Barbieri Marcello
Dipartimento di Morfologia ed Embriologia, Via Fossato di Mortara 64a, 44121, Ferrara, Italy.
Biosystems. 2020 Apr;190:104100. doi: 10.1016/j.biosystems.2020.104100. Epub 2020 Jan 22.
Traditional linguistics was based on the idea that language is an activity that links sounds and meaning, an idea that has been referred to as 'the code view of language' because codes are the most familiar processes that generate meaning. Ever since the work of Noam Chomsky, however, this view has been increasingly replaced by 'the syntax view of language', the idea that children learn a language because they have an innate mechanism that allows them to grasp the syntax of whatever language they grow up with. This innate mechanism has been given various names - first Universal Grammar, then Language Acquisition Device (LAD), and finally Faculty of Language - but despite decades of research attempts there still is no evidence that such a device actually exists. At the same time, it has become increasingly clear that codes are not the sole processes that generate meaning. Another such process is the ability of higher animals to interpret what goes on in the world, and interpretation is different from coding because it is not based on fixed rules but on a process that Charles Peirce called abduction. This allows us to generalize the code view of language into the semantic view of language, a theory which maintains that language is primarily a semantic activity that gives meaning to sounds either by codes or by processes of interpretation. This view, furthermore, gives us a new theoretical framework for studying the origin of language without resorting to any deus ex machina device. In this framework the origin of language is compared with the origin of life and the origin of mind, because those mega transitions generated the three great families of codes that we find in Nature - the organic codes, the neural codes and the cultural codes - and it is possible that a comparative study allows us to catch a glimpse of the mechanisms that gave origin to language.
传统语言学基于这样一种观点，即语言是一种将声音和意义联系起来的活动，这种观点被称为“语言的代码观”，因为代码是最常见的产生意义的过程。然而，自诺姆·乔姆斯基的著作问世以来，这种观点逐渐被“语言的句法观”所取代，即儿童学习语言是因为他们有一种内在机制，使他们能够掌握他们成长过程中所使用语言的句法。这种内在机制有各种各样的名称——先是普遍语法，然后是语言习得装置（LAD），最后是语言官能——但尽管经过了几十年的研究尝试，仍然没有证据表明这样一种装置实际存在。与此同时，越来越明显的是，代码并不是产生意义的唯一过程。另一个这样的过程是高等动物解释世界上所发生事情的能力，而解释不同于编码，因为它不是基于固定规则，而是基于查尔斯·皮尔斯所称的溯因过程。这使我们能够将语言的代码观推广为语言的语义观，该理论认为语言主要是一种语义活动，通过代码或解释过程赋予声音意义。此外，这种观点为研究语言的起源提供了一个新的理论框架，而无需借助任何解围之神的装置。在这个框架中，语言的起源与生命的起源和心智的起源相比较，因为那些重大转变产生了我们在自然界中发现的三大代码家族——有机代码、神经代码和文化代码——而且通过比较研究有可能让我们瞥见语言起源的机制。
