| This thesis is about a certain kind of tension existing between two quite divergent concepts of language: that of the American linguist, Noam Chomsky, and that of the British linguist, Roy Harris. According to one conception, language is considered to be a cognitive capacity--the 'language faculty'. The methodological approach of this view is to abstract some notion of language away from language use by way of the competence/performance distinction and other idealisations. Language is then conceived to be a formal mechanism, consisting of a system rules and principles, instantiated in the brain. The general form of this mechanism (universal grammar) is said to be biologically innate and when exposed to some linguistic environment, virtually causes intact human beings to acquire one or more languages. The other conception also considers language to be a cognitive capacity which, no doubt, depends upon the brain, among other factors. This view holds that it is a mistake for any study of language to artificially contrive a distinction between some abstract notion of language, on the one hand, and language use, on the other, and then estrange the one from the other, treating the abstraction as fundamental. The former vision is that of Noam Chomsky and the latter vision is that of the Oxford linguist Roy Harris; and they are seen by their respective advocates as being mutually incompatible (in principle) in their aims for linguistic analysis. But what is most interesting about these two ostensibly incompatible conceptions of language and linguisitics is that some of what they both stand for seems to make sense--this, of course, intensifies the tension. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
