Procedural Syntax and Interactions

The view of NLs as codes mediating a mapping between “expressions” and the world is abandoned to give way to a view where utterances are seen as actions aimed to locally and incrementally alter the affordances of the context. Such actions employ perceptual stimuli composed not only of “words” and “syntax” but also elements like visual marks, gestures, sounds, etc. Any such stimuli can participate in the domain-general processes that constitute the “grammar”. The function of the grammar is dynamic categorisation of various perceptual inputs and their integration in the process of generating the next action steps. Given these assumptions, a challenge that arises is how to account for the reification of such processes as exemplified in apparent metarepresentational practices like quotation, reporting, citation etc. It is argued that even such phenomena can receive adequate and natural explanations through a grammar that allows for the ad hoc creation of occasion-specific content through reflexive mechanisms. 1 Language as action and grammar Standard models that describe natural languages (NLs) as representational systems belong to the ‘language-as-product’ paradigm (Clark, 1992), concerned with the definition of linguistic representations, the “product” of linguistic processing. In this tradition, it has been a standard assumption that NL properties should be explained by reifying NLs as abstract codes, mapping forms (strings of symbols) to propositional intentions. However, a substantial amount of evidence indicates that NL use substantially affects NL structuring indicating an alternative characterisation: within a ‘language as action’ paradigm, NL properties can be explicated as coinciding with those of human action; an agent’s linguistic actions are structured sequentially, directed by predictions of upcoming inputs, interleaved and interacting with other activities and agents. Accordingly, in everyday conversation, utterances are not expected to display evidence of necessary hierarchical constituency, e.g. sentential structuring: non-sentential utterances are adequate to underpin interlocutor coordination and all linguistic dependencies are resolvable across more than one turn: (1) Angus: But Domenica Cyril is an intelligent and entirely well-behaved dog who Domenica: happens to smell [radio play, 44 Scotland Street] In such cases, postulating a notion of wellformedness based on a code licensing units ranging over strings of words, as an independent level of structuring, impedes a natural account of such phenomena. This is because joining overt forms together often results in illformedness or misleading interpretations: (2) A: I heard a bang. Did you hurt B: myself? No, but Mary is in a state Moreover, at the level of semantics/pragmatics of dialogue, the issue of recoverability of propositional intentions is also problematic, e.g., in cases such as (5) where various speech acts are accomplished within the unfolding of a shared single proposition (see Gregoromichelaki et al. (2011)): (3) Jack: I just returned Kathy: from . . . Jack: Finland. [Lerner (2004)] (4) Eleni: A: Are you left or Yo: Right-handed. [natural data] (5) Hester Collyer: It’s for me. Mrs Elton the landlady: And Mr. Page? Hester Collyer: is not my husband. But I’d rather you think of me as Mrs. Page. [The Deep Blue Sea (film)] This endemic context-sensitivity and situatedness of NL use is indicative of the fact that both content and structure are emergent products of the processes and practices underpinning human interaction. For these reasons, the more general approach to NL analysis argued for here revolves around the idea that structures, objects, concepts, concrete reality (and even the individual self) can all be taken as metaphysically emergent categories with processes, mechanisms, and change as ontologically primary.