Principia Linguistica (original) (raw)

2008

Language is a biological, pragmatic, evolutionary phenomenon. Performance creates competence, dialog creates language, discourse creates grammar, deixis precedes conceptualization - not the other way round. Extinct languages are deprived of pragmatics, not of grammar. Living ones, including pidgins and creoles, exist in dialog, no matter how elaborate or not is they grammar.Grammar is a means, not an end nor an organ: both at the beginning and end there is communication. Generative grammar explains language as accurately as Ptolemaic Astronomy explains the Universe. Linguistics should take the pragmatic turn (Quine, Rorty...). Further developments are displayed on http://kirtchuk.wikidot.com/start Keywords : accusativity - actancy - Afroasiatic - Amerind – anaphore = Intra-Discursive deixis - Aramaic - autopoiesis - biology - biphonematism of the Semitic root – Bolinger - Bühler - cognition - complexity - context - creologeny - Darwin - deixis - diachrony - diaglottics - dialogue ( > categorisation / conceptualization) - human dimension of language - dynamics: interlocution > language faculty, discourse > grammar, parole > langue, praxis > system - epigeny - ergativity - evolution - expressivity - focalization – Fonagy - function – Givón - grammaticalization - Greenberg - Guarani - Hebrew - Hispanic - interactive nature of language - internal hierarchy of the utterance – interaction - iconicity - Indo-european - intonation - Lamarck - languaging - loanability scale – Lieberman - Maturana (& Varela) - multiple encoding - noun - non-person - onomatopoetics - ontogeny - paleontology - phylogeny - Pilagá - pragmatics - prosody - proto-sapiens - Quechua - reduplication - scalarity - subsegmentals, segmentals & cosegmentals - Semitics - Spanish - taboo - topicalization - typology - valency - verb - zero marking