Cartesian Linguistics by Noam Chomsky

Author:Noam Chomsky
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780521708173
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2012-03-22T04:00:00+00:00

Similarly, the perception of speech is a matter of determining the unified and undifferentiated thought from the succession of words. “[The words] work together to produce the whole sense or the thought we wish to arise in the minds of those who read or hear them” (p. 185). To determine this thought, the mind must first discover the relations among the words of the sentence, that is, its syntax; it must then determine the meaning, given a full account of this deep structure. The method of analysis used by the mind is to bring together those words that are related, thus establishing a “meaningful order” [ordre significatif] in which related elements are successive. The actual sentence may, in itself, have this “meaningful order,” in which case it is called a “simple construction (natural, necessary, meaningful, assertive)” (p. 232). Where it does not, this “meaningful order” must be reconstructed by some procedure of analysis – it must be “re-established by the mind, which grasps the meaning [sens] only by this order” (pp. 191–192). To understand a sentence of Latin, for example, you must reconstruct the “natural order” that the speaker has in his mind (p. 196). You must not only understand the meanings of each word, but, furthermore,

you would not understand anything in it except by putting together in your mind the words in their relation to one another, and you can do this only after you have heard the whole sentence.

(pp. 198–199)

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