Fodor Concepts Where cognitive science went wrong

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inferential patterns (39). So Jackendoff accounts for [the univocality of
keep in J1 J4] by claiming that they are each realizations of the basic
conceptual functions (specified by the putative definition) (37). What
accounts for the differences among them is a semantic field feature that
designates the field in which the Event [to which the analysis of keep
refers] . . . is defined (38). So if we assume that keep has a definition, and
that its definition is displayed at some level of linguistic/cognitive
representation, then we can see how it can be true both that keep means
what it does and that what it means depends on the semantic field in which
it is applied.8
So much for exposition. I claim that Jackendoff s account of polysemy
offers no good reason to think that there are definitions. As often happens
in lexical semantics, the problem that postulating definitions is supposed
to solve is really only begged; it s, as it were, kicked upstairs into the
metalanguage. The proposed account of polysemy works only because it
7
This analysis couldn t be exhaustive; cf. keep an appointment/ promise and the like.
But perhaps keep is ambiguous as well as polysemous. There s certainly something
zeugmatic about He kept his promises and his snowshoes in the cellar .
8
On the West Coast of the United States, much the same sort of thesis is often held in
the form that lexical analysis captures the regularities in a word s behaviour by exhibiting a
core meaning together with a system of metaphorical extensions. See, for example, the
putative explanation of polysemy in Lakoff (1988) and in many other treatises on cognitive
semantics . As far as I can tell, the arguments against Jackendoff that I m about to offer
apply without alteration to Lakoff as well.
Chaps. 3 & 4 11/3/97 1:11 PM Page 51
The Linguist s Tale 51
takes for granted a theoretical vocabulary whose own semantics is, in the
crucial respects, unspecified.9 Since arguments from data about polysemy
to the existence of definitions have been widely influential in linguistics,
and since the methodological issues are themselves of some significance,
I m going to spend some time on this. Readers who are prepared to take
it on faith that such arguments don t work are advised to skip.
The proposal is that whatever semantic field it occurs in, keep always
means (expresses the concept) CAUSE A STATE THAT ENDURES
OVER TIME. Notice, however, that this assumption would explain the
intuitive univocality of keep only if it s also assumed that CAUSE ,
STATE , TIME , ENDURE , and the rest are themselves univocal
across semantic fields. A s always entailing B doesn t argue for A s being
univocal if B means sometimes one thing and sometimes another when A
entails it. So, then, let s consider the question whether, for example,
CAUSE is univocal in, say, CAUSE THE MONEY TO BE IN
SUSAN S POCKET and CAUSE THE CROWD TO BE HAPPY ? My
point will be that Jackendoff is in trouble whichever answer he gives.
On the one hand, as we ve just seen, if CAUSE is polysemic, then
BLAH, BLAH, CAUSE, BLAH, BLAH is itself polysemic, so the
assumption that keep always means BLAH, BLAH, CAUSE, BLAH,
BLAH doesn t explain why keep is intuitively univocal, and Jackendoff
looses his argument for definitions. So, suppose he opts for the other horn.
The question now arises what explains the univocality of CAUSE across
semantic fields? There are, again, two possibilities. Jackendoff can say that
what makes CAUSE univocal is that it has the definition BLAH, BLAH,
X, BLAH, BLAH where X is univocal across fields. Or he can give up
and say that what makes CAUSE univocal across fields isn t that it has a
univocal definition but just that it always means cause.
Clearly, the first route leads to regress and is therefore not viable: if the
univocality of CAUSE across fields is required in order to explain the
univocality of keep across fields, and the univocality of X across fields
9
Examples of this tactic are legion in the literature. Consider the following, from
Higginbotham 1994. [T]he meanings of lexical items systematically infect grammar. For
example . . . it is a condition of object-preposing in derived nominal constructions in English
that the object be in some sense affected in the events over which the nominal ranges: that
is why one has (1) but not (2) (renumbered):
1. algebra s discovery (by the Arabs)
2. *algebra s knowledge (by the Arabs).
Note that in some sense is doing all the work. It is what distinguishes the striking claim that [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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