper) failed to confirm, prima facie at least, that comprehension stems from actual decomposition (see for example Fodor, Fodor & Garrett, 1975; and Johnson-Laird, 1983, especially chapter 10). Roughly, an illustration of the idea underlying these kinds of experiments follows: By

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hypothesis, the meaning of the word bachelor is a set of semantic markers that contains, among other things, the negative feature -MARRIED. If real-time comprehension requires decomposition, we would expect a subject asked to evaluate a sentence in which the word bachelor appears to show a longer processing delay (or at least not shorter) than he or she would for the same sentence in which bachelor has been replaced by the sequence not married. In fact, at bottom, genuine decomposition should entail reducing bachelor to not married (and then, eventually, to other more basic markers). What is actually

observed is that people i n relevant contexts are reliably faster in processing sentences where bachelor occurs, while the correspondent sentences where not married occurs require a longer time. This suggests that in order to understand bachelor, one is not obliged to reduce this word to the feature specification

-MARRIED. In the absence of a full theory of how comprehension works, and of how elements pertaining to semantic competence map onto mechanisms of semantic performance (reaction times measure the latter, not the former), these fmdings do not say per se that the decompositionalist theory is wrong, yet, somehow, they were almost unanimously judged to shed a negative light on it. Moreover, also from a theoretical (especially, competence-oriented) point of view, the strong version of the theory, according to which the decomposition in semantic features exhausts the meaning of the word, was unsatisfactory, as observed by Chomsky himself. Take the word assassinate: it is highly plausible that it shares some semantic feature (say, the feature CAUSE TO DIE that itself might be decomposed in more primitive components) with other words like kill, murder, massacre, etc. It is not equally plausible, however, that it also contains an

abstract additional feature to specify that the person who dies is in some way prominent, that the crime has socio-political implications, and so on. For these and other reasons, decompositionalism in the strict version is not popular today. However, it is still widely believed that some decomposition is part of the story, even if it is not all the story. Because of space limitations, we cannot discuss the

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work in lexical semantics within the Chomskyan tradition throughout (but see Pustejovsky, 1995; Hale & Keyser, 1993; and Fodor & Lepore, 1996b). We prefer to concentrate on an example, representative of how the current version of the generative theory of syntax contains at its core the idea that lexical items entering the derivation of the sentence are associated with semantic features. 5 We will see that Theta Theory, an important part of lexical semantics, plays a key role at the very core of the Chomskyan program: the theory of syntax.

Theta Theory An important module, among the different ones in which the generative theory of syntax is organised, deals with thematic relations: It is the so-called Theta Theory. Like the other modules, it constitutes a well-structured delimited realm of hypotheses and predictions in the theory itself, and at the same time a specific distinct component in the mental workings t h a t the theory attributes to each individual speaker-hearer. The contents of Theta Theory are, thus, to be understood as being part and parcel of the hearer-speaker's tacit knowledge of language. In the background of this theory lies the traditional idea, in part borrowed from much older theories of grammar, and in part from formal logic, that lexical items come either as predicates, or as arguments, or else as adjuncts. Let us pause a moment to specify what these terms mean. Predicates are elements t h a t typically require "saturation": One-place predicates (or properties) such as run or

collapse require one "agent" (Bill, or the house, or Mary, etc.). Expressions like "Bill runs" or "The house collapsed" are well-formed, because the open space of the predicate is properly saturated. The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to two-place predicates or relations such as feed (Bill feeds the dog), to three-place-predicates such as give (John gave a book to Bill ), and so on. The arguments are the elements that can saturate the open spaces of predicates and they are typically (though not exclusively) nominal expressions (like the farmer, a rabbit, John, etc.). Adjuncts

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are elements, like adverbs, that contribute with further qualification, but are not strictly necessary to the well-formedness of the sentence, (for instance, regularly in "the farmer regularly feeds a rabbit"). Theta Theory focuses on the relation between arguments and predicates and identifies some fixed semantic roles that arguments play with respect to predicates. The idea is very simple. Take a three place predicate like give. Whatever its three arguments are, one of them will have the role of AGENT of the event of giving, the other will have the role of GOAL and the third will be the THEME. So, in a sentence like 1 below, John is the agent,

Bill is the goal and the book is the theme:

John gave a book to Bill

(1)

Examining different kinds of predicates, in a variety of well-formed sentences, and in many languages, it is possible to identify a list of Thematic Roles that must be assigned to arguments: apart from those already cited, further potential candidates are PATIENT, EXPERIENCER, SOURCE, BENEFACTIVE and some others. It is, moreover, theoretically convenient to order the thematic roles in a kind of universal hierarchy, such that predicates (most notably complex verbal forms) are accordingly saturated or "discharged" by the arguments present in the sentence in a certain fixed sequence, from top to bottom (Grimshaw, 1990; Hale & Keyser, 1993). We do not need to go further into the details of Theta Theory (for a more complete presentation of Theta Theory and its relations with the other modules of the theory of syntax see Haegeman, 1994). We think that even this summary presentation is enough to clarify the point we are interested in: Theta Roles are among the core syntactico-semantic features that are associated with a lexical item. The idea is that a predicate like kill is stored in the mental lexicon together with a so-called "theta grid": in addition to the information that it is a two-place predicate, the thematic roles of the two arguments, and their respective syntactic

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valencies are also specified. One of them must be an AGENT and the other a PATIENT. Simplif~ng a bit, we may add that these roles, in a given language, will map precisely onto certain strategically decisive hierarchical positions in the syntactic structure of the sentence. This universally fLxed co-mapping of semantic and syntactic specifications (given certain uniform differences between different languages) contributes to the determination of the meaning of kill in any sentence in which it appears in that language. It is interesting to add that our innate knowledge of this complex universal mapping does indeed offer an explanation for the remarkable facts about acquisition t h a t we have alluded to earlier, notably for the child's highly efficient guesses about the meaning of novel lexical items made on the basis of the specific syntactic forms in which they appear upon first presentation. This may already suffice to show that thematic roles are absolutely central to the theory of syntax within the generative tradition. To better see why it is so, one must also be reminded of the role t h a t syntactic transformations (a notion we will introduce in a moment) play in this research program. Virtually every sentence is the result of a transformational operation: Its derivation is a process during which certain lexical units, inserted from the lexicon and placed in certain positions, move to other positions in the syntactic tree. These movements are traditionally called syntactic transformations, and they gave the initial name to the theory as a whole. As of the mid-Fifties, Chomsky was able to demonstrate, by means of justly celebrated arguments, that a transformational g r a m m a r is an intrinsically more efficient and psychologically more plausible formal device t h a n any of the preceding "Phrase Structure Grammars" postulated in the structuralist tradition. A very simple example involves interrogative sentences. Take:

Who(m) are you looking for? You are looking for him

(2)

(3)

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It is now assumed by many that the interrogative phrase in sentence 2 has moved from the position that follows the proposition for (the position occupied by him in sentence 3. This explains many interesting properties of interrogative. For example, if the movement of whom has taken place, there is a certain level of representation (the one that precedes the movement) in which the preposition for governs the interrogative noun phrase assigning it the accusative case. So, the accusative case of whom

in sentence 2 can be related to the presence of the

preposition for (this seems correct, since the object pronoun that follows for in sentence 3 is also accusative, as expected). The core intuition here is that sentence 2 is derived from a structure like the one exemplified in sentence 3, and not built from scratch as a separate and independent expression. In particular, sentence 2 is the result of having "moved", the interrogative element correspondent to "him" in sentence 3 to the very beginning of the sentence, obtaining an interrogative, though some key syntactic dependencies have been left intact. In English, this involves the morphological device of prefixing a wh- and (optionally in current speech, mandatorily in good written style) preserving the manifest accusative SUffLX -m. In other languages, in general, other morpho-syntactic devices will be mobilized in carrying out this kind of "transformation". Further evidence that something has, indeed, moved is also offered by the impossibility, in sentence 2, of preserving any noun or pronoun in the final (or "base") position (sentences like: "Who(m) are you looking for him?" or "Who(m) are you looking for John?" are totally impermissible). This is a rather trivial example of transformation but, it should make the idea clear enough. Let us now come to the next crucial point, one that brings together the notion of transformation and that of thematic positions.

We can ask, more

generally, how to justify the presence of transformations in the first place. Why do constituents move? Why is the sequence "are you looking for whom?", under normal circumstances, i.e., barring special emphasis, as an "echo-question," ungrammatical?

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The answer in the generative tradition can seem very clear (but it is not, as we will see): constituents move because the positions where they are engaged in thematic relations with other constituents (that is, the place where they receive theta roles) are different from those in which they check grammatical features (like agreement, case etc.). Everyone knows that certain thematic relations typically "go with" certain grammatical features. For instance, an agent typically is a subject and takes the nominative case, a theme typically is a complement object and takes the accusative case, etcetera (in English this is particularly clear with personal pronouns He loves her, she loves him etc.). This raw pre-theoretical notion of "going with" does not work, as one can easily understand, reflecting on passive sentences in which the subject is not an agent. However, it has been formalized and substantiated in the theory in a sophisticated form that does not suffer from the problems we have just alluded to: first, it is assumed that there is a sort of split between the thematic relations

as such, and the grammatical features as such, each corresponding to a certain fLxed position in the syntactic structure. Subsequently, they are recomposed, as a result of movement of the lexical item from one position to the other. So, constituents are first directly inserted from the lexicon into the thematic positions (typically, positions close enough to the constituent from which they receive a theta role: for example, a theme is inserted close enough to the verb for which it saturates an empty position). Then, later on, they move to the position where they receive case, agree with other constituents and fulfil other grammatical tasks (an interrogative phrase, for instance, must move to a sentence-initial position for reasons related to the explicit interrogative morphology it carries - the whmorpheme in English: a theme in a passive sentence moves to the subject position to receive the nominative case, as is clear from languages like Latin where the case is visible). In a certain sense, then, the answer to the general question "Why is movement needed?" rests on the theory of thematic relations. Of course, such an

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answer is not really a satisfactory one, since one could also ask: why cannot constituents check grammatical features directly in the initial (or base), thematic position? In a sense, generative grammar does not really answer this deeper question. Maybe human natural languages just are like that, and it is conceivable, in the abstract, that other intelligent creatures could speak languages in which checking or case-assigning takes place directly in the base position. We can conceive of such a possibility in the abstract, but maybe for humans such languages would be un-learnable and un-usable. Or possibly there is some deeper conceptual necessity for it to be so. In the generative tradition, so far, the fact that grammatical features are checked in places different from those in which thematic roles are assigned comes close to being a primitive, something that cannot be in turn deduced from something else (but Chomsky's recent works contain some speculations on this topic (see for example, Chomsky, 1995b paragraph 4.7.1 and Moro, 1995 who explicitly addresses this problem and proposes an alternative view). However, given the Theta Theory, and the other components of the theory that deal with Case, Agreement, etc., the all-pervasive transformational property of natural languages can be reduced to this primitive. Keeping in mind the importance of transformations (virtually every sentence is the result of some transformations!), it should be clear why the role of thematic theory is absolutely crucial. So, even the theory of syntax strictu sensu presupposes a theory of the lexicon.

Meaning Postulates What about other theories of lexical meaning that have been proposed? Are they in line, or at least compatible, with the general characters of generative grammar? Without any claim of completeness, we must mention at least the theory of semantic networks. Simply stated, in its most radical version, it identifies the meaning of a word with its position in a semantic network (this position, moreover, is supposed to mirror faithfully the way in which the informa-

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tion conveyed by the word has been originally acquired). This theory, originally proposed in the old associationist psychological framework, has recently been revamped in the connectionist literature. It is hardly compatible with the strong innatist hypothesis that characterises the generative tradition. However in a much attenuated form, and restricting it to localized chunks of the lexicon, most notably to technically or at any rate specialized terms, few doubt t h a t it has some merit. Even in the generativist framework, it can be safely conceded that the meanings of map (restricted to land geography) as opposed to chart (restricted to nautical use, or astronomy) are mutually inter-defined. The same applies to a host of scientific terms t h a t are introduced via mutual differences (such as

prophase, metaphase, and telophase). Given the limited aim of this paper, and the formidable problems encountered by the semantic networks theory as a general theory of the lexicon (this is at least implicit in all the consideration we have made already, as well as in those we are about to make now), it will not be developed any further. 6 Instead, some attention will be devoted to another theory: the idea t h a t the meaning of a lexical item can be captured by a set of "meaning postulates". A meaning postulate is a device originally used by logicians to avoid some problems t h a t arise in the framework of possible worlds semantics (cf. Carnap, 1952). However, Montague explicitly uses it in his semantic analysis of English and Fodor once considered it as the basis for a theory of lexical meaning. Again, the idea is pretty simple, even if the technical implementation can be very complex: a meaning postulate is nothing other t h a n a restriction on the domain of interpretation. For the reader who is not at all familiar with this approach, we first present some very basic information on model theoretic semantics (for an introduction to model theoretic semantics, and indeed to the formal approach to semantics in general, see Chierchia & McConnell-Ginet, 1990; and Larson & Segal, 1995). After that, we will specify what a meaning postulate is.

428

Piattelli-Palmarini and Cecchetto A language, be it a natural language like English or an artificial one like

propositional calculus, must be interpreted; that is, there must be some model that represents the world referred to by the language under question. For instance, if a certain artificial language can be used to prove theorems in arithmetic, then the domain of interpretation of that language will include the set of natural numbers. Colloquial English can be used to talk about a certain portion of reality; thus, the model of colloquial English will include those individuals and sets t h a t are part of the portion of reality we want to describe. The language in question will contain at least singular terms (roughly, names for individuals) and names for properties (like red, or prime). The interpretation of a singular term in the model (its denotation) will be an individual corresponding to it: the interpretation of John will be the individual John. What about names for properties? They will be interpreted as subsets of the domain. For example, the denotation of prime in a model for arithmetic will be the (infinite) set of all the prime numbers, the denotation of red in a model for English will be the set of all and only the things that are red, and so on. If the language contains names for binary relations (like see or bigger than), these will be interpreted in the domain as sets of ordered pairs. For example, the denotation of bigger than will be the set of the ordered pair {x~y}such that x is bigger than y. Analogously, the denotation of see will be the set of the ordered pairs {x~y}, such t h a t x sees y; The generalization to names of ternary relations like give is straightforward. Adopting this strategy, we can easily see how the truth value of a sentence can be calculated. Imagine that someone wants to know ff the sentence "John sees Mary" is true in a certain model. What he has to do is i) check which individuals are the denotations of John and Mary, ii) pick out the set of ordered pairs t h a t is the denotation of see, and finally, iii) verify that this set contains a pair whose first member is the denotation of John and whose second member is the denotation of Mary. If such a pair exists in the model, then the sentence is true (in the model), otherwise it is false (in the model).

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Bearing in mind this very sketchy characterization of such standard semantic theory, consider a relation of synonymy, for example the one t h a t holds between bachelor and unmarried, and ask how a theory of the lexicon can represent this kind of relation. A very n a t u r a l answer comes to mind: it can be said t h a t a model for the language t h a t contains the two words bachelor and unmar-

ried m u s t be such t h a t if some individual in the model is a bachelor, then he is also unmarried. This might seem a mere trick, but it is not. If nothing is said, the words bachelor and unmarried, in (some of) the possible models of the language t h a t contains them, can have different denotations, t h a t is, they can be associated with different sets (after all, they are two different linguistic expressions). What we need in order to express the fact t h a t the two expressions are synonymous is a condition like sentence 4 (that all the possible models for a language contairSng

bachelor and unmarried m u s t satis~):

for any x, x is a bachelor if and only ff x is u n m a r r i e d

(4)

So, technically, a meaning postulate is a device used to reduce the number of the admissible modeJs for a certain language L. Coming now to our main point here, it has been proposed t h a t the meaning of a lexical item A is the set of m e a n i n g postulates necessary and sufficient to build a model adequate for the language L in which the expression A occurs. The idea is clear: we do not consider a model in which an arbitrary x can be a bachelor without being u n m a r r i e d as adequate. Arguably, the proponent of the meaning postulates theory goes on to say, analogous constraints can be proposed for each one of the lexical items. So, lexical semantics can be reduced to a list of sets of m e a n i n g postulates. 7 This idea, at least in its pure form, today is no longer very popular (but see Fodor & LePore, in press, for a recent revamping). There are several problems

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with it, but we will mention only a couple of the most salient ones (for a criticism of the meaning postulates theory based on different considerations see Johnson-Laird, 1987; and also Kripke's, 1980; and Putnam's, 1975, notorious arguments for a direct reference theory). The reason for doing this is twofold: First a t r e a t m e n t based on meaning postulates is a particularly perspicuous version of what has been called "conceptual role semantics". In a nutshell, this theory identifies the meaning of an expression with the role it plays in the totality of the language system it belongs to, or, in other words, with the set of links that hold between the expression and the rest of the lexicon. This is an hypothesis that, even today, receives much attention. 8 Many people would be ready to subscribe to some version of "conceptual role semantics", even if this idea does not always receive enough specification. Meaning postulates, then, are a nice way to implement what is called "conceptual role semantics, because they allow for a formal (that is to say, precise) implementation. An additional reason for presenting meaning postulates here is that they will lead us to a topic -the controversy on externalism- t h a t will be treated in some detail in the second part of this paper (the one devoted to compositional semantics). So, let us come to the salient problems. What is wrong, if anything, with meaning postulates? A major problem the theory has to face is t h a t not all the words are like bachelor. As a matter of fact, it is now widely believed t h a t the set of words that admit explicit definitions is rather restricted. Trying to give an exhaustive list of the meaning postulates for a natural-kind term like dog or water is likely to lead to frustration. Dictionaries do attempt to give definitions

for these terms, but they are patently inmffticient. It comes as no surprise that, in the end, dog is defined allusively, in terms of some typical canine property (possibly supplemented with some drawing or picture). That can be acceptable for the purpose of a dictionary, but it goes without saying, it is not a genuine defmition, nor something out of which we can build a list of meaning postulates for dog. The source of the problem with meaning postulates seems to be the fact

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that, in order to identify something as a particular instance of a certain kind, we do not need to be able to define exhaustively the kind itself. Rather, our concept of the kind largely rests on a presentation (in one way or another) of some of its typical instances; that is, the meaning of a natural-kind word seems to be encoded as a schema or a prototype. We can identify Fido as a dog because it is close to the prototypical dog we have in mind, not because we can give the definition of doghood (maybe in terms of DNA sequences). Several experiments based on reaction times, and on a factorial decomposition of similarity traits within a kind, have shown that, for instance, a canary is more quickly identified as an instance of bird than a penguin, lettuce as a better instance of vegetable than an olive, and so on. The closer an actual exemplar is to the prototype, in a mental similarity space that is remarkably uniform across different subjects, the quicker it will be identified. Specimens that are closer to the prototype in that space are perceived and judged as "better exemplars" of the kind than specimens that lie far from the prototype. One is entitled to ask, then, what is a prototype? One proposal is that it is a list of default values for the main features of the kind. A prototypical bird, for example, flies, so a default value will be "able to fly". Of course, there are birds that do not fly (penguins, for instance). Accordingly, they are judged "poor" exemplars of bird. This is why what counts are default values, and not rigid ones: it is part of our ability to master the meaning of the term bird, that we feel free to change the relevant value from the default one (flies) to a non-default one (does not fly) when presented with a penguin. It is not, thus, a binary judgement of all-or-nothing (belongs to the k i n d / d o e s not belong to the kind), but rather a graded judgement

of more-or-less, ranging continuously from prototypical

exemplars, to peripheral ones, to non-exemplars. (for an early discussion, see Rosch, 1978; recent papers on the topic include Fodor & Lepore, 1996a; Kamp & Partee, 1995; and Osherson & Smith, in press). Therefore, it is now fairly widely believed that those psychological theories

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based on meaning postulates are not appealing, at least if they pretend to be theories of our lexical knowledge in general. On the other hand, they can still be adequate theories for a limited part of the lexicon: the one composed by words like

bachelor t h a t admit explicit definitions. Finally, let us come to the relation that holds between the Chomskyan approach to language and one which uses meaning postulates. This is the bridge towards the second part of this paper. Note t h a t to introduce a meaning postulate is to operate at the denotation (language-external) level. As we stressed before, you have a class of possible models for a certain language L and you exclude some of them from the list of those acceptable, given the vocabulary (or lexicon) of the language in question. This may seem innocuous, even unavoidable. Aider all, a language, it can be argued, is used to talk about an external reality and so what can be wrong with operating at the level of denotation? A model is a portion of the reality referred to by the language. Admittedly, the model can be more or less adequate, but there should be no problem in principle with using model-theoretic devices to capture lexical meanings. It is however exactly this prima facie innocuous claim t h a t Chomsky elects as a major polemical objective in his latest philosophical papers. Chomsky's opposition to externalism, it seems to us, undermines, among other things, the possibility of meaning postulates theories. So if Chomsky's latest work is right, meaning postulates theories are wrong. This leads us to compositional semantics.

COMPOSITIONAL SEMANTICS S y n t a x a n d S e m a n t i c s in M o n t a g u e The best th/:ng is to b e ~ n by defining the problem for this part cf the theory of mea:~fing. Frege was the first to formulate it (see Geacb & Black, 1952): 9 A speaker can understand a potentially infinite number of sentences, even if his~ler abili~y to dc so necessarily depends on the use of finite means (as shown by the

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fact t h a t the brain is finite). How can t h a t happen? The a n s w e r given by Frege lies in the so-called =Principle of Compositionality': the m e a n i n g of a sentence can be built up compositionally from the m e a n i n g s of its constituents in a way t h a t depends entirely on the g r a m m a t i c a l modes of combination. In addition, the g r a m m a t i c a l modes of combination (the rules of syntax, as we might say) are explicitly recursive and it is the presence of this recursive procedure t h a t guarantees to the speaker the possibility of u n d e r s t a n d i n g a potentially infinite n u m b e r of sentences. 1~ Speaking of compositionality is not a mere metaphor. Frege and, after him, Montague and Montagovian scholars built up a system of rigid compositional rules,

according to which constituents

possessing the

same

syntactic role a r e t r e a t e d as having the same basic semantics. The result is a semantics t h a t is strictly isomorphic with syntax, each compositional rule on meanings corresponding to a syntactic rule, and vice versa. We will now give an example, to give the flavour of the extent to which such a n isomorphism holds in Montague. Take two sentences like the following:

J o h n smiles

(5)

Every m a n smiles

(6)

It seems t h a t the two noun p h r a s e s John and every man play the same syntactic role in the two sentences: they are the subject of a simple intransitive verb. This actually corresponds to a naive concept of syntax, as we will see in a moment, but, for the time being, let us go on with our example. The "Principle of Compositi::',na.li~y', then~ forces the semanticist to assign the same semantics to the two nc~:~:: phra::es. ~l~,~s is t:i::e: source cf a no:.~ t r l ~ l ~ problem: G~ven what we said e~u'iic:~ :i ~-,,. ~!~: -~ :=:::i~'~ c:"th~', v : d~:m,-~.- t.h;.!:.

...... /..~ i,=-:s

set. t ~ a t inc.h,:de:; the en~::'t::es of ~,e

~e :~'.~,..... ,.~a:[Ir,p::i,::',._ ..v~. .., w~:,..,ah.'-::.!::~-~ct h.e:~',,~,f~~

n~anv~ i:m~.:.~:rt;mt f~.ctc..~'s,

...

~'~.::.:i;~:,,~.~:o

~

t~::_~.r:., w o , . ~ i a

~'-,'~ r o u g ~

the-:

fi:;~.-owmg:

~

§ ",-~, ~..~.u~,~:-~:,.,c~.~ . . . . . ~ ....~ . . . . ~

of

o~s,;

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contains the denotation of John, the sentence is true, otherwise it is false. Assuming the "Principle of Compositionality" and the hypothesis that J o h n and every m a n play the same syntactic role, we are in trouble. In fact, we seem to be

committed to assert that the denotation of every ma n , like the denotation of John, is an individual of the domain, but this is clearly problematic: every m a n is a quantificational expression, it does not have the function of naming a singular individual! 11 Montague (renewing the treatment for quantificational expressions proposed by Frege) makes a characteristic move at this point, turning, in a sense, the problem upside down: he asks what an adequate semantic account of the quantificational expressions is and, then, extends this semantic account to proper names as a special case. The desired result is obtained: an identical semantic treatment corresponds to the same syntactic role. We will now sketch Montague's solution: counterintuitive as it might seem at first blush, it is formally elegant and attains the desired goal. The starting point is that smile denotes a set and that we want sentence 6 to have a t r u t h value computable on the basis of its constituents. Montague's solution is that every m a n denotes a set of sets and that the sentence is true if, and only if, the set denoted by smile is a member of that set of sets. The inclusion order is now reversed: in order for the sentence to be true, the predicate must be a member of the set denoted by the subject (it is not the subject that must belong to the set denoted by the predicate). This may appear awkward, or, at best, to be the result of a merely formal trick, but it is not. There is an important intuition underlying this treatment. Remember that the denotation of a property is a set. So, a set of sets can be seen as a set of properties. If we now ask what set of properties corresponds to the noun phrase every m a n , a natural answer comes to mind: that set will be the one that includes all the properties that hold of every man. For example, if all the men of the domain of interpretation are tall, the denotation of every m a n will include the set of the tall men. But, if all the men but one are tall, the denotation of every m a n will not include the set of the tall

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435

men. Similarly, if all the m e n of the domain of interpretation smile, the denotation of every man will include the set of the m e n who smile. This ensures t h a t sentence 6 is true exactly in the situation in which our intuition indicates t h a t it is true: when all the m e n smile. Before moving to proper names, let us take another m o m e n t to observe t h a t this t r e a t m e n t applies straightforwardly to other quantificational expressions. Take the following sentence:

No m a n smiles

(7)

If our semantics is to be strictly compositional, here as well the quantificational expression m u s t denote a set of sets, and the sentence m u s t be true just in case the set denoted by smile is an element of t h a t set of sets. W h a t is the set of sets denoted by no man? The answer is refreshingly easy: it is the set of the properties t h a t hold of no man. We leave to the reader the simple t a s k of checking t h a t this choice gives the desired t r u t h conditions for the sentence 7. Finally, let us consider the case of the proper n a m e John in sentence 5: once again, as required, given the strict compositionality of our approach, it has to denote a set of sets (or, putting it differently, a set of properties). Which one? The answer should, by now, sound perfectly predictable: The noun phrase John will denote the set of properties t h a t hold of the individual John. An individual is t h e n identified with all the properties it possesses. Our example, we hope, will have shown t h a t compositionality is not a vague metaphor in the Montagovian tradition. Rather, it a f u n d a m e n t a l and demanding constraint t h a t the theory of meaning m u s t obey. In conclusion, we w a n t to stress the point which is crucial for us. Compositionality, as it is conceived in the Montagovian tradition at least, imposes a very strict parallelism between syntax and semantics. This strict isomorphism leaves no room for an autonomous syntax, or prima facie symmetrically, for an autono-

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mous semantics. But that holds only prima facie, because, given the fundamental semantic character of the Principle of Compositionality, it is the syntax that becomes ancillary, if not to a specific semantic theory directly, at least to the general requirements imposed by the theory of meaning. It is against this ancillary view of syntax that Chomsky raised his strong objections.

The Classical A r g u m e n t for the Autonomy of Syntax Since Chomsky's arguments supporting the thesis of the autonomy of syntax from semantics are notorious, we will remind the reader of them only very briefly. For our present purposes, it suffices to recall one example, the most celebrated one. Let us examine the two sequences 8 and 9 below, and ask ourselves in what way their meanings differ:

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously

(8)

Furiously sleep ideas green colorless

(9)

Chomsky observes that, while we have no intuition about differences in meaning between sequence 8 and sequece 9, we have a very clear intuition on the grammaticality of the two sequences: (8) is a good English sentence, whereas (9) is not. Trivial as it might seem, this observation alone constitutes a serious obstacle for a theory that postulates a too strict isomorphism between syntax and semantics. That theory does not predict, nor can it accommodate, such a striking difference between grammaticality judgements and judgements on meaning. However, this example, and the related discussions, constitute a well-known chapter of the history of recent linguistics, dispensing us from needless elaborations. Rather, we think that, today, after 40 years of fruitful empirical investigations, something else can better justify the autonomy of syntax from semantics, namely the growth of knowledge that that hypothesis has made

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possible. Even more telling is the fact that the research program based on the autonomy of syntax has proved to be fruitful in the field of semantics proper as well, or at least in the territory that lies at the boundary between syntax and semantics. In line with the limited scope of this review, making, once more, no attempt at systematicity and completeness of coverage, we think that a representative example may be sufficient.

Quantificational Expressions in Government and Binding Theory Capitalizing on what we have just seen above, the example we want to consider involves quantilicational expressions. For reasons that are both historica] and expository, it has the additional merit of allowing us to draw a comparison between the Montagovian program and the generative one. It is eminently appropriate, as we wi]] see in a moment, to start with an apparently unrelated class of expressions, the interrogative ones. Consider a standard interrogative sentence in English:

Which man have you seen?

(10)

Interrogative sentences raise a host of intriguing problems, but the main aspect we want to focus on here is the following: There seems to be a link between the interpretation that the interrogative phrase (Which man) receives and the sentence-initial position it occupies. 12 Let us be reminded that in these sentences the interrogative constituent is presumed to move from the position where it receives a Theta Role (the one following the verb seen) to the left peripheral position where its interrogative value becomes manifest. Suppose that the interrogative phrase leaves behind a sort of empty slot, or gap, in the original position. This supposition, daring as it may sound at first blush, has an intuitive justification (after being prompted to do so, upon a moment's reflection, many of us come to develop a sort of "direct" intuition that there is, indeed, such a gap).

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Moreover, it gives an immediate explanation for the fact that, as we have noted earlier, whereas in a declarative sentence the verb seen can be followed by an element like a pronoun (cf. you have seen him), this is clearly impossible in interrogative sentences (cf. the ungrammaticality of which m a n have you seen him?). Assuming that the interrogative phrase leaves a gap (or, as it is technically

called, a trace) after the verb, one can say that the pronoun is excluded because its position is already occupied by the trace. But, most of all, in hindsight, the existence of these gaps has been so well corroborated by many interesting theoretical and empirical consequences, ranging over many languages, that it has gained an aura of obviousness within the generative tradition. Now, our main point here is that the gap can be interpreted as a variable in the logicians' sense. For example, a sentence like (10) can be paraphrased by saying: "For which x, such that x is a man, have you seen x?'. The moved interrogative constituent fixes the range of variation (in our case, the set of the xs that are men) of the variable left in the thematic position. So far, so good. Let us now move to quantificational expressions. First observe that logicians represent a quantifier as an operator that binds a variable from a position at the left periphery of a logical formula. So, typical logical representations involving universal and existential quantifiers are the following:

Vx (x is even or x is odd)

(11)

3x (x is even and x is prime)

(12)

From this observation it is natural to speculate that, at some abstract level, the quantificational expressions of natural languages also move to the sentence-initial position, just like the interrogative expressions. An important difference is that the latter do it overtly. Yet, at a higher level of abstraction, this d~erence becomes inessential. In this way, at a certain higher level, natural

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439

languages would have a uniform logical representation for interrogative and quantificational sentences, moreover, this representation is, in relevant respects, similar to the one assigned to quantiticational formulas by logicians. This all-important abstract level is called by generative linguists Logical

Form. At this level (or, as it is called for short "at LF') sentence 13 would have the representation in sentence 14:

I saw every man

(13)

Every man (x) I saw x

(14)

This conjecture, if right, is interesting, because it allows for a unitary analysis of two apparently unrelated empirical domains: quantificational sentences and interrogative ones. In addition, it makes visible a nontrivial correspondence between formal and natural languages. So let us briefly review the main arguments and data supporting this conjecture. Extensive crosslinguistic research has given ample evidence for this hypothesis. We give one piece of evidence in the following and we refer to the works cited in note 12 for more extensive discussion. An interesting interpretative fact about interrogatives can be illustrated by the following example:

Who does his mother love?

(15)

This sentence, interestingly, lacks (or at least strongly discourages) a reading that is, a priori, perfectly intelligible: Which is the person such that his own mother loves this person? This is a perfectly plausible meaning, yet sentence 15 does not have it (or at any rate the use of sentence 15 to express it would be exceedingly contrived and ineffectual). This is the reading that would admit as an answer:

John

(meaning that

the

mother

of John

loves John).

We all

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Piattelli-Palmarini and Cecchetto

unproblematically understand sentence 15 as having a different meaning, namely: Who is the person x such that the mother of y (y being a male person

different from x, and antecedently specified in the discourse) loves x? This apparently marginal fact about straightforward versus impossible interpretations of sentences of type (15) has received much attention, also because it holds crosslinguistically to an astonishing point. 13 If we characterize the missing reading saying that in it the pronoun h/s and the interrogative element who would have the same referential index - and if we go on assuming that the interrogative has moved from the theta position after the verb to the sentence initial position there must be a constraint that says something like the following: in its leftward movement, an element cannot cross a pronoun which has the same referential index. Now, consider the conjecture about the quantificational expressions illustrated by sentences 13 and 14. It was stated that a leftward movement of the quantifier takes place at an abstract level (at LF). This conjecture, if correct, makes an interesting prediction in the case of sentences like the following:

His mother likes everyone

(16)

We said t h a t an element cannot cross a coindexed pronoun in its leftward movement. Then, if the quantifier everyone actually moves (non-overtly), the following reading should not be allowed: "everyone is loved by his own mother." As is easily verified, this reading is in fact missing. This strongly supports the hypothesis t h a t quantifiers, like interrogatives, leftward-move, leaving a variable in the base position. Note now that nothing like t h a t happens with proper names: sentence 17 below can indeed mean that the mother of John loves John:

His mother loves John

(17)

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Let us pause a moment to reflect on what we have accomplished. Interestingly enough, the Montagovian approach and the generative one arrive at very different conclusions in a field typically investigated by semanticists: The status of quantificational expressions. While in the former approach their semantics is identified with that of proper names, in the latter, quantifiers are assimilated to a significant extent to interrogative phrases (since they both display an operator-variable structure). Both analyses are well motivated, even if the kind of motivation behind each of them is very different, and it would be beside our point here to make a definite stand. 14 What we wanted to show was merely that a treatment based on a non-ancillary (that is, autonomous) syntax proved to be theoretically and empirically productive even in the treatment of a typically semantic topic: the theory of quantification. This seems to us to add to the legitimacy of Chomsky's defence, initiated some 40 years ago, of the autonomy of syntax. Bearing this in mind, one could yet observe that the problem that led Frege to introduce the "Principle of Compositionality" is still very much with us. And, as a matter of fact, a most challenging (and most exciting) task that the present day research in semantics is confronted with is exactly reconciling a system of compositional rules with the background assumption of a sophisticated theory of syntax.

Externalism and Internalism We have seen that model-theoretic semantics identifies the meaning of a lexical entry with the extension it has in the domain of interpretation. 15 To simplify things, let us say that intransitive verbs and adjectives denote sets, while transitive verbs denote sets of ordered pairs, and singular terms denote individuals (or, if one prefers, sets of sets, as in the Montague account). The second main characteristic of model-theoretic semantics is the fact that the rules of meaning composition are, to a great extent at least, set-theoretical notions (one

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example we saw is that grammatical predication can be interpreted as set-inclusion). The result of the meaning composition functions consists in delivering a truth value: the sentence is either true or false. So, in the determination of the meaning of a lexical item the notion of extension (or denotation) is crucial, and so is the notion of truth in the determination of the meaning of a sentence. 16 Chomsky's main line of work is focused on the syntax of natural languages and does not directly address the problem of meaning composition as such. However, he explicitly discusses the program of model-theoretic semantics in his more recent philosophical papers (see Chomsky, 1992; Chomsky, 1993; and Chomsky 1995a) and, as we are going to see, expresses a pessimistic attitude towards it. 17 Model-theoretic semantics, according to Chomsky, is problematic because it is an expression of "externalism', a philosophical theory which he considers wrong because it postulates a relationship between the mind and a world composed of a totality of language-independent things, is Chomsky argues against a conception of semantics as the bridge between language and the world, and challenges the legitimacy, in a genuinely scientific linguistics, of the idea that words refer to mind-independently "given" things. As for the language-world relation, Chomsky of course admits that it obtains, but that it is established only in indirect and complex ways. For sure, we use language (also) to describe the world we live in but the relation is not simple, nor direct: for example, it is not the case that one referential term corresponds to one object. Rather, it is only through variegated social practices and the mediation of their many different uses that linguistic expressions are linked to the external reality. This is why a theory of use is called for: Pragmatics becomes important and its role might be comparable to the one conjectured in Wittgenstein's later work. This is, in a nutshell, Chomsky's argument against reference-based semantics: Let us take some prima facie innocent relation of reference, for perfectly basic terms. (Chomsky's favorite examples are the terms house, London

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and book). His opening move is to show that to posit, even for them, a referent (some concrete thing outside, in the real world) is highly problematic, if not downright contradictory. Then he concludes that, if even in these very simple cases the idea of external referents leads to undesirable results, we are entitled to fear the worst for more complex, but nonetheless still quite ordinary, terms. More concretely, let us take the term book in the sentence The abstruse book

John wrote weighs 5 pounds. What is its reference? In particular, if something like that exists at all out there in the world, then it should be an entity which is at the same time concrete (it has a certain weight) and abstract (only its abstract content can be said to be abstruse). It could hardly be the case that John materially scribbled ink-marks (or typed strings of characters) on one single exemplar that weighs 5 pounds, and it could hardly be the case that this heavy object is, as such,

abstruse. Thus, we patently have a contradiction. No such entity could possibly exist in the external mind-independently characterized world. Analogous considerations can be made for the term house in the sentences He painted his house red, and The house is for sale. In the first sentence house has as its referent an external surface (the sentence would be false if he only painted the interior of the house red, leaving the outside surface intact). On the other hand, the second sentence would be false if the proposed transfer of property against money were limited to the outer walls only, excluding everything that the walls enclose. Thus, once more,

house refers to a bidimentional surface, but also to a well delimited three dimensional space. Another contradiction. Finally, take the term London: What is its referent in the real world? One might think it is "the portion of space-time delimited by the present London", but this is problematic: if a new skyscraper that happens to be the highest in town is built, does the reference of London change? Moreover, in some cases at least, we might want to speak of London in the future or in the past as the same entity it is today, even if the material composition of the town is (or will be) completely changed. For example, if an earthquake is going to destroy the city and it is rebuilt in a different place, there

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is a sense in which we want to say that the new city is still London. Moreover, we can say things like London is polluted, London is culturally sophisticated, London is

awfully expensive, and so on. The referents, accordingly, range from a certain bubble of air, to institutions of higher learning and literary events, to average prices paid for rents and in restaurants for meals over a certain territory. This is only a sample of the problems one has to deal with when an extra-mental entity is posited as the referent of simple, ordinary terms. The source of these problems is the fact that the speaker's conception of objects, events and situations seems to play a crucial role in determining the reference of the term. The variability of use determines the variability of the actual physical reference (supposing that something of the sort exists at all) in ways t h a t are perfectly obvious to the speaker and the hearer~ yet conducive to all sorts of paradoxes, if one insists on trying to connect terms with external, mind-independent, material objects. Chomsky's main point is not that these external referents are elusive, or complex, or ill-defined, but rather that no such external object could possibly exist at all, or at any rate become a minimally consistent object of study for a serious science. Therefore, a reference-based theory (and model-theoretic semantics is such a theory) is built on a weak basement, to say the least. This, according to Chomsky, calls for a theory of use and indeed for a rather sophisticated one. Chomsky, however, is not always completely negative and seems to believe that an alternative is available that can salvage much of the work carried out in the model-theoretic semantics framework (see for example Chomsky, 1992, pp. 218-224). This alternative involves reinterpreting large parts of the theory in an internalist framework. Maybe, the best way to characterize such a reinterpretation is to pay attention to what Chomsky considers a paradigm of the internalist approach: the theory of vision elaborated by David Marr (see Marr, 1982). This theory is paradigmatic because it "applies to a brain in a vat exactly as it does to a person seeing an object in motion". Chomsky (1995a) goes on to say that Marr's

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"studies of determination of structure from motion used tachistoscopic presentations that caused the subject to see a rotating cube, though there was no such thing in the environment; "see", here, is used in its normal sense, not as an achievement verb.., the account is completely internalist. There is no meaningful question about the "content" of the internal representations of a person seeing a cube under the condition of the experiments...". The counterpart of Marr's approach in semantics would consist in treating meanings not as relationships between language and chunks of the external world but, instead, as mental objects created at the interface between two different levels of mental representations: The one of proper syntactic objects, and the one of our conceptual world, somehow including the ability to use concepts in everyday existence. The rough idea being that when one talks about "discourse representations", "models", "situations" and other familiar semantic notions one is still inside the mind, not outside in the world. Chomsky has sometimes stressed that we know vastly more about the former level than we do about the latter, maybe for contingent reasons, due to vagaries in the progress of our scientific knowledge, or maybe because the latter is not structured, like the former, around deep universal traits that can be the object of a serious scientific inquiry (maybe our conceptual-pragmatic component is a haphazard repository of species-specific idiosyncratic filters, rules of thumb, and tentative conjectures subject to incessant updating and revision). To this day, he remains noncommittal about these two possibilities.

Mental Models and Internalist S e m a n t i c s The discussion on externalism (and on the proposal of replacing it with internalism) may seem a quintessentially philosophical matter, of no great interest to linguists and psychologists, but, although it is indeed a philosophical matter, it is not uniquely that. In this paragraph, we will see that an internalist position may be related to a specific semantic theory and to a specific psychologi-

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cal research program. Establishing such a link, however, carries us until a certain point only, and is far from being unproblematic. Chomsky is not explicit about the features that internalist semantics should have. Apart from some general considerations, he says little, not to say nothing, about specific implementations. The general considerations are the following: we should not stick to the common-sense idea that things have referents in the world, but we should rather say that our mind is such that it can contain, somewhere, somehow, mental entities like generic objects (the average man), things that are both concrete and abstract at the same time (books), maybe partly immaterial and partly extended entities (London), and so on. These mental objects, and not something else, are the entities we associate to the words. In order to better understand what an internalist semantics might be, we will try to go beyond the general sketch traced by Chomsky. The fact is that in the last 15 years 19 a research tradition in semantics (and in the theory of mind) that can qualify as internalist has received increasing interest. Let us start with a presentation of the general idea underlying this kind of research; later on, we will give an example of its empirical motivation. Johnson-Laird (1983) lists a set of desiderata a theory of meaning should satisfy. One of them is that it should be a two-stage theory. To clarify what this means, let us modify an example he gives (Johnson-Laird, 1983, pp. 244-245):

The elderly gentleman often visited the town

(18)

Suppose someone reads (or hears) sentence 18 out of the blue. Johnson-Laird's point is t h a t what the listener does in the first place is not to get the denotation of the words and the truth value of the sentence. The first step, instead, is building a mental model of the situation. A discourse referent (or a file card) 2~ is introduced, to which the property '%eing an elderly gentleman" is attributed. Another

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discourse referent is introduced by the expression "the town" and the two are linked because the former is in the relation of "often visiting" the latter. With this piece of information we begin to have a sketchy model of the narrative, but, as you can see, at the very beginning the mental model is descriptively very poor. If a new sentence is read, new discourse referents can be introduced or new properties can be a t t r i b u t e d to those already present and new relations b e t w e e n t h e m are established. The m e n t a l model of the discourse is t h e n enriched, and this happens every time a new sentence is h e a r d (or read). 21 Now, observe a point t h a t is crucial for us: this first step in the comprehension of a discourse (the construction of a m e n t a l model) is not affected at all by the fictitious or veridical status of the discourse. U n d e r s t a n d i n g Joyce's Ulysses or a faithful crime report requires the same process of m e n t a l model-building. In this sense, the first step in the comprehension t a s k is entirely internalist; no question of its relation with the outside world is raised. Of course, one can ask if the discourse our m e n t a l model represents is true or false. But t h a t is only a further step and one t h a t is not even required in order for us to understand the discourse. We do not ask w h e t h e r Bloom's wife "really" had a lover. Yet, we u n d e r s t a n d the contents of Ulysses. Similarly, we u n d e r s t a n d sentence 18 even if we do not know t h a t the elderly g e n t l e m a n is Niels Bohr and the relevant town Princeton. As for the cases in which knowing the t r u t h of the discourse is relevant (the crime report), one can say t h a t a discourse is true if it has at least a m e n t a l model t h a t can be embedded in the model corresponding to the world. 22 Needless to say, all this is pretty vague. W h a t we are s u m m a r i z i n g here cannot be considered a theory, unless the function t h a t constructs, extends, evaluates and revises a m e n t a l model is introduced and explained. Nonetheless, the general project should be clear enough and it should be equally t r a n s p a r e n t why it satisfies to a large extent the requisites of an internalist semantics. In the next p a r a g r a p h , we will see the empirical motivation t h a t supports this kind of theory.

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Indefinites and the N e c e s s i t y of a Two-Stage S e m a n t i c Theory If entia non s u n t moltiplicanda praeter necessitatem, (entities are not to be engendered beyond necessity) we need evidence supporting the theory that postulates two semantic levels, the first being the construction of a mental model and the second being its updating (in particular, its embedding in the model corresponding to the world, when the computation of a truth value is required). The strongest empirical evidence probably does not come from Johnson-Laird's work directly, but from a domain much studied by formal semanticists: indefinite expressions. Starting from the seminal work of Russell (1905), an indefinite description like a m a n is translated by the existential quantifier of symbolic logic. One might think that this is not really right since there are cases in which an indefinite has a specific content that allows it to be a sort of naming expression. This is the case of the indefinite a m a n with dark hair a n d a yellow coat in sentence 19:

Yesterday around noon, a man with dark hair and a yellow coat entered the room twice looking for John

(19)

However, it is not difficult to show that indefinites are not naming expressions. 23 Consider sentence 20:

It is not true that a dog entered the room

(20)

This sentence can clearly mean that no event of dog-entering-the-room occurred. But, ff the indefinite is a naming expression, this reading cannot be represented. So, a standard t r e a t m e n t (stemming from Russell) is to represent the indefinite article by the existential quantifier 3 (sentence 21 is a simplified formal representation for sentence 20:24

The Problem of Meaning in Generative Grammar

It is not true t h a t 3x (x is a dog and x entered in the room)

449

(21)

So far, so good. Let us simply comment t h a t this t r e a t m e n t , in a sense, violates internalist principles since the variable bound by the existential quantifier ranges directly over the domain of interpretation representing the entities of the world. 25 More recently, 26 a new theory of indefinites has been proposed t h a t capitalizes on the idea of m e n t a l models. The starting point of the new theory is the anomalous p a t t e r n of the so-called donkey sentences:

If John owns a donkey, he beats it

(22)

The problem with sentence 22 is t h a t the indefinite description a donkey cannot be interpreted a la Russell. To see why, consider that, adopting the standard analysis of the indefinite article as an existential quantifier, there are only two possible formal representations for sentence 22, depending on the scope of the existential quantifier with respect to the conditional: 27

3x (x is a donkey and John owns x --*

John beat x

3x (x is a donkey and (John owns x --* John beat x ) )

(22a) (22b)

Both these representations are problematic, as we are going to show (however, the reader not willing to consider the details of symbolic logic can simply take for granted t h a t no adequate formal representation exists for sentence 22 as long as the indefinite article is treated a la Russell, for in the remainder of this paper we will not make further use of the logical tools necessary to analyze this sentence). The problem with sentence 22a is the fact t h a t the

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variable following beat is outside the scope of the existential quantifier (as indicated by the parenthesis, its scope is in fact limited to the antecedent of the implication). As a consequence, the variable is not bound and can receive an arbitrary interpretation. This representation, then, does not capture the reading we are interested in (the one in which John beats the donkey he owns, and not some other arbitrary entity in the domain of interpretation). For example, sentence 22a would be true in a situation in which John does not beat the donkey he owns, but rather beats his dog. The problem with sentence 22b is different. Now the quantifier has scope over the consequent of the implication but, by the standard definition of ~ , we derive that the entire sentence 22b is true for any value of x that makes the antecedent false. So, just to give an example, if there is at least a donkey in the domain of interpretation t h a t John does not own, sentence 22b is true (independently of John's attitude towards the donkeys he owns). 2s Patently, this does not capture the truth conditions of sentence 22 either. This is one aspect in which indefinites behave differently from what is expected when one assumes a standard existential interpretation (for a more extensive discussion, we refer to the works cited in note 26. To handle this pattern, a theory often referred to as Discourse Representation Theory [DRT], has been proposed whose formal apparatus takes advantage of the idea of mental models. We will limit ourselves here to the fundamental insight underlying the theory, namely that indefinites introduce new discourse referents [or file-cards] that can be used in subsequent text [definites, on the other hand, do not introduce discourse referents but simply update them]. This applies, in particular, to the case of the donkey-sentences. So, the pronoun it in sentence 22 picks up the discourse referent introduced by a donkey. Now, the point that should be emphasized is the following: the indefinite a donkey in sentence 22 cannot be interpreted existentially for the reasons we have seen, but it cannot be interpreted as a

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naming expression either, for reasons similar to those we discussed with reference to sentence 20 (even intuitively, it is clear that the function of the expression is not that of picking up a particular individual from the domain). So, we are almost forced to introduce an intermediate level between language and the world, that of the discourse referents (the basic building blocks of mental models). What the treatment capitalizes on is the fact that a discourse referent does not (at any rate, not necessarily) correspond to an actual referent in the domain of interpretation. Of course, many unsolved questions remain

about the relation-

ship between the two semantic levels (for instance, when does an actual referent correspond to a discourse referent?). These questions are legitimate but we cannot really address them. The interested reader is again referred to the cited works. 29 We believe that we have attained our limited goal. We wanted to understand better what an internalist semantics might be. We now have an idea of some of its formal features, and of the empirical motivation that can support it.

General Considerations We have seen which kind of semantics is compatible with the philosophical doctrine of internalism. It remains unclear whether Chomsky thinks that some portion of semantics, different from the one inspired by the idea of mental models, is amenable to an internalist reinterpretation (to tell the truth, he never explicitly endorsed DRT as a positive example of an internalist semantics). We will leave this interpretative question open. In closing, we wish to add some general considerations. The first is that, even if part of this semantic enterprise, being internalist, is safe from the Chomskyan critiques seen earlier, much of it may still be affected. In fact, even in DRT, the internalist stage is only the first one. Once a mental model is built, in order to compute the truth value of a sentence, one has to embed it in a model of the (portion of) reality the discourse is about, and here. following Chomsky, the externalist problem arises again.

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Piattelli-Palmarini and Cecchetto One might ask, at this point, whether an internalist reinterpretation of the

notion o f t r u t h would solve it. The answer to this question lies in part in the answer to another, more general, question: Which notion of truth is adequate for the theory of meaning? Note that, if we concede that semantics is a branch of an individualistic cognitive psychology, then the traditional pragmatist definition (according to which truth is "correspondence in the ideal limit of complete rational inquiry"), becomes unavailable. This definition, independent of its dubious value in other fields, being intrinsically sociological (or, to be more cautious, intersubjective), cannot be adopted in the investigation of individual psychology. This is an important point, because the pragmatist definition could, in the abstract, be amenable to an internalist interpretation: What counts is not the state of a mind-independently given totality of things, but instead the asymptotic goal to which a collective mental effort tends. It is mentalistic, for sure, but not individualistic. On the other hand, the Aristotelian "correspondence theory" of truth (adequatio intellectus et rei) bears no collectivist commitment, but is, by definition, founded on an externalist concept. This concept of truth, through the mediation of Tarski

(1936/1956)

became

crucial

for

semantics

(proof is,

the

label

"truth-functional semantics"), and it can have, as such, a legitimate role in psychology, at least if what we want is to explain data like judgements of the native speakers about the truth values of sentences. This concept of truth can be made individualistic, but it remains ineliminably externalist, admitting no hypothetical internalist reinterpretation. All in all, the concept of truth that is relevant for linguistics and psychology cannot be easily integrated into the internalist framework. So, the next question is: Are the Chomskyan objections to externalism really sound? And, if they are, must we then abandon much of the good work done in semantics? We will conclude this paper trying to make explicit a counter to Chomsky's objections that, though not often voiced explicitly, we believe many semanticists

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would be ready to subscribe to. It consists in ruling out of the jurisdiction of semantics proper the determination of what belongs to the domain of interpretation, and what does not. Semantics has to determine the way in which words and sentences receive meanings. To do so, it has to determine how the meanings associated with words combine and result in complex meanings associated with sentences. This can be accomplished by just presupposing that certain words, somehow, have a referent outside, in the real world. Being about the modes of combination, and these being, in turn, (at least largely) independent of the actual references of the words, semantics does not have to explain reference. Of course, some other science (not semantics), under an externalist perspective, must be charged with the identification of the actual referents of the words whose meanings semantics is about. This other science (again, not semantics), will have to say a final word on ontology. Semantics does not have to worry about the actual referents of words, any more than it has to worry about the actual truth values of sentences whose structure it deals with. Its worries are limited to the (recursive) procedure of composition of meanings. Once it has identified these procedures, its task is over. If semantic analysis successfully tells us how the meanings of the constituents of sentence 23 below contribute to its truth value, we must be satisfied, even if the actual truth value of the sentence remains unknown. It is for astrophysics, not for semantics, to say what the truth value of 23) is.

Mars

will collide

with

the

Earth

on

9998754327465529977540685271476 AD.

the

last

day

of the

year (23)

The natural question now is: which sciences must be charged with the identification of the actual references of words? The easiest answer might be: That depends on what the discourse is about. If the discourse is about electrons, then it is for physics to say what the actual referent of electrons is. And so on. What, then,

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about the problematic cases, those discussed by Chomsky involving fuzzy and paradoxical referents (house, book, London etc.)? The proponent of this approach, probably, would say that these should be the pertinence of pragmatics. Therefore, acceptance of this approach as an effective counter to Chomsky's objections, relies heavily on what, in the end, pragmatics will be able to accomplish. Let us not lose sight of a typical problem this discipline inherits: Why do we use a unique referential term like London to refer to such different things as a geographic area ("London is very large"), the air surrounding it ("London is polluted"), or the people therein ("London is more lively than Paris")? The burden on pragmatics, as proposed by Chomsky, is heavy indeed. Yet, this does not absorb the role of the semantic component. Far from it. After all, if it did, we should also say, by analogy, that the fact that biology fLxes the truth conditions of sentences describing the structure of DNA makes the theory of meaning useless. Pragmatics, in these cases, plays exactly the role that biology, physics, geology etc. play in the non-fuzzy ones (like, for instance, sentence 23 above). It remains to be seen whether pragmatics can really accomplish the task it would, thus, inherit. Summarizing, although the issues discussed by Chomsky constitute a real challenge for much of traditional theorizing in semantics, at least one strategy is available that is worth pursuing and that can be effectively used to defend a reference-based semantics, notably including those parts that do not easily admit an internalist reinterpretation. 30

CONCLUSION As we have seen, although it is true that the Chomskyan tradition is not primarily concerned with semantics, there has been among the generative scholars a lively debate on the problem of meaning. A point that can be considered sound enough is that lexical semantics is on a par with syntax in regard to the following problem: children show such extraordinary skills in acquiring lexical

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meanings that this process must be to a great extent internally caused. There have been different proposals to the effect that lexical competence drives the acquisition and, more generally, the knowledge of the lexicon. Some of them have been described in this paper stressing both their merits and problematic aspects. Although, as usual in scientific research, no statement expresses the definitive truth, lively research is going on and it is leading to significant results. More problematic is the relationship between generative scholars (especially Chomsky himself) and the tradition we labelled compositional semantics. Historically, an influential approach within this tradition denied the possibility of an autonomous and interesting theory of syntax. Today, however, this problem has been to a large extent overcome, since it is admitted more and more that an adequate theory of meaning cannot but operate on the basis of a sophisticated theory of syntax. Another problem in the relationship with compositional semantics is philosophical, and as such, bound not to have a definitive assessment. Chomsky's skepticism on the notion of reference risks undermining much work in semantics, and, as we have seen, no obvious reinterpretation seems to be available which is compatible with the internalist approach he advocates. What we hope the reader has realized is that research in both syntax and semantics -even the hottest and most polemical debates- have contributed to an indubitable growth of our knowledge of meaning.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors acknowledge their debts for illuminating discussions and insightful remarks to Paolo Casalegno and Gennaro Chierchia. Thanks to Maria Teresa Guasti, Andrea Moro and Daniel Osherson for observations on a previous version of this paper. Following the introduction, Massimo Piattelli Palmarini takes responsibility for sections 2-3 and Carlo Cecchetto takes responsibility for sections 4-5.

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ENDNOTES

1. At any rate the distinction is not rigid and cases of overlap exist. The meaning of a lexical item such as a preposition cannot be anything other than its role in the composition of the meanings of other constituents. In this case, lexical semantics just is compositional semantics. 2. For example, Thomason in his introduction to Montague's collected papers (Montague, 1974) writes that "we should not expect a semantic theory to furnish an account of how two expressions belonging to the same category differ in meaning". 3. See the second part of this paper and, especially, the quotation in note 18. 4. The typical data elicited in these experiments consist of the presentation of a certain stimulus to the child (a drawing, a strip of cartoons, a certain series of sounds etc.) accompanied by different, quite specific, syntactic constructions containing plausible new words (such as: "Donald Duck is gorping Cookie Monster", versus "Cookie Monster and Donald Duck are gorping'). The different meanings that the child instantly conjectures for the new term (in spite of the sameness of the perceptual non linguistic stimulus), upon hearing different syntactic expressions, are systematicaUy predictable and are in excellent agreement with syntactic and lexical-semantic hypotheses possessing strong independent plausibility (Gleitman, 1990; Bloom, 1994). The innate character of these constraints on lexical meanings has also been corroborated by studying the process of lexical acquisition in blind children (Landau & Gleitman, 1985), and in congenitally deaf children acquiring the lexicon of sign-languages (Petitto, 1987). 5. To speak of "current version" might seem vague and inadequate, especially given the well-known fact that generative syntax is a research program in fast and continuous evolution. In recent years a major shi~ is taking place from the so-called Government and Binding Theory (born in the late seventies and initially formulated in a systematic way in Chomsky (1981) to the Minimalist Program

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(whose more complete, but still largely programmatic, enunciation is given in Chomsky, 1995b). However, the role of Theta Theory (on which we are going to focus in the next paragraph) has remained pretty much stable through the changes in the research program. 6. The idea of using some kind of network to represent semantic relationships can only be justified (if it can be justified at all) by the unique perspicuousness that such networks are expected to possess in displaying all and only the correct inferential relations between the terms of the language. As both theory and practice (notably computer simulations) have shown, the very idea is crushed by unsurmountable difficulties. To begin with, it is far from clear what should be represented by the nodes and what by the links comlecting these nodes. Standard candidates are concepts for the nodes, and relations for the links. Thus '%uilding" and "person" should be typical nodes, while the relationship "taller than" should be a typical link. The architecture of the network should allow one to see at a glance that a building is (usually at least) taller t h a n a person, and that persons go into and out of buildings and not the other way around. Yet "height" is also a concept, and so is "visitor". So, should "height" be a node, connected by a link of weaker intensity to "person" t h a n it is to '%uilding '~. Then the link "taller than" becomes unnecessary. Should "visitor" be linked to "person" by a link that is qualitatively (not just quantitatively) different from the one t h a t relates it to "building'~. How many such qualitatively different links should there be in a semantic network? Must there be separate links expressing relations of size, causality, composition, precedence, worth, prominence, ownership, whatever? No principled specifications have ever been offered for such crucial choices (for a cautious review by an early proponent of semantic networks see Woods, 1975). Yet, it is plain to see t h a t inferential relations (i. e. the very stuff semantic networks are allegedly made of) are crucially sensitive to the nature of such links. The inferences one draws from the fact that buildings are taller than people are different from those that can be drawn from the fact that people own buildings. In

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the limit, it is arguable that we may need as many kinds of links as there are verbs in the lexicon, and as many nodes as there are nominals made out of verbs (including concepts such as donation, foreclosure, incineration, perusal and command). Possibly some nodes will be preferentially linked only to some other nodes and maybe only by a subset of these links, but the sheer number of components needed in a network that remotely captures most of our straightforward linguistic inferential powers is astronomical. The problem of combinatorial explosions always plagues such models, even granting one could solve in a non arbitrary way the fundamental uncertainty as to what these semantic networks are supposed to connect, and by what kinds of links. Finally, nowhere has there been the beginning of an idea of how to express by means of semantic networks the obvious inferential roles created by adjectivals ("A toy pistol", "A fake Stradivari"), adverbials ("Mary is allegedly taller than John"), tense ("A child was born that would be king"), aspect ("I consider it too dangerous"), progressives ("Buildings grow taller as you drive north") and much besides. On the basis of these fundamental shortcomings (and others we cannot go into here), it is our opinion that the perspective of ever modelling the semantics of natural languages by means of such networks is doomed. 7. One can ask if (and how) meaning postulates theories could account for the metaphoric use of linguistic expressions. The idea underlying this approach is that the metaphoric meaning is derivative from the strict meaning and that mastering the latter is a prerequisite to get the former. So, metaphoric meaning would not be a counter example to the theory but rather an indication that it stands in need of integration, if it has to account for the many different uses of linguistic expressions. 8.

For example, "conceptual role semantics" is close in spirit to structuralist

linguistics. According to De Saussure and to his followers, language is a "system of differences" and the semantic value of an expression is given by its collocation in this system of differences. For a discussion of this theory and its relations with

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the holistic view, see Fodor and Lepore (1992). Also note that, although, as we are saying, in their formal and most perspicuous definition m e a n i n g postulates are devices operating at the denotational (language-external) level, it is also possible to define t h e m more generically (and maybe vacuously) as "the set of links t h a t hold between the expression and the rest of the lexicon". This vague definition allows an internalist reinterpretation of m e a n i n g postulates (in the sense of "internalist" t h a t will be introduced in the second p a r t of this paper). 9. We are not strictly faithful to Frege when formulating the problem this way. As it is well known, Frege was not interested in the psychological

problem of

comprehension. Analogously, presenting the "Principle of Compositionality" we will simplify the discussion avoiding the presentation of some crucial distinguos: the consequences of its application to the different levels of Sinn and of Bedeu-

tung, the "Principle of Substitutability" etc. We feel free to do so because our aim here is not an exegesis of the Fregean text as such. The first to emphasize the infinite use of finite m e a n s in language was von Humboldt (see von Humboldt, 1889/1988). 10. A recursive rule is one t h a t can be applied one more time to the result of its former application, and then again on the result, and so on. Take the arithmetical operation "successor of": be it S(x), where x is a variable ranging over the set of n a t u r a l numbers. It can initially apply, for instance, to the n a t u r a l n u m b e r 0, giving as a result S(0)= 1. Then, as a second step, t h a t operation can also apply to the result of its former application, t h a t is to S(0), now giving as a result S(S (0))=2. Of course, one can again apply the operation "successor of' to S(S(0)), obtaining S(S(S(0)))=3, and so on, and so on. An infinitely recursive rule has, among others, the property t h a t it can create an infinite set of new entities starting from a single one. Needless to say, not all the operations are recursive: For instance, the operations "greatest number" and "arithmetical average" defined over sets of numbers are not recursive. We will see in a moment examples of recursive operations defined over linguistic entities.

460

Piattelli-Palmarini and Cecchetto

11. Of course noun phrases can also refer to pluralities; a sentence like John, Bill and Mary smile

can be given a coherent semantic analysis along the lines

suggested in the text. Roughly speaking, the sentence is true if the set whose individuals are John, Bill and Mary is a subset of the set whose individuals are the entities of the domain t h a t smile. 12.

This fact is explicitly noted by Chomsky (1977). For the hypothesis that

quantificational expressions move at the level of Logical Form to the left peripheral position, see May, 1985; Haegeman, 1994, (chapter 9) and Huang, 1995 are two recent introductions to the topic. See Hornstein, 1995 for a t r e a t m e n t internal to the generative tradition that does not need this hypothesis (this book also contains a detailed bibliography). 13. The condition we are talking about is known as weak crossover (WCO) constraint. The presentation we are going to give is simplified in many aspects (for example, it does not consider the crucial difference between A and A' movement). 14.

Furthermore, a very interesting trend in current research consists in an

attempt to take elements from both traditions, even though historically they have been presented as competing research programs. (Often polemically so: In fact, Montague believed linguistics to be part of mathematics, an assumption t h a t is worlds apart from the Chomskyan idea of linguistics as a natural science very close to biology). In this new trend, there is a growing belief that many empirical analysis and technical devices can be mutually exchanged. For a systematic attempt to supply generative syntax with a formal semantic theory see Higginbotham (1985). Chierchia (1995) and Reinhart (1995) are two interesting recent works that, although internal to the generative tradition, nonetheless take many elements from model-theoretic semantics (for example, the hypothesis of quantifier raising is accepted but is not obligatory, since the interpretation of quantifiers directly in situ is admitted as an option). 15. The affrrmation in the text is a simplification, as some reader could observe. We are ignoring in our presentation the important part of model-theoretic

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semantics which uses possible worlds for the analysis of intensional contexts. If possible worlds semantics were considered, we should say that the meaning of a lexical entry is a function from possible worlds to the appropriate extensions in the domain of interpretation. 16. The idea of representing the meaning of the sentence by its truth conditions goes back to Wittgenstein's Tractatus logico-philosophicus (Wittgenstein, 1922). Wittgenstein said that to understand a sentence is to be able to say what happens if it is true (cf. proposition 4.024). The idea is simple: a proposition is a partial description of reality. So, we can say we understand the proposition if, and only if, we can identify (at least some) possible situation in which it is true, and (at least some) possible situation in which it is false. If the relevant proposition is "it snows", we can confidently say that someone understands it if he can say that it is false when it rains but true when it is actually snowing. Before Wittgenstein, Frege had identified the denotation (Bedeutung) of each sentence directly with its truth value (the True, or the False). 17.

In conversation, he has once symptomatically characterized to one of us

(M.P.P.) Montague's semantic theory as, at bottom, the semantics of the verbs "can" and "must". 18. Chomsky has changed his mind on semantics several times during 40 years of lively intellectual life and even today he seems to show some oscillations on this topic. Actually, it can be argued that he moved from the initial skepticism of

Syntactic Structures (that is, Chomsky, 1955) to a more optimistic attitude in the '70s. In his latest philosophical papers, however, he goes back to the initial critical position. For an example of the middle-period, see the introduction to Chomsky (1975) and Chomsky (1977). The following are some recent papers in which the role of semantics is seen (again) quite critically:

Chomsky (1992),

Chomsky (1993) and Chomsky (1995a). Particularly interesting is the following passage of Chomsky (1995a): As for semantics, insofar as we understand language use, the argument for

462

Piattelli-Palmarini and Cecchetto a reference-based semantics (apart from an internalist syntactic version) seems to me weak. It is possible that natural language has only syntax and pragmatics; it has a "semantics" only in the sense of ,,the study of how this instrument, whose formal structure and potentialities of expression are the subject of syntactic investigation, is actually put in use in a speech community,, to quote the earliest formulation in generative g r a m m a r 40 years ago, influenced by Wittgenstein, Austin and others.

Here Chomsky is quoting a passage from Syntactic Structures with the purpose of saying that his initial skepticism on semantics might well be sound. Chomsky's statement seems to be hardly compatible with some other recent affirmations according to which semantics, if internalist, is a workable and interesting project. 19. However, Karttnunen (1976) had already discussed the linguistic problem and introduced the basic idea to deal with it. Another important work in this approach (in addition to those we are going to mention) is Fauconnier (1985). 20. The expression "discourse referent" is not Johnson-Laird's but comes from the cited Karttnunen work. The expression 'Tile card" is used by Heim (1982). 21. For simplicity we omit discussion of the fact that a mental model can also be enriched nonlinguistically (for instance pictorially, or ostensionally). 22. Note t h a t a discourse ean have many mental models associated with it. Take sentence 18: there are many mental models compatible with it: One is that in which the elderly gentleman is a famous physicist, another one is that in which he is a famous film director, and so on. If (18) is followed by the sentence "he did that in order to teach in the local physics department", the mental model in which the main character is a film director is ruled out (or discouraged), but others remain. Generally speaking, the more elaborate a discourse is, the more constrained the mental models representing it are. But, given the fragmentary and finite character of the written (and oral) discourses, there will always be more t h a n one mental model representing them. 23. For a different view see Fodor and Sag (1982) (who, however, do not deny that

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indefinites can be interpreted existentially). 24. Representation (21) must be read in the following way: "It is not true that an individual x exists that is a dog and that entered the room". Sentence 21 is true if no dog that entered the room exists in the domain of interpretation representing the entities of the world referred to by the language. 25. A caveat for the reader familiar with symbolic logic: one can observe that what we said in the text is not (necessarily) true, since the matter entirely depends on the choice between substitutional and referential methods for interpreting the quantifiers. However, in order to get the adequate truth conditions for a sentence of a natural language, if one chooses the substitutional method (the more internalist one), then one must postulate that every individual of the domain has a name, an assumption that, according to us, violates the internalist maxims as well. 26. See Geach (1962) for the initial evidencing of the donkey-sentences pattern. As for the formal treatment usually labelled DRT (Discourse Representation Theory), see Heim (1982) and Kamp (1981) for its early development (borrowing elements from Karttnunen, 1976 and Lewis, 1975) and Kamp and Reyle (1993) for a systematic presentation. For a new (dynamic) version of the theory, see Chierchia (1995) (that also contains a detailed bibliography on the issue). 27. The reader not familiar with symbolic logic is advised that, in the propositional calculus, the formula A --* B stays for "if A, then B" and is equivalent to the formula ~ A v B (to be read "not A or B"). To get what this equivalence expresses, one must remember that the formula A v B is true in the propositional calculus even if both A and B are true (that is, disjunction is not exclusive). Keeping that in mind, consider when ~A v B is true. As the reader can easily verify, ~A v B is made true by three combinations of truth-values out of four: When A is false and B is true; when both A and B are false; and, finally, when

464

Piattelli-Palmarini a n d Cecchetto

both A and B are true. In fact, the only combination that makes ~A v B false is the truth of A and the falsity of B. Whence, the equivalence that holds between A -~ B and - A v B expresses the idea that a conditional is false just in case the antecedent is true and the consequent false. In the discussion of the formal rendering of sentence 22, this equivalence plays a crucial role. 28. We are interpreting the conditional in terms of the material implication but the same point holds for other interpretations as well. 29. Nevertheless, let us try to give a simplified answer to the question in a few lines. The reason why not every discourse referent does find a corresponding real referent in the domain of interpretation is the following: some discourse referents have a limited life-span (to use an expression due to Heim 1982). They survive (that is, they are accessible to anaphoric pronouns) only in a certain syntactic environment. Consider the following contrast:

i) He got a car. It was cheap and reliable ii) * He did not get a car. It was cheap and reliable

As shown by i), the indefinite a car can establish a discourse referent that can be accessed by an anaphoric pronoun. However, when the indefinite occurs within the scope of negation, the discourse referent is not available any more. Data like these have suggested that an operator fLxes the maximum range within which the discourse referent is available (metaphorically, its life-span). 30.

This is not the only possible counter to Chomsky's objections. One of the

authors of this paper pointed out that another strategy is available (cf. Cecchetto, forthcoming who attributes the initial suggestion to Gennaro Chierchia): it can be argued that semantics is not about the way in which the truth value of a single sentence is determined compositionally in a given context; rather it is only about inferences that relate two (or more) sentences to one another. In this perspective,

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semantics has to deal uniquely with concepts like consequence, presupposition, tautology, and so on. If one is willing to nat-row its range of application in this way, semantics becomes more easily amenable to an internalist reinterpretation. The point is that the inferential schemata on the basis of which the meaning links are calculated are just a question of syntax. It is true that syntax needs to be interpreted (a theory of logical consequence must come alongside with it), but we know from symbolic logic that in many cases, although some model must be there, an abstract one (that is, one that is not intended to give a description of a certain portion of reality) can be enough. By analogy, in natural languages a theory of inferential links that hold among sentences might be given in which the model for interpretation is not intended as a description of the world. The difficulties discussed by Chomsky would then disappear because semantics would no longer be the bridge towards a language-independent reality. However this way out has a cost: one has to give up the idea that semantics deals with the compositional fLxation of the truth value of a sentence in isolation. That is, we must abandon the idea that we can give an account of why we judge a certain sentence A true or false in a given context B. Needless to say, this is one of the traditional semantic jobs.

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Author Index Italicized numbers refer to entries in reference lists; other numbers refer to text citations

Abelson, R. 61, 77 Abrams, M.H. 366, 371-372 Ackerman, B. 387, 408 Adams, B. J. 78, 100, 110 Ahlquist, J. E. 148, 178 Allan, K. 21, 31, 69 Andresen, J.T. 33, 69, 84, 110 Andrews, J. 387, 408 Andrews, P. 148, 172 Andrick, G.R. 234-236, 257 Anglin, J. M. 222, 257 Annett, J. M. 88-89, 110 Antos, S.J. 348, 368, 413 Aristotle 18, 24-25, 28-32, 69-70, 74, 452 Arter, J. 382, 412 Arter, J.A. 351,368 Asch, S. 84, 110, 382, 408 Asimov, I. 351,366 Astington, J. 385-386, 409 Atak, J.R. 101, 114 Aucella, A. F. 111 Austin, G. 56, 70 Austin, J. L. 265,293, 295 Azuma, H. 302, 305-306, 338, 340 Baars, B. J. 57, 69 Bacon, F. 12, 31, 69 Bakeman, R. 325, 338 Barnes, D. 88, 110, 116, 122-124, 132, 142, 144-145 Barnes, T. 93, 116 Baron, A. 105, 114 Bartlett, E. 234, 247, 258 Bartlett, F. C. 44, 61, 69 Barwise, J. 67, 69 Bates, E. 150, 162, 172, 198, 204, 214-215, 235, 258 Baumrind, D. 319, 338

Baur, M. 243, 258 Bayley, N. 209-210, 215 Bazerman, C. 22, 69 Beals, D. 262, 293 Behrend, D. 235, 260 Bellugi, U. 159, 172, 184, 217 Benigni, L. 198, 214 Bentall, R. P. 88-89, 98, 108, 110 Bentham, J. 38, 69 Berkeley, G. 37, 69 Berlin, B. 233-234, 237, 241-242, 258 258 Berman, R.A. 303, 338 Bernstein Ratner, N. 222,258 Berti, A. E. 243,257 Bertrand, J. 222,259 Best, E. 387, 414 Bever, T.G. 404, 411 Bihrle, A. 159, 172 Binet, A. 40 Black, J. E. 167, 173 Black, M. 64, 69, 432, 466 Blackburn, S. 43, 69 Blasko, D.G. 404, 409 Bloom, P. 447, 456, 465 Bloomfield, L. 55-56, 69 Blumenthal, A. L. 39-41, 55-56, 69-70

Blum-Kulka, S. 273, 293 Bohannon, J. 3, 11,222,258 Bombi, A. S. 243,257 Bonvillian, J. D. 5-8, 181, 188, 194-196, 198, 201-202, 205, 208, 215-216, 218 Bookin, H.B. 399, 403,411 Bornstein, M. 305, 338, 344, 382, 412

Bosco, L. 387, 414

4 72

Author Index

Botha, R. P. 16, 19, 21, 70 Bowman, L. L. 244, 259 Boyes-Braem, P. 222,260 Brady, J. H. 99, 111 Brakke, K. E. 115, 150, 172, 178Bransford, J. D. 61, 70 Bretherton, I. 198, 214 Brinton, B. 265, 293 Brown, M. 411 Brown, P. 301,338 Brown, R. 3-4, 11, 64, 184, 215, 223, 235-236, 258 Bruner, J. S. 44, 56, 65, 70,171-172, 198, 215, 297, 299-301,309, 333, 339 Buchanan, G. M. 18, 70 Biihler, K. 41, 44, 55, 64-65, 70-71 Burns, B.C. 347-348, 368 Bush, K.M. 70, 100, 111 Butters, R.R. 348, 366 Byrne, R.W. 201,218 Cacciari, C. 404, 409 Callahan, T. D. 88, 111 Camaioni, L. 198, 204, 214-215 Capelli, C. 388, 409 Carey, S. 234, 247, 258, 384, 409 Carnap, R. 427, 465 Carrigan, P. 116 Catania, A. C. 105, 111 Cattell, P. 210, 215 Caudill, W. 304, 339 Cauley, I~ M. 167, 173 Cecchetto, C. 6-7, 10, 415, 455, 464-465

Chafe, W. 262,293 Chall, J. 222,259 Chambers, L. 108, 114, 131,144 Chandler, S.R. 347, 366 Chapman, R. 265, 293 Charles, D. 25, 70 Chevalier-Skolnikoff, S. 206, 216 Chierchia, G. 427, 455, 460, 463-465, 465

Chomsky, N. 4, 6-7, 11, 25, 31, 36-37, 57-59, 62, 70, 84, 110-111,149, 172, 298-299, 339, 348, 415-418, 420, 423, 426, 432, 436, 441-442, 444-446, 451-452, 454-457, 460-462, 464-466

Church, M.B. 395-396, 412 Churchland, P. S. 23, 70 Cicone, M. 382, 414 Clancy, P. M. 301,306, 339-340 Clark, E. 194, 215-216, 244, 258 Clark, H. H. 398-399, 403, 409 Cofer, C. N. 83, 111 Cohen, L.R. 111 Cohn, R. H. 195, 211,218 Collins, A. M. 59, 70 Connine, C.M. 404, 409 Conno~, K. 382, 412 Corina, D. 159, 172 Creelman, M.B. 82, I i I Cresson, O., Jr. 120, 145 Crystal, D. 322,340 Csikszentmihalyi, M. 243,258 Cummingham, S. 116 Cutler, A. 390, 399, 409, 414 Cyphers, L. 305, 344 Dale, P.S. 3, 11,235, 258 Darwin, C. 17, 41-42, 71-72, 158, 171-172, 182-183, 214, 216 Davenport, R. K. 153, 172 Davidson, D. H. 303, 344 Day, W. F., Jr. 54, 71 De Laguna, G.A. 50-51, 71 de Rose, J. C. 85, 111,126, 142 de Rose, T. 100, 111,126, 142 de Souza, D.G. 126, 142 Deese, J. 1, 11, 84, 111 Demetras, M.J. 3, 12 Demorest, A. 386-387, 409 Dent, C. 382, 410 Derrida, J. 16, 23, 66, 71 Descartes, R. 34-37, 57, 71,149, 172

Author Index

Devany, J. M. 88, 111,126-127, 142 Dewey, J. 42-43, 50, 71 Dews, S. 6-7, 10, 347-348, 350, 362, 366, 377-378, 380, 387, 389, 393, 395-397, 410 Dickins, D.W. 88, 98, 108, 110 Dickinson, D. 307, 345 Dickson, W. 306, 340 Dinesen, I. 364, 366 Dixon, T. R. 82,111 Doi, T. 306, 316, 340 Domjan, M. 171, 173 Dore, J. 203, 216, 265-266, 293 Dorfmueller, M.A. 367 Dube, W.V. 87-88, 92, 111, 114 Dugdale, N. 88, 112 Dummett, M. 45, 71 Dymond, S. 122-124, 132, 142 Eagleton, T. 353, 366 Ebbinghaus, H. 1, 89, 112 Ebeling, K. S. 235,260 Ebenholtz, S. M. 84, 110 Eikeseth, S. 88, 112 Ekstrand, B. R. 84, 112 Ennis, R. E. 44, 71 Erber, J.T. 350, 369 Eshleman, J.W. 84, 112 Esper, E.A. 39, 55, 71 Everson, S. 71 Fagot, B.A. 254, 258 Fath, S. 121,142 Fauconnier, G. 462,466 Fava, D. 382,412 Fenson, L. 235, 237, 239, 242,245, 258

Ferguson, C.A. 222,260 Fields, L. 87, 100, 110, 112, 120, 142 Fillenbaum, S. 350, 366 Fischer, K. W. 307, 340 Fivush, R. 333, 343 FlaveU, J. H. 206, 216 Flores, F. 64, 79 Fodor, J. 7, 22, 26-27, 36, 58-59,

473

61-62, 65, 67, 71-72, 74, 418-419, 421,427, 429, 431, 459, 462,466-467 Fogel, A. Fogel 305, 344 Foley, J.P. 83, 111 Folven, R.J. 188, 194, 198, 201,205, 208, 215-216 Fouts, R. S. 152, 173, 184, 216 Fowler, R. 348, 366 Fox, S. R.A. 88-89, 98, 108, 110 Franks, J. J. 61, 70 Fraser, B. 351,366 Frede, M. 26, 72 Frege, G. 45, 432-434, 441,459, 461 Fujiki, M. 265,293 Furness, W. H. 159, 173, 183, 217 Furth, H.G. 243, 258 Furuichi, T. 148, 170, 178 Galizio, M. 105, 108, 114, 131, 144-145

Galperin, C. Z. 305,338 Gardner, B.T. 173, 175, 217 Gardner, H. 72,408-410, 412, 414 Gardner, J. 366 Gardner, R.A. 173, 217 Garrett, M. F. 419, 466 Gasking, D. 54, 72 Geach, P. 432, 463, 466 Gelman, R. 384, 410 Gelman, S.A. 235,260 Gentner, D. 244, 258, 350, 366, 383, 410

Gerbert, E. 334, 337, 340 Gergen, K. J. 65-66, 72 Gerrig, R.J. 349, 362,367, 407, 411 Ghezzi, P.M. 124, 126, 143 Gibbs, R.W. 352,367, 378, 390, 400-404, 407, 410-411 Gibson, K.R. 155, 173 Gibson, R. F. 55, 72 Gifford, E.V. 131,143 Gildea, P. 399, 403, 407, 411,418, 468

4 74

Author Index

Gilman, C.P. 351,367 Gisiner, R. 152, 178 Gleason, J. B. 2, 4-8, 12, 221,224, 236, 245-246, 253, 257-259 Gleitman, L. 456, 466, 468 Glenn, C. G. 337, 344 Glidden, D. K. 27, 72 Glucksberg, S. 390, 396, 399, 403, 405, 407, 411-412 Goffman, E. 265, 293 Golinkoff, R. M. 162, 167, 173 Goodnow, J. 56, 70 Gordon, L. 167, 173 Gottman, J. M. 325, 338 Gough, P.B. 82, 112 Graesser, A.C. 395, 399, 405, 412 Gray, W. D. 222, 259-260 Green, G. 74, 100, 112, 122, 132, 143 Greenfield, P. 173, 293 Greenough, W.T. 167, 173-174 Grice, H. P. 317-318, 333, 340, 406, 411

Grimm, B.K. 152, 178 Grimshaw, J. 422, 467 Gross, A. 382, 385, 412 Gruber, H. E. 41, 72 Grundt, A. 5-7 Hacking, I. 16, 73 Hadley, P. 264, 292-293 Haegeman, L. 422, 460, 467 Hagan, R. 254, 258 Hale, K. 421-422, 467 Hall, D. G. 244, 259 Hall, E. T. 302,340 Halle, M. 360, 367 Hammeal, R. 382, 412 Hanggi, E.B. 152, 178 Hanlon, C. 3, 11 HappY, F. 388, 411 Harkness, S. 297, 344 Harlow, H.F. 156, 174 Harre, R. 18, 76 Harris, P. 385-386, 409

Harris, R.J. 348, 367 Harrison, R.J. 100, 112 Harwood, D.L. 351, 36 7 Haugeland, J. 64, 73 Hawthorne, N. 355-356, 359, 367, 371 Hayakawa, S. I. 18, 73 Hayashi, R. 332,340 Hayes, C. 217 Hayes, K. J. 174 Hayes, L. J. 112-113, 143-144 Hayes, S. C. 5-7, 12, 73, 111-113, 142-146 Healy, A. 349, 362, 367 Heim, I. 462-464, 467 Henri, V. 40 Herbart, J. 39 Herman, J. 264, 295 Herman, L. M. 153, 176 Hess, R. 306, 340 Hida, T. 337, 341 Higginbotham, J. 460, 467 Hillix, W.A. 168, 177 Hinds, J. 301,340 Hirsch, E.D. 353, 367 Hirsh-Pasek, K. 167, 173 Hobbes, T. 31-32, 34, 73 Hoffman, R.R. 367 HoUoway, S.D. 302, 304, 340 Holt, E.B. 49 Honeck, R.P. 64, 73, 351,367 Hopfield, N. 388, 413 Hopkins, W. D. 176-177, 179 Home, P. J. 2, 12, 67, 73, 81, 88, 104, 108, 113, 126-127, 143 Hornstein, N. 460, 467 Horton, D. L. 82, 111 Huang, J. 460, 467 Hudson, J.A. 337, 340 Hull, C. 50-51, 73 Humboldt, von W. 39, 459, 467 Hume, D. 37, 73 Hunt, J. McV. 189, 206, 208, 219

Author Index

Hunt, M. 380, 389, 410 Hunt, R.R. 349, 363, 368, 368 Huntley, K.R. 124, 126, 143 Hutchinson, J. 124, 143 Imbens-Bailey A. L. 6-7, 9, 264, 294 Ingold, T. 155, 173 Inhelder, B. 150, 174 Inoue, Y. 337,341 Ishimori, N. 337, 341 Iwata, J. 298, 308, 341 Jackendoff, R. 22, 62, 73 Jaeger, S. 41, 73 Jakobsen, R. 360, 367 James, W. 37, 42, 73-74 Janus, R.A. 404, 411 Jenkins, J. J. 82-83, 112-113 Jerison, H. J. 148, 158, 174 Johnson-Laird, P. N. 234, 235,259, 419, 430, 446, 448, 462,467 Johnson, D. M. 222, 259, 260 Johnson, M. 67, 74-75, 377, 412 Johnson, M.G. 347, 348,359, 367 Johnston, J.R. 265, 293 Jones, J. 350, 367 Jones, W. 38 Julia, P. 82, 113 Kamp, H. 431,463, 467 Kano, T. 148, 153, 170, 174, 178 Kant, I. 41, 43, 44, 61 Kantor, J. R. 50-51, 74 Kaplan, J. 393, 395,408, 410 Karttnunen, L. 462-463, 467 Kashiwagi, K., 306, 340 Kastak, D. 88, 115 Katz, A.N. 349, 368, 378, 411 Katz, J. J. 16, 19, 46, 58-59, 61, 65, 74, 418, 467 Kawai, M. 305, 344 Kay, P. 233-234, 237, 241-242,258 Keenan, M. 88, 110 Keil, F. 381,384, 411-412 Kellogg, L.A. 58, 183, 217 Kellogg, W. N. 58, 183, 217

475

Kennedy, C.H. 100, 113 Keyser, S. J. 421-422, 467 King, B.J. 164, 174 Kintsch, W. 61, 74 Kirby, K. C. 100, 115 Kirk, B. 100, 115-116 Kitchener, R. F. 15, 21, 68, 72, 74 Kjeldergaard, P. M. 83, 113 Kleinginna, A.M. 2, 5, 12 Kleinginna, P.R. 2, 5, 12 Klima, E. S. 184, 217 Koch, G. G. 341 Kogan, N. 184, 217 Kohlenberg, B. S. 122, 144 Konstantareas, M. M. 201,217 Kop, P. F. 88, 113 Korzybski, A. 18, 74 Kotlarchyk, B.J. 122, 144 Kretzmann, N. 17, 24, 26-27, 31, 39, 74

Kreuz, R.J. 390, 395-396, 412-413 Kripke, S. 21, 67, 74, 430, 468 Kumon-Nakamura, S. 396, 411 Kuno, S. 300, 336, 341 Kurihara, K. 337, 341 Kushner, J.M. 352,367 Labov, W. 60, 74, 289, 294 LaFarge, O. 363,367 Laitinen, R. 100, 113 Lakoff, R. 236, 259 Lakoff, G. 22, 67-68, 75, 298, 341, 377, 412 Lamour, M. 305, 338 Landau, B. 456, 468 Landis, J. R. 325,341 Larson, R. 415, 427, 468 Lashley, K. S. 56-57, 75 Latif, I. 56-57, 75 Lazar, R. 116, 122, 144 Lazerson, A. 307, 340 Leader, G. 122, 144 Leahey, T. H. 51, 75 Learned, B. 159, 179

4 76

Author Index

Leary, D. E. 32, 44, 70, 75 Lebra, T. S. 302-303, 306, 316, 341 Lee, V. L. 2, 12 Leekam, S. 387, 412, 414 Leibniz 16 Leonhard, C. 132, 144 Lepore, E. 421,429, 431,459, 466 Lepper, M. R. 321,341 Leslie, J. C. 88-89, 110 LeVine, R.A. 306, 341 Levinson, S. C. 301,338 Lewin, R. 148, 178 Lewis, C. C. 303. 320-321, 341 Lewis, D. 463, 468 Liles, B. Z. 265, 294 Lim, K. 410 Lindauer, M.S. 352, 367 Linden, E. 152, 175,211,218 Lipkens, R. 88, 109, 113, 131-132, 144

LoCastro, V. 332, 341 Locke, J. 22, 32-34, 36-37, 46, 49, 75 Loewenberg, I. 351,367 Looney, T.A. 351,367 Lorge, I. 222, 259 Lowe, C.F. 2, 12, 67, 73, 81, 88, 104, 108, 112-113, 126-127, 143 Lucariello, J. 299, 339 Lucy, P. 398, 409 Ludemann, P. 305, 338 Lyons, J. 322, 341 Mackay, H.A. 122, 143 Macnamara, J. 81-82, 85, 113 MacWhinney, B. 224, 259, 292, 294, 322, 342 Madden, C. 388, 409 Maguire, R. W. 93, 116 Malgady, R.G. 347-348, 359, 367 Malkus, U. 387, 408 Mandell, C. 1-2, 4-7, 12, 67, 88-89, 99, 101, 104, 106-107, 113-114 Mannle, S. 245, 253, 259 Marchman, V. 150, 172

Markman, E. 244, 259 Marks, L. 382,412 Marr, D. 444-445,468 Marschark. M. 347,349, 362, 363, 368

Martin, L. 148, 172 Matsumoto, Y. 301,342 Matsuzawa, T. 157, 174 Matthews, B.A. 105, 111 Matthews, R. J. 64, 75 Matthijs, W. 88, 113 May, R. 460, 468 Mayer, N. 203, 218 Maynard, S. K. 302, 316, 332, 336, 342

McCabe, A. 2, 4, 6-7, 10, 262, 281, 288, 294-295, 342-343, 368, 308, 310, 322, 332, 342-343, 361-362, 368 McCarthy, M. 382, 414 McConnell-Ginet, S. 427, 465 McCuUagh, P.D. 88, 110 McCurry, S.M. 137, 139, 144 McDermott, R. P. 265,293 McGovern, A. 410 McIlvane, W. J. 87-88, 111,114 McNeill, D. 3, 12, 58, 75 Mead, G. H. 22, 43, 50, 75 Mendelsohn, E. 383, 412 Merriman, W. E. 259 Mervis, C.A. 244, 259 Mervis, C. B. 60, 77, 222, 244-245, 259-260

Meyer, C. 409 Michael, J. 85, 114 Miles, H.L. 152, 163, 175, 184, 206, 217

Milius, R. 349, 368 Mill, J. S. 45 Miller, G.A. 56, 57, 70, 75, 234, 235, 259, 418, 468 Miller, P. J. 288, 294 Mills, W.R. 352,367

Author Index

Minami, M. 6-7, 9, 297, 302, 304, 308, 322, 332-333, 340, 342-343 Minsky, M. 61, 75 Morgan, J.L. 3, 12 Moro, A. 426, 455, 468 Morrel-Samuels, P. 152, 174 Mowrer, O.H. 50,51, 76 Miihlhfiusler, P. 18, 76 Miiller, F. M. 181, 217 Murphy, J. 115, 150, 178 Nachtigall, P.E. 152, 176 Nakagawa, N. 388, 409 Napier, J. R. 148, 175 Napier, P.H. 148, 175 Nelson, K. 164, 175, 195, 196, 217, 299, 343 Nelson, R. O. 88, 111,126-127, 142 Nerlove, H. 382, 408 Nevin, J.A. 87, 101,112, 114 Newmeyer, F. 59, 76, 419, 468 Nicolaides, N. 380, 389, 410 Nilsen, A. P. 58, 76 Nilsen, D. L. F. 58, 76 Ninio, A. 9, 12, 261,263, 265-266, 284, 286,294 Nissen, C. H. 159, 174 Novack, L. L. 188, 194, 196, 208, 215 Novak, G.N. 119, 144 Ogden, C. K. 16-17, 21, 55, 76 Ogino, M. 305, 338, 344 Olson, D. 334, 343, 385-386, 397, 406, 409,412 Orlansky, M. D. 188, 194, 196, 201, 208, 215, 218 Ortony, A. 348, 351,366, 368, 382, 393, 401,412-414 Osgood, C.E. 16, 50, 76, 83, 114 Osherson, D. 431,455, 468 Overton, W.F. 15, 72-76 Oxman, J. 201,217 Pack, A.A. 152, 174 Paivio, A. 349, 368 Palermo, D. S. 83, 113

477

Pan, B. A. 264-265, 267, 294-295 Paul, H. 39 Parrott, L. J. 135, 144 Partee, B. 135, 144 Patterson, F. G. P. 5-8, 152, 175, 181, 184-185, 190-191, 193-196, 200, 202-203, 211,215, 218 Pavlov, I. P. 114, 175 Peak, L. 303, 308, 321,343 P&heux, M. G. 305, 338 Pepperberg, I.M. 152, 175 Perlmann, R.Y. 245, 259 Perner, J. 385-386, 413 Perone, M. 105, 107, 114 Perry, J. 67, 69 Peterson, C. 281,288,295, 310, 322, 336, 341-342 Pethick, S. J. 235, 258 Petitto, L. A. 456, 468 Phelps, E. 409 Piaget, J. 67, 150, 174-175, 202, 205-206, 208, 218, 243, 258, 381,413 Pilgrim, C. 108, 114, 131,144-145 Place, U.T. 115 Pollio, H.R. 347-348, 368 Post, K.N. 3, 12 Premack, A. J. 175 Premack, D. 81, 115, 152, 160, 162-163, 175-176 Price, G. G. 306, 340 Pustejovsky, J. 421,468 Putnam, H. 59-60, 65, 72, 77, 430, 468

Qualter, A. 410 Quillian, M. R. 59, 70 Quine, W.V. 23, 27, 46, 55, 72, 77 Rahn, C. 305,338 Rapoport, A. 350, 366 Ratner, N. B. 245, 259 Rauzin, R. 116 Razran, G. 82, 115 Redshaw, M. 206, 218

4 78

Author Index

Reese, E. 333, 337, 343 Reese, H.W. 130, 134, 145 Reilly, J. S. 343 Reinhart, T. 460, 468 Reyle, U. 463, 467 Reynolds, R. 348, 351,368, 382, 412-414

Reznick, J. S. 235, 258 Richards, I.A. 16, 21, 55, 64, 76-77, 348, 354-355, 358, 368, 372, 374 Richardson, W. K. 156, 176-177 Ricoeur, P. 360, 369 Rieber, R.W. 41, 56, 76-77 Rips, L. 347-349, 351,359, 369 Roberts, R.M. 395, 413 Robins, R. H. 38, 77 Rochberg-Halton, E. 243,258 Roche, B. 123-124, 145 Rogers, C.W. 153, 172 Roitblat, H.L. 152, 174-176 Rollins, P. 265, 294 Romski, M.A. 164, 176 Rosch, E. 60, 77, 222,260, 431,469 Rosenblatt, E. 387, 408, 410, 414 Rosenstiel, A. 382, 385, 414 Rossito, A. L. 126, 142 Rumbaugh, D. M. 5-8, 88, 115, 147, 150, 152-157, 159-160, 162, 168-170, 172-173, 176-179 Rumelhart, D.E. 378-379, 407, 413 Russell, B. 21, 26, 45-46, 51, 54-55, 69, 77, 448-449, 469 Sabourin, M. 2, 12 Sag, I. 462, 466 Santambrogio, M. 62, 77 Sarich, V. M. 158, 177 Saunders, K.J. 100, 108, 115-116 Saunders, R. R. 100, 108, 115-116, 122, 143 Saussure, F. de 40, 149, 177, 458 Savage-Rumbaugh, E. S. 5-8, 88, 115, 147-148, 150-151, 154-156, 159, 164-167, 170, 172-173, 176-178

Schallert, D.L. 348,368, 413 Schank, R. C. 61, 77 Schick, K. D. 155, 178 Schooler, C. 304, 339 Schunk, D.H. 399, 409 Schusterman, R.J. 88, 115 Schusterman, R.L. 152, 178 Schwartz, S.H. 310, 343 Scott, C. M. 265, 295, 337, 343 Searle, J.R. 265,295, 378, 398, 413 Sebeok, T.A. 77 Sechenov, I. 47 Segal, G. 415, 427, 468 Seligman, M. E. P. 18, 70 Sevcik, R.A. 115, 150, 155, 164-165, 172, 176,178 Shanon, B. 5, 12 Shantiris, K. 383,413 Shapiro, L.R. 337, 340 Shatz, M. 235, 260 Sheen, V. 88-89, 99, 104, 106-107, 109, 113 Shibatani, M. 300, 336, 343 Shigaki, I. S. 303, 306, 344 Sbimoff, E. H. 105, 111 Shotter, J. 66, 77 Sibley, C. G. 178 Sidman, M. 77, 111, 115-116, 145, 178 Sigurdardottir, Z. G. 122, 143 Silberstein, H. 409 Skinner, B. F. 4, 7, 12, 22, 46, 51-55, 65-66, 71, 78-79, 84-85, 104, 110-111, 116, 134-135, 139, 145, 178, 339 Slobin, D.A. 303,338-339 Smarsh, B. 410 Smeets, P.M. 122,143-144 Smith, E. E. 431,468 Smith, J. E. 243, 258 Smith, J. H. 266,293 Smith, L. D. 1, 6-7, 12, 15, 49, 64, 75, 78-79

Author I ~

Smith, T. 88, 112 Snow, C. E. 2-3, 6-7, 9, 12, 222,224, 259-267, 273, 284, 286, 292-295, 322, 342 Spelke, E. 384, 410 Sperber, D. 317, 344 Sperry, L. L. 288, 294 Spradlin, J. E. 100, 108, 115-116 Staats, A. W. 2, 13, 82, 116 Stanowicz, L. 3, 11 Steele, D. 123, 131-132, 145 Stein, N. L. 337, 344 Sternberg, R.J. 347-348, 360, 369 Stoddard, L. T. 88, 111 Stokoe, W. C., Jr. 183-184, 215, 218 Stone, C.A. 350, 364, 367 Strawson, P. F. 54, 78 Streeck, J. 265, 295 Strikeleather, G. 100, 116 Stromer, R. 122, 126, 143, 145 Strosahl, K. 138, 143 Stuart, P. 383, 410 Sullivan, K. 387-388, 413 Suls, J.M. 395, 399, 414 Super, C. M. 297, 344 Swinney, D_~. 399, 414 Szuchman, L.T. 350, 369 Tabossi, P. 404, 409 Tager-Flusberg, H. 234-236, 257, 387, 413 Tailby, W. 67, 77, 86-87, 116, 120-121, 145 Tal, J. 305, 338 Tamis-LeMonda, C. 305, 338, 344 Tanner, J. 201,203, 218 Tarski, A. 452,469 Terrace, H. S. 163-164, 178 Thal, D. 172,258 Thompson, S. 88, 112 Tobin, J. J. 303, 344 Toda, S. 304-305,338, 344 TomaseUo, M. 245, 253, 259 Toth, N. 155, 178

479

Tourangeau, R. 347-349, 351, 359-360, 369 Travis, L.L. 3, 12 Tuttle, R. H. 148, 179 Tversky, A. 350, 369 Tzeng, O. C. S. 16, 76 Uchida, N. 334, 344 Umiker-Sebeok, J. 58, 77 Uzgiris, I. C. 189, 206, 208, 219 Van Cantfort, T. E. 152, 173 Vardi, D. 305, 338 Vaughan, M. 105, 116 Vendler, Z. 36, 78 Verbrugge, R.R. 351, 367 Verhave, T. 100, 110, 120, 142 Vetter, H. 41, 56, 77 Violi, P. 62, 77 Voegtle, IL 367 Vogel, E. 320, 344 Volterra, V. 198, 204, 214-215 Vosniadou, S. 382, 414 Vygotsky, L.S. 299, 344 Walker, J. T. 89, 116 Wallace, C. S. 167, 173-174 Wapner, W. 382, 408, 414 Warren, R.P. 360, 369 Warren-Leubecker, A. 222,258 Washburn, D.A. 147, 156-157, 162, 168-169, 171, 176-177, 179 Watson, J. B. 78 Webster, C. D. 201,217 Weinstein, H. 304, 339 Weiss, A. P. 50, 55 Westby, C. E. 264, 295 Wheeler, P. 265-266, 294 White, S. 332, 344 Whorf, B. L. 119, 145, 303, 345 Wilbur, R. B. 184, 219 Wilkerson, B. J. 153, 178 Williams, S. 24, 78, 115, 148, 150, 170, 172, 178-179 Willson-Morris, M. 115-116, 145 Wilson, A. C. 158, 177

480

Author Index

Wilson, D. 317, 344 Wilson, K. G. 131-132, 138, 143, 145 Wilson, P. 382,414 Wimmer, H. 244, 260, 386, 413 Windmueller, G. 387, 414 Winner K. 264, 294 Winner, E. 6-7, 10, 307, 345, 347-348, 350, 362, 366, 377-380, 382-383, 385, 387-390, 393, 395, 397, 406, 408-410, 412-414 Winograd, T. 63-64, 79 Wither, G. S. 167, 174 Wittgenstein, L. 17, 21-22, 43, 45, 54, 60, 65-66, 71, 79, 442, 461-462, 469

Wolf, M. 307, 345 Woods, A. 457, 469 Woodward, W. R. 55, 73, 78-79 Wu, D. T. H. 303, 344 Wulfert, E. 132, 146 Wundt, W. 40 Wynne, C. tL 93, 116 Yamada, H. 300, 332, 345 Yaeger, C. 164, 175 Yerkes, R. M 58, 159, 179 Zaitchik, D. 387, 413 Zipf, G. IL 56, 79

481

Subject Index American Sign Language (ASL) 152, 159, 173, 175, 181, 183-184, 186-190, 193, 195-197, 200-205, 212-219, 468 Sign-learning children 188, 193-194, 196, 201-202, 205, 210, 212 Animal language 16-17, 28-30, 34-35, 88, 130, 149-175, 181-184, 206, 216, 335 apes 58, 77, 148-153, 155-163, 166-170, 181-184, 206-207 monkeys 156 Ape Language Projects Kanzi 152-155, 167-168, 178; Lana 160 Nim 163-164 Sarah 160 (see also animal language) Artificial intelligence 19, 61, 63-64 frame problem 63 ASL (see American Sign Language) Associationism 46, 82-84, 87, 427 Attribution theory 160, 318, 321, 332-333, 386, 388-389, 413 Autism 388 Behavioral approaches to meaning 2, 7, 22, 46, 55, 66, 68, 78, 81, 113, 117-118, 132-135 Categorization (see also concept formation) 60, 145, 164, 259, 265, 469 CDS (see Child-directed speech, scaffolding) Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) 8, 221,224, 227, 257, 259, 264, 292, 294, 322, 342 Child-directed speech (CDS) 4, 222-223, 228, 230-231,241,

256-257 CHILDES (see Child Language Data Exchange System) Chomskyan tradition 3-4, 6-7, 10-11, 25-26, 31, 36-37, 57-59, 61-62, 70, 84, 110-111, 149, 172, 298-299, 339, 348, 415-418, 420-426, 432, 436, 441-462 transformational grammar 374, 423-424, 426 Clarification (see scaffolding) Classical conditioning 50, 53, 82-84, 110, 122 Cognitive approaches to meaning 2, 55, 134 Cognitive development 8, 189, 205-207, 211,215-216, 218, 244, 250, 333, 409, 412 Cognitive semantics 67-68 Color words 8, 221,231,235-237, 239, 241-242, 255-256 Communication 4-5, 8, 17, 20, 22, 28, 33, 62, 77, 151-152, 159, 174-188, 197-202, 261-263, 279, 286, 302-304, 315-317, 347, 396, 408 acts 203, 266, 294 maternal 304 intent 265, 406 Compositional semantics 11, 416-417, 430, 432, 455-456 Comprehension (see also listener behavior) 10, 41, 63, 85, 119, 149-178, 234, 242, 347-368, 381-413, 419-420, 447, 459 Irony 385 Reading 119 Concept formation 44, 56 (see also categorization) Connectionism 23, 366, 427

482

Subject Index

Connotation 19, 45, 50 Context 5-6, 20, 63, 76, 81, 86, 109, 120, 122-124, 127, 129, 164, 167, 187, 191-193, 272, 290, 297, 301, 317, 319-320, 347, 350-352, 360, 362-363, 368, 389-390, 401-403, 420, 461 control and 86, 111, 123-124, 139, 144 irony and 389 metaphor and 382 nonliteral language and 407 Contextualism 66 Conventionalism 24, 30 Conversation, maxims of 317 Conversational supports (see scaffolding) Core vocabulary 8, 221-228, 230, 243, 255 Cross-Cultural Comparisons 297 Culture and meaning 4, 6, 11, 16, 44, 66, 68, 76, 78-79, 109, 141,222, 286-287, 297-310, 316, 320-321, 331, 333-335, 353, 372, 393 narrative, 262 Decompositionalist theory 11,418, 420 Denotation 19, 45, 50, 428, 432-435, 442, 446, 461 Derived relations 113, 118-145, 360 language acquisition and 119 Development constraints and 307 early experience and 154, 186 extended discourse and 264, 290 irony and 395 patterns of 248 pragmatic 272 psychosocial 300 Discourse analysis 59, 65, 294, 303, 310 Discourse, extended 9, 261,263-265,

278-279, 282, 286, 290-291 Discourse Representation Theory (DRT), 446-451,464 DRT (see discourse representation theory) Emergent relations 82-10, Emergents 168-176 Empiricism 12, 25-28, 30-37, 55, 77 Epicureans 26-27, 29-30, 33 Epistemology 19, 51 Equivalence classes 5, 67, 86, 92, 97-98, 100, 104, 110, 112, 115-116, 143-144, 146 Evaluation (see also scaffolding) 246, 248, 262, 264, 288-289, 295, 319-333, 337, 349, 362, 380, 394 Evolution, theory of 38-40, 73, 113, 141-146, 150-156, 168, 172-178, 218 brain 31, 147-148, 153, 158, 169, 433 Exclusion 124, 126, 143, 145, 152, 178 Externalism 432, 441-442, 445, 452 Frame problem (see also Artificial intelligence) 64 Gender differences 236-237, 241, 245, 253-254 maternal evaluations and 327 General Semantics, school of 17 Government and Binding Theory 11, 437, 456, 467 Humor 394-399 Iconicity (of signs) 201,215, 217-218 Input language parents 221 lexicons 244 vocabulary 221,228 Intelligence tests of 188, 209 Intended meaning 26, 393-406 Intentional behavior patterns 151

Subject Index Internalism 11,444-463 Interpretant 301 Interpreting metaphors 347-368 Validity 358, 374 Interrogatives 423, 437-441 Inventory of Communicative ActsAbridged (INCA-A) 265 Irony 6, 10, 307-308, 345, 366, 373, 377-408 communicative function 393 comprehension 10, 386-387, 389, 408 cues 390 development and 395 humor function 394 muting function 393-4 Japanese language 185, 300-345 Katz-Fodor theory 59 Language comparative studies 41 definition of 150 Language acquisition 4-6, 62, 119, 167, 215-216, 221,244, 301, 409, 417-418, 456 imitation in 164 Koko 184 age and 167 color 2, 231,234, 236, 241-242 lexicon 8, 189, 195-196, 201-202, 211,223-236, 244-245, 247-249, 253 meaning 9, 109, 181, 213, 297-298, 307 money terms 243, 255 word-meanings 154 rates 194-195 sign language 184 Language development 8, 11, 29-30, 172-177, 189, 194, 212, 304, 316, 339 Language disorders 88, 126, 265, 278, 282, 289, 294 metaphor interpretation and

483

350 Learning transfer of 156 Lexical meaning 1,419, 426-427 Lexical semantics 11,416-421,429, 454, 456 Linguistic relativity 36 Linguistics, historical 38-39 Listening 4, 9-10, 21, 50, 57, 85, 88, 135, 139, 261-291, 301-302, 318, 330, 379, 385-389, 394, 396, 407, 446 (see also comprehension) Literal language 347, 378, 397, 407 Literary criticism 19, 54-55, 77 LRC-CTS 156-158 MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory 235 Meaning culture and 7 definition of 1, 21, 151,297 ethics and 17 lexical 1 locus of 20 metaphors of 20 metaphysical issues 19 pragmatic accounts of meaning 38 psychological 1 referential approach 1, 21-22, 49 sentence- 378-379, 416, 433, 461 speaker 378-379, 384, 399 symbol- 7 theories of 59, 416 types of 1 word- 7, 416 Meaning postulates 11,416, 426-430, 432, 458-459, 465 Meaning-as-referent 133-134, 136 Meaning-as-use 6, 11, 42, 133-134, 136

484

Subject Index

Mediation of behavior 45, 83- 89, 104, 113,.127, 442, 452 Mediational theories 50-51, 83-84, 87 Mental lexicon 59, 366, 416, 422 Mentalese 31, 62, 418 Metalinguistic abilities 307-308 Metaphor 6-7, 10, 32, 44-45, 64-65, 67, 117-118, 298, 307, 347-357, 359-369, 377, 380-393, 401, 433, 435 communicative function 393 comprehensibility 349 comprehension of 10, 350, 366-367, 381-384, 389 communicative functions 393 conceptual similarity and 349, 352, 361, 363, 368 context and 359, 373 definitions of 10, 44, 64, 137-139, 307, 347-348, 356, 374, 380-381, 384 development and 350 perceptual similarity and 383 relational-frame theory and 133, 136-142 tenor and vehicle 351,354, 356-357, 359, 361-363, 371-373 topic 137 vehicle 137 validity of interpretation 353354, 356, 358 Metonymy 360, 371 Monetary terms 8, 221,231,244-248, 250, 255-257 Montagovian tradition 417, 433, 435, 437, 441 Mutual exclusivity 124, 143, 259 Names 16, 24, 29-33, 46, 81-98, 107, 109, 161, 192, 196, 204, 229251, 336, 428, 434-435, 440-441 proper name 81,435 Narration schema 61 Narrative 6, 10, 44, 55, 61, 109, 262-

289, 297, 309-310, 337-343, 347, 350, 365, 382, 447 Naturalism 23-24, 30, 74 Nonhumans (see animal language) Nonliteral language 6, 377-379, 393, 397-401,405, 407-408, 410-411 comprehension time 401 conventional meaning model 4OO multiple meaning model 398 parallel-race model 405 Stroop test 403 three-stage model 398 Observational Learning 154 Operant conditioning 4, 84, 114, 166, 168-169 tact 85, 135 three-term contingency 127-130 verbal operants 53, 111 Overregularization 3 Paraphrase 58, 348, 353, 382, 395 Parent 8, 38, 85, 119, 121, 188, 223-252, 264-289, 304, 310, 316, 322 color terms, use of 235 feedback 3 instruction 251 maternal communication 304 lexicon 221-224, 247 techniques 319 Personal narrative 268 Phonology 38-39, 99, 101-107, 222, 231,336, 373, 416 Piagetian framework 243, 258 Politeness 258, 301, 338, 342 Pragmatics 12, 19, 32, 38, 42, 173, 218, 294, 317, 442, 454, 462 functions 203 skills 261 Primates 147-149, 155, 157-158, 162, 168, 170, 174-175, 183-184, 206, 217

Subject Index Principle of Compositionality 436 Productive lexicons 244 Propositional meanings 41 Propositions 25-26, 42, 51,337 Prototypes 431,467 Psycholinguistics 11-12, 19, 56, 64, 69, 75-77, 112, 134, 295, 411 Psychosocial Development 300 Quantificational expressions 11, 434-435, 437-438, 440-441,460 Rationalism 25, 28, 30, 34, 36, 70 Reference-based semantics 442 Referential language 8, 204-205, 216 signing 204 Reinforcement 3-4, 52, 84-85, 87-88, 90, 99-108, 114, 116, 154, 163, 168 Relational Frame Theory (RFT) 7, 113, 117-118, 129-130, 132-133, 135-137 transformation of stimulus functions, 122 RFT (see Relational Frame Theory) Rule-governed behavior 3, 104-105, 108, 111-112, 116, 143 stimulus equivalence and 108 Sapir-Whorf hypothesis 303 Scaffolding 12, 34, 58, 263-264, 272288, 333 conversational 278-279, 286, 290 historical 264, 278, 286 psychological 264, 278, 288-289 verbal support 263 Scripts 44, 61-63, 77, 249, 260, 268, 340 Second signalling systems 47, 82-83 Semantic development 244 Semantic features 59, 266, 416, 420-421 Semantic markers 11, 19, 418-420 Semantic networks 426-427,

485

457-458, 469 Semantic theory 58-59, 74, 76, 429, 436, 445, 448, 456, 460-461, 467 Semantic therapy 17 Semantics, featural 59-60 Semantics 11, 17-19, 26-27, 31, 58-68, 73-74, 164-165, 216, 340, 409, 413, 416-469 Chomsky on 58 cognitive semantics 67 conceptual role semantics 430, 458 Semiotics 19, 32 Sensorimotor Development 205-208, 210 Sign language (see American Sign Language) Skinnerian tradition 54, 66, 84- 85, 104, 134, 168 Social context of language 50 Social-interactionist approach 309 Sociocognitive approach 8, 221,298 Speech Act Theory 265 Stimulus equivalence classes 67, 86, 110 reflexivity 86 symmetry 86, 90, 110, 113, 116, 120, 128, 131, 145 transitivity 86, 90, 113, 120 Stoic philosophy 25-26, 46 Symbols 7-8, 19, 25, 62, 86, 107, 148, 150-157, 165, 170, 172, 202-206, 211,214, 353 Synchronic linguistics 40 Synonymy 27, 58, 429 Syntactic Structures 57-58, 70, 222, 461-462, 466 Syntax 6, 11, 31, 58-59, 63, 70, 153, 172, 222, 231,255, 339-340, 343, 416-462 theory of 58-59, 70, 172, 339, 417, 421-423, 426, 441,455

486

Subject Index

Theories of meaning 10, 16, 20-23, 33, 42, 46, 50, 52, 60-67, 347, 416, 432, 435-436, 446, 452-455 contextualist approach 22-23 dissolutionist approach 22-23, 49 mentalist approach 21-22, 25 Theory of mind 10, 61-62, 160, 386387, 411,446 Theory of reference 27, 54, 67, 135 Theta Theory 11,421-422, 426, 457 Tinge Hypothesis (see also nonliteral language) 394, 406 Turn-taking, conversational 280, 330 Two-Stage Semantic Theory 448 Universal color hierarchy 233-234 Universals 9, 25, 31, 46, 150, 216, 221, 257 338 Utterance pragmatic skills and 261 complexity 211, 214 definition of 322 Parental 322 Verbal Behavior 51, 65-66, 83-85 review by Chomsky 84 Verbal learning 71, 82-83, 89, 112-113, 368, 409, 411,413-414 Vocabulary core 222 input 221 Content 196-197, 215 Words definitions of 262

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