Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T04:25:52.331Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Syntax: Autonomous or Meaning Motivated?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Walter H. Hirtle
Walter H. Hirtle*
Affiliation:
Fonds Gustave Guillaume, Université Laval
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

… on ne peut rien savoir de scientifiquement valable concernant les actes d’expression si l’on n’a fait préalablement l’étude des actes de représentation dont ils émanent. (Gustave Guillaume 1954:28)

Perhaps the most remarkable trait of human language is the way it adapts spontaneously to the particular experience the speaker wants to express. Thanks to our mother tongue, the linguistic means are available to render more or less faithfully whatever we intend to communicate regardless of the particular nature or quality of the message. This is remarkable first of all because, in itself, raw experience is strictly private and incommunicable, a fact Northrop Frye (1971:124) depicts quite vividly in the following passage:

… it is clear that all verbal structures with meaning are verbal imitations of that elusive psychological and physiological process known as thought, a process stumbling through emotional entanglements, sudden irrational convictions, involuntary gleams of insight, rationalized prejudices, and blocks of panic and inertia, finally to reach a completely incommunicable intuition.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , June 1994 , pp. 95 - 111
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bloomfield, Leonard 1966. Language. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. [1933.]Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam 1962. Syntactic Structures. ’S-Gravenhage: Mouton. [1957.]Google Scholar
Darwin, Francis 1961. Reminiscences of My Father’s Everyday Life. Pp. 77–118 in Charles Darwin’s Autobiography. Darwin, Francis Sir, ed. New York: Collier Books.Google Scholar
Duffley, Patrick J. 1992. The English Infinitive. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Frye, Northrop 1971. Ethical Criticism: A Theory of Symbols. Pp. 1118–1147 in Critical Theory Since Plato. Adams, Hazaro, ed. New York: Harcourt.Google Scholar
Guillaume, Gustave 1954. Leçons de linguistique: 23 décembre 1954. Fonds Gustave Guillaume, Québec.Google Scholar
Guillaume, Gustave 1960. Leçons de linguistique: 28 janvier 1960. Fonds Gustave Guillaume, Québec.Google Scholar
Guimier, Claude 1988. Syntaxe de l’adverbe anglais. Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille.Google Scholar
Hirtle, Walter H. 1982. Number and Inner Space. Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval.Google Scholar
Hirtle, Walter H. 1988. Some and any: Exploring the System. Linguistics. 26:443–477.Google Scholar
Morris, Lori 1991. Gender in English: System and Uses. PhD thesis, Université Laval.Google Scholar
Reid, Wallis 1991. Verb and Noun Number in English. A Functional Explanation. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Stern, Gustaf n.d. Meaning and Change of Meaning. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. [1931.]Google Scholar
Valin, Roch 1981. Perspectives psychomécaniques sur la syntaxe. Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval.Google Scholar
Wickens, Mark A. 1992. Grammatical Number in English Nouns. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar