An On-Line Interview with Noam Chomsky: On

the nature of pragmatics and related issues

Brigitte Stemmer
Centre de Recherche, Institut universitaire de griatrie de Montral, Canada
and Lurija Institute for Rehabilitation and Health Sciences at the University of
Konstanz,
Kliniken Schmieder, Allensbach, Germany
e-mail: brigitte.stemmer@uni-konstanz.de
When the idea of the special issue on pragmatics was born, so was the idea to invite
two scientists who have had a tremendous impact on the fields of linguistics and
pragmatics: Noam Chomsky and John R. Searle. Both assured me that the project
sounded extremely interesting and that they would love to be part of the project if it
werent it for the fact that one of them was, meanwhile, diving into different spheres
and the other one committed for a long time to come, with deadlines looming and
sometimes passing at a depressing rate. I was not able to compete with the spheres
but thanks to modern technology, looming deadlines could be beaten: some authors,
the editor of the special issue as well as the editor of Brain and Language framed
some questions which were sent to and readily discussed by Noam Chomsky via email.

QUESTION 1: How do you see contemporary clinical neuropsychological research

influencing your views on language processing?

N.C.: The question is hard to answer because I have never had any particular views
of language processing beyond what seems fairly obvious: that if Jones has the
language L, then Jones's language processing accesses L; thus in processing
language, I access a variety of English, not Japanese. Here I understand L (for me,
some variety of English) to be an attained state of a genetically-determined faculty of
language FL (I overlook here irrelevant real world complexities, e.g., the fact that no
one is "monolingual" in this sense).

I follow the processing literature to see what I can learn from it about language
processing and about the nature of language, of course with particular questions in
mind: e.g., how apparent properties of language are "apportioned" among processing
systems and the system L that they access.

QUESTION 2: (a) Do you think that language is a module in a strictly Fodorian sense of
the term, i.e., as a "stupid" satellite of a general-purpose central machinery, where
"real intelligence" would lie?
(b) Do you think that communication is, or at least could be, a competence in his
(or Marr's) terms?
Both questions relate to the position you might take on the domain-generality vs.
domain-specificity debate. It seems to me that your idea of "mental organs"
resembles the latter rather than the former position, but you seem to me rather

obscure on the whole topic of the architecture of the mind. If I am right, then when
you (in a marginal remark in one of your books) talk of "communicative
competence", you might mean something similar to what I mean: a mental organ,
but an inferential, non-modular one. Else, you would take a Fodorian position, and
should therefore conceive of an intrinsically inferential process like communication
as performance (i.e., as a task of the central system) rather than competence.

N.C.: Little can be said with any confidence about "the architecture of the mind," and
for that reason I (purposely) remain "rather obscure on the whole topic." I have
expressed my own (of course tentative) assumptions many times, for example in the
opening parts of _Reflections on Language_ (1975, RL). The assumption here is that
the architecture of the mind is modular in the sense that Randy Gallistel recently
described as "the norm these days in neuroscience." In Gallistel's words, in all
animals learning is based on specialized "learning mechanisms," "instincts to learn"
in specific ways, these being essentially "organs within the brain [that] are neural
circuits whose structure enables them to perform one particular kind of
computation," as they do more or less reflexively apart from "extremely hostile
environments"; human language acquisition is instinctive in this sense, based on a
specialized "language organ." In _RL_, the "learning mechanisms" are called LT(O,D)
("learning theories" for organism O in domain D); one of them -- the one that
particularly concerns me -- is LT(Human, Language), the initial state of the human
faculty of language FL, the specialized "language organ" that attains various states
under the triggering and shaping effect of experience, e.g., the language L that Jones
has.

We can describe the initial state of LT(Human, Language) as a device that maps
experience into state L attained, hence a "language acquisition device" (LAD). The
existence of such LAD is sometimes regarded as controversial, or even as having
been disproved. If terms are being used in their technical sense, these conclusions
amount to saying that there is no dedicated "language module," in which case it
remains a mystery why my granddaughter's pet kitten (or chimpanzee, or whatever)
doesn't acquire a particular language just as she does, given essentially the same
experience. I doubt that anyone believes that; when investigated at all closely,
proposals about "general learning mechanisms" that apply to language seem to
presuppose extremely rich innate language-dedicated structure, often richer than
proposed in familiar linguistic theories (e.g., "irregular verb modules"). I know of no
approach to these matters, including the most extreme "radical behaviorist"
approaches, that does not presuppose (often tacitly) that a child can somehow
distinguish linguistic materials from the rest of the confusion, again presupposing FL,
hence LAD.

The way to make the general assumptions less obscure is to discover the nature of
the various specialized "learning mechanisms" -- the systems LT(O,D), in my
terminology -- among them the "language organ" FL, the states it can in principle
attain, the "neural circuits" involved, etc. That is also the way to arrive at one or
another "position...in the domain-generality vs. domain-specificity debate," a very
tentative position I would think, given the limits of current understanding. I concede
that I don't really understand what this debate is about in the way it is usually waged
(without my participation). There are very interesting questions about just what
might be specific to human language (part of LT(Human, Language), the dedicated
"learning mechanism" that is the "language organ"). These are the topics of inquiry in

all study of language and other cognitive systems that I know of. But I do not
understand the more general "debate" that seems to arouse much passion.

It could be that one of the systems that develops, either as a distinct module or a
component of others, is the kind of "communicative competence" that enables us to
use language coherently and in ways that are appropriate to situations. This seems
rather likely, for one reason, because of dissociations that have been discovered
(limited communicative competence along with rich language competence, etc.).
Whether this system, if it exists, is an "inferential, non-modular one" depends on the
facts of the matter: e.g., are the properties of "communicative competence" similar
to those of finding our way home when we come upon a detour? does
"communicative competence" function independently (or partly independently) of
general inferential capacities (if such exist)? There is evidence on these matters, and
interesting efforts to organize it systematically, but far too little is understood, as far
as I am aware, to take a confident stand. My own personal impression, for what it is
worth, is that talk of "general inferential or problem-solving capacities" tends to be
rather empty, and that when we investigate actual cases in one or another organism,
we find that specific mechanisms are assumed. But that's a matter for discovery, not
pronouncements.

It's perhaps worth adding that one should be careful not to be misled by idiosyncratic
informal usages. In particular, in English one uses the locutions "know a language,"
"knowledge of language," where other (even similar) linguistic systems use such
terms as "have a language," "speak a language," etc. That may be one reason why it
is commonly supposed (by English speakers) that some sort of cognitive relation
holds between Jones and his language, which is somehow "external" to Jones; or that
Jones has a "theory of his language," a theory that he "knows" or "partially knows."
The systematic ambiguity of the term "grammar" in technical linguistics, though
constantly emphasized, may also have contributed to such conclusions, along with
the fact that the term "language" of English (and related though typically not
identical concepts of other languages) is used in ways that involve sociopolitical,
teleological, and normative elements, colors on maps and stability of empires, etc.
One should not expect such concepts to play a role in systematic inquiry into the
nature, use, and acquisition of language, and related matters, any more than one
expects such informal notions as "heat" or "element" or "life" to survive beyond
rudimentary stages of the natural sciences.

Let's turn to questions (a) and (b).

With regard to (a), the notion of modularity discussed in _RL_ and elsewhere, and
explored in studies of FL and particular languages (states of FL, from my point of
view), is not inconsistent with Fodorian modularity but is a different notion. Fodorian
modularity is concerned primarily with input systems. In contrast, _RL_ modularity is
concerned with cognitive systems: specialized "learning mechanisms," their initial
states and states attained; and how input (perceptual) and output (language use)
systems access the states attained. Whether these input and output systems are
modular in Fodor's sense is a distinct question. Though related, the topics and
conceptions of modularity are different.

As Fodor puts the matter in his _Modularity of Mind_, "the perceptual system for a
language comes to be viewed as containing quite an elaborate theory of the objects
in its domain; perhaps a theory couched in terms of a grammar of the language." I
would prefer to rephrase this by saying that the perceptual system for Jones's
language L (a state of FL) accesses L. Theories of L (and FL) are what the linguist
seeks to discover; adapting traditional terms, the linguist's theory of Jones's L can be
called "a grammar of L," and the theory of FL can be called "universal grammar," but
it is the linguist, not Jones, who has a theory of L and FL. Jones has L, but no theory of
L (except what he may believe about the language he has, which has no privileged
status, any more than what he may believe about his visual system or problemsolving capacities.

When we look more closely, we see that more is involved here than choice of
terminology, but let us put that aside. Clearly the notions of modularity are different,
as are the questions raised, though they are not incompatible, except perhaps in one
sense: FL and L appear to be "central systems" in Fodor's framework, but the
assumption of _RL_ (and Gallistel's "norm of neuroscience") is that they are
distinctive components of the central "architecture of mind," so that the "central
systems" would not be unstructured -- what Fodor calls "Quinean and isotropic,"
andwhat Tirassa, if I understand him, calls "inferential, non-modular."

In any event, the concept of modularity I have discussed for the past 40 years (e.g.,
in _RL_) is definitely _not_ one that takes language (FL and its states) to be a
"stupid" satellite of a general-purpose central machinery, where "real intelligence"
would lie.' That would be a category mistake, conflating the perceptual system (the
Fodorian input module) with the cognitive system L it accesses (what Fodor calls the
"theory of the objects in its domain." I think this is explicit in _RL_ and elsewhere, and
I hope it is put as clearly as our limited understanding warrants.

Turning to (b), communication is an action, not a competence (whether the term

"competence" is being used in its technical or its informal sense). It's possible that a
form of "communicative competence" underlies the use of language for
communication (one of its many uses). As for Marr's famous three levels of analysis,
he was concerned with input-output systems (e.g., the mapping of retinal images to
internal representations). Language is not an input-output system. Accordingly,
Marr's levels do not apply to the study of language, though one could adapt them to
the very different problem of characterizing cognitive systems accessed in processing
and production.

QUESTION 3: What do you think of neurolinguistics these days?

N.C.: I share the general hope that new non-invasive technologies will make it
possible to circumvent, at least in part, the barriers to direct experiment. These
include the obvious ethical barriers, and the apparent biological isolation of the
human faculty of language in essential respects, which has rendered animal
experimentation pretty much irrelevant to the study of language (even putting aside
ethical barriers); to quote Gallistel again, "we may never be able to study the neural
basis of language perception in animals [let alone language as a cognitive system
accessed in language perception] for the same reason that you cannot use a
mammal to study the neural basis of polarization perception." New technologies hold
considerable promise, one hopes. That aside, more traditional neurolinguistic

inquiries continue to yield intriguing results. To mention one recently published

example, Yossi Grodzinsky and Lisa Finkel report finding a distinction between
dislocation of phrasal and of lexical categories in agrammatic Broca's aphasia, a
result that could relate to (still unpublished) ideas proposed at the borders of inquiry
into the nature of language. That's just one case, which happens to interest me
particularly.

More generally, I don't see any principled way to distinguish linguistics (meaning, the
branch of the study of language we are discussing here) from neurolinguistics, any
more than one can distinguish chemistry from physical chemistry in principle. These
may be useful distinctions for temporary purposes, but one looks forward to erosion
of such boundaries as understanding progresses. My own view has always been that
the part of the study of language relevant here is in principle part of human biology:
"biolinguistics," as some have called it.

QUESTION 4: (a) Levinson, in his book on pragmatics (1983), discusses the role of
pragmatics within linguistic theory. He argues that a general linguistic theory must
incorporate pragmatics as a component or level in the overall integrated theory: "In
order to construct an integrated theory of lingusitic competence, it is essential to
discover the logical ordering of compoentns or levels. For example, Chomsky has
elegantly argued that syntax is logically prior to phonology, in that phonological
descriptions require reference to syntactic categories, but not vice versa; syntax is
thus AUTONOMOUS with respect to phonology, and phonology (non-autonomous with
respect syntax) can be envisaged as taking a syntactic input, on the basis of which
phonological representations can be built up. Accepting for a moment this kind of
argument, the question is, is it possible to argue that there is some accepted
component of grammar that is non-autonomous with respect to pragmatics (i.e.
some component requiring pragmatic input)? If so, pragmatics must be logically prior
to that component, and so must be included in an overall theory of linguistic
competence." (p. 34).
What is your view on Levinson's argument?

(b) Do you think it is worthwhile to postulate a "neuro" aspect of pragmatics?

N.C.: As for (a), perhaps I should begin with some terminological/conceptual

clarification. My own view has always been stronger than what you quote from
Levinson: "a general linguistic theory must incorporate pragmatics" not only "as a
component or level in the overall integrated theory," but as a central and crucial
component (for irrelevant terminological reasons, I wouldn't call it a "level" in the
technical sense).

My first (non-)publication on these topics is a very long manuscript called _Logical

Structure of Linguistic Theory_ (1955, revised 1956 version published in part in
1975). Here, and in everything else I've written as far as I can recall, I used the term
"syntax" in its traditional (Peircean, Fregean, Carnapian, etc.) sense, and assumed a
kind of "use theory of meaning" (influenced at the time by the later Wittgenstein and
John Austin particularly). Thus by "syntax," I mean the study of symbolic systems,
including whatever computational/representational systems we take to be internal to

the mind/brain. That includes formal relations among the elements of these systems
(e.g., rhyme and entailment, insofar as these are formal relations among internal
symbolic objects), model-theoretic semantics (insofar as the models are considered
to be internal objects, i.e., "mental models" -- as in practice they are, in my opinion,
contrary to what is often asserted), formal semantics based on a relation R
(sometimes called "reference") holding between symbolic objects (e.g., between
"London" and its "semantic value," not an entity in the world, or even the world as we
conceive it to be, but of some internal system of thought that is itself related to the
world), etc. Continuing to take Jones's language L to be a state of FL, Jones uses the
syntactic objects of L in a variety of ways: internal thought (statistically by far the
most prevalent use, I suppose), maintaining personal relations, communication,
telling stories, etc. The study of such uses of language is "pragmatics," in a
conventional terminology. Whether there is also a semantics of natural language in
the traditional sense, based on a true reference relation between symbolic objects of
L and external objects (in the real world, or the external world as conceived and
imagined) seems to me an open question. I have always been rather skeptical, for
reasons discussed elsewhere. In any event, it is a matter for discovery, not
stipulation.

From this point of view, "pragmatics" must be a central component of any linguistic
theory that aims to be comprehensive.

To continue with terminology, I've used "syntax" in both a narrow and a broad sense.
The broad sense is the traditional one, just mentioned. The narrow sense is theoryinternal. Suppose we postulate that oe part -- call it NS -- of the internal syntactic
computational- representational) system of FL constructs syntactic objects that are
mapped to "phonetic form" (accessible to sensorimotor systems) and to "logical
form" (accessible to the systems of thought, conceptual-intentional systems). Then
"narrow syntax" is the study of NS. That's one usage, which (purposely) leaves open
many important questions, to be answered by empirical inquiry: e.g., where does
determination of quantifier scope or anaphoric relations enter into the broad syntax?
These empirical assumptions do hold that narrow syntax is "prior to phonology," in
that the objects constructed independently by NS are mapped to phonetic form by a
component of the syntax that we may call "phonology" (in a very general sense,
including morphological processes, and -- in my opinion -- operations that have the
properties of grammatical transformations). But these are empirical questions, which
are quite lively and controversial. No one can sensibly regard them as matters of
doctrine.

Suppose (as the question suggests) that we tentatively adopt empirical assumptions
of this nature. Then let us consider the question raised: "is it possible to argue that
there is some accepted component of grammar that is non-autonomous with respect
to pragmatics (i.e. some component requiring pragmatic input)," in which case
"pragmatics must be logically prior to that component, and so must be included in an
overall theory of linguistic competence"? I suppose it is possible to argue that the
computational/representational system accesses features of language use, though
what such a system would look like, I have no idea. Suppose, for example, we
consider the (plainly correct) fact that in a linguistic interchange, new/old information
is a matter of background that participants assume to be shared (what is sometimes
misleadingly called "discourse"; there need be no discourse in any significant sense
of that term). Suppose further (as appears to be correct) that old/new information
relates to "displacement effects" in narrow syntax. And suppose further (merely for

concreteness) that we take these displacement effects to be expressed in narrow

syntax by transformational operations. Should we then say that the operations of
object-shift, topicalization, etc., literally access shared background information? This
seems close to incoherent; any clarification of these intuitive ideas that I can think of
yields computational systems of hopeless scope, compelling us to try to formulate
what amount to "theories of everything" that cannot possibly be the topic of rational
inquiry (NB: not TOE in the technical sense of physics, which is a totally different
matter). A more reasonable approach, I think, is to take the operations to be
"autonomous," i.e., syntax in the broad sense, and to understand pragmatics to be a
theory concerned with the ways properties of expressions (such as displacement) are
interpreted by language-external (but person-internal) systems in terms of old/new
information. That leaves us with manageable and coherent questions. The conclusion
generalizes to other such matters, in my opinion. If that's correct, then syntax (broad
or narrow) will be "autonomous" of pragmatics -- though I might add that "autonomy
of syntax" is a term I do not think I have ever used, except in reaction to references
to some alleged "autonomy of syntax" thesis, sometimes attributed to me. There is a
one-sided debate about "autonomy of syntax," one-sided in that only critics of the
alleged thesis take part. There are a number of such debates, including the debate
over what critics call the "innateness hypothesis" (also often attributed to me, Fodor,
and others). I have no idea what the phrase is supposed to mean, and
correspondingly have never advocated any such hypothesis -- beyond the truism that
there is some language-relevant distinction, to be discovered, between my
granddaughter and her pet kitten (monkey, rock, etc.).

Should pragmatics "be included in an overall theory of linguistic competence"? We

seem to be back to terminology. As noted, I've always assumed that pragmatics is a
central part of general linguistic theory; my own view is rather extreme in this regard,
as just discussed. As for the term "competence," it has the informal meaning of
ordinary usage, and also a technical meaning, which is whatever its users assign to it
(as in the case of "tensor," "undecidability" in the technical sense, etc.). I am familiar
with only one technical sense, the one I've used for many years to mark the
conceptual distinction between what Jones knows and what Jones does (competence
vs. performance), a distinction that is not controversial. I introduced the technical
term in a (probably vain) effort to avoid pointless debate engendered by uncritical
use of the informal English notion "knowledge," or use of technical concepts of
knowledge introduced in the philosophical literature that diverge considerably from
informal usage (which is fine, as long as it is recognized clearly, in which case the
debates dissolve).

If we are using the term "competence" in my technical sense, then pragmatics is not
part of a theory of linguistic competence, for uninteresting terminological reasons. If
we are using the term "competence" in its ordinary English sense, then I suppose one
might say that pragmatics is part of linguistic competence, but the conclusion is
again uninteresting, merely a matter of terminology. I don't see any other way to
interpret the question. Perhaps I am missing the point.

Let's turn to (b): is it worthwhile to postulate a "neuro" aspect of pragmatics?' If

pragmatics is the study of use of language, then it has some basis in the human
organism, partly the brain (it presumably also includes much else, including gesture,
etc.). If that much is agreed, then we are postulating that brain mechanisms are

involved in pragmatics, including those that enter into organization of motor action,
perception, etc. One assumes that these include neural mechanisms crucially, though
perhaps there are other relevant brain mechanisms -- "brain" is an informal term.
Again, I don't really understand what it is at issue.

END of interview