What's My Philosophy of Language? 1. Chomsky

Aspects of the Theory of Syntax by Noam Chomsky




Note: I haven't actually read this book, but I just got through the excerpt included in Critical Theory Since 1965 and I wanted to set down my thoughts.

In the first section of his book, Chomsky develops the idea of a “deep structure” within the mind that helps us generate language. Only this essentially rationalist approach (modeled with mathematics) can explain how we produce and understand infinitely many sentences, for empiricist approaches oversimplify the complex, active agency of the mind in acquiring language. Chomsky’s theory of language thus figures a debate between two theories of knowledge acquisition. I’ll need to think a lot more on where I should take this idea in my own writing about culture.

Noam Chomsky’s central interest is in how our language abilities develop as the consequence of principles deeply inherent in who we are as human organisms:

[I:]t seems reasonable to suppose that a child cannot help constructing a particular sort of transformational grammar to account for the data presented to him, any more than he control his perception of solid objects or his attention to line and angle. Thus it may well be that the general features of language structure reflect, not so much the course of one’s experience, but rather the general character of one’s capacity to acquire knowledge – in the traditional sense, one’s innate ideas and innate principles.

What is most surprising, and most compelling, about Chomsky’s opening chapter is that he derives this plan to study the “deep structure” of the mind’s language acquisition ability from 17th century rationalist philosophy. Chomsky’s impressive reading in this area shows the predominance of the thesis that what Chomsky calls “the acquisition of knowledge” is not a simple matter of perceiving external objects, but the active application of “the innate vigour and activity of the mind itself.” (Cudworth 1731, p. 49 of Adams and Searle). Descartes was far from alone, and thus not entirely original, in this line of thought.

Chomsky locates his own investigation in the deep structures of language acquisition in rationalism to contrast it with behavior scientific approaches the he correspondingly locates in “empiricism:” which models the mind as a rather simple “device:”

…it assumes that the device has certain analytical data-processing mechanisms or inductive principles of a very elementary sort, for example, certain principles of association, weak principles of “generalization” involving gradients along the dimensions of the given quality space, or, in our case, taxonomic principles of segmentation and classification…

Chomsky’s big problem is that the empiricist view makes dogmatic presumptions about these interior mental processes.

It’s clear that Chomsky’s line of thinking has implications far beyond the acquisition of language, which is now no more than a figure for an investigation of the human mind. Chomsky defends Leibniz’s wonderful metaphor of the mind, not as tabula rasa, but as veined marble, with the ideas of the mind, the mind’s output, shaped and determined in part by the veins of the marble.

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The Struggle to Read, pt. MCMLXX: Dictionary Work

Snippet from my dictionary work, 5/4

I'm really struggling to get time to read and write as I finish up this class I'm teaching, along with other duties, and of course my normal lazy leisurely activities. I haven't done such a good job since Thursday, but I did re-discover the need to consult dictionaries.

"Dictionary work" is becoming a household term. As in,

A. : "Oh I do want to watch that Cromwell film. I suppose not tonight...?"

J. : "Sure we can watch it. Just let me have the next 15 minutes for some dictionary work."

This works splendidly as a way to get 15 minutes. When it comes to crafting sentences or reading anything seriously, 15 minutes is a laughable amount of time. But when it comes to dictionary work, 15 minutes can be a great amount of time to force yourself to look up the list of terms you've circled as you've read through a chapter or essay.

There's a bit of useful tension in this activity. I might come across terms like "push-knock," tuiqiao 推敲 that really can't be defined without telling a little story. And in the course of the story, we must needs learn quite a bit about the context in which this term is used. The term itself stands for a story that tells you how to use the term. That fascinates me to no end!

But I have only 15 minutes. I must get through the dictionary work to the end so that:

a. I know all the new words in the piece that I didn't know before.
b. I can use my vocab list to write, later on. The writing will come later on.

So. It took longer than it should have, but I finished the dictionary work for Yang Jiang's essay "The Experience of Failure: On Translation." It was a fine piece that I hope to write about in a chapter on Yang Jiang's methods of translation. Now, on to the next thing!

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Classical Chinese: Rouzer, Lesson 1

Liu Xiang 劉向, Archivist and Collector.

Rouzer, Paul. A New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, distributed by Harvard University Press, 2007. It's clear enough now that for my teaching and even my PhD work, I need better classical chops. I'm beginning at the beginning -- back to my teacher's basic textbook.

I have a recurring dream that I have to go back to elementary school, because it turns out I didn't actually finish some crucial credits. It's not entirely a nightmare, because I always imagine that I would do quite well in grade school, seeing as how I spell and write sentences at or above my grade level. Reading this book from the beginning, I get that feeling again. The first few lessons at least are quite easy, but of course they are also rabbit holes as well -- practically any line of classical Chinese, no matter how short or seemingly insignificant, seems capable of supplying adventures of the literary and linguistic kind.

Lesson 1: A Few Proverbs

知命者不怨天，知己者不怨人

He who knows Fate does not complain to Heaven; he who knows himself does not complain to men.

禍生於欲得，福生於自禁；聖人以心導耳目，小人以耳目導心。

Bad fortune is born of the desire for gain; good fortune is born of self restriction. The sage uses the mind to guide ear and eye; the inferior person uses ear and eye to guide the mind.

為善者天報以德，為不善者天報以禍。

Those who are good, Heaven repays with inner virtue; those who are not good, Heaven repays with bad fortune.

A Few Notes:

Proverb 1

知命者不怨天，知己者不怨人

He who knows Fate does not complain to Heaven; he who knows himself does not complain to men.

The term yuan 怨, which I translate here as the simple verb "complain," is also sometimes translated as "rancor," and refers to the deep indignation of a person who has not got what they want -- the classic example is the Confucian whose king will not listen to his advice. Yuan-rancor is a fraught concept because it demands expression but can only remain honorable if it is not whining. Hence the virtuous trait yuan'er bu nu 怨而不怒, to have rancor without complaint. This proverb perhaps gives us more clarification of yuan-rancor: its expression as a frustrating song to Heaven must mean that the singer does not "know" Fate; that is to say, he is not resigned to the workings of Fate, but has a strong desire to establish his own will.

In the second statement, whining is suspicious activity because there is the distinct possibility that the truly knowledgeable person would know to blame only himself. I could imagine arguing that a person of true understanding could at all times see that the decisions they have made have got them to this imperiled state, and so that person would not blame anyone else for his problems.

One sort of wants to link these statements together: on the one hand, you should not blame Heaven since Fate is fickle and everything crashes down at some point anyway. And on the other hand, you are most likely a big factor in any bad situation that arises in your life, so you should not whine about yourself too much. There is a strong sense of "shut up or put up," of learning to simply bear adversity in good form, without whining.

Proverb 3:

為善者天報以德，為不善者天報以禍。

Those who are good, Heaven repays with inner virtue; those who are not good, Heaven repays with bad fortune.

As we saw in the second proverb, "bad fortune" 禍 is more likely to be opposed with good fortune, but here it is paired with de, one of those rich philosophical terms whose meaning has been the subject of conversation for thousands of years. I haven't read Benjamin Hoff's book The Te of Piglet yet, but this proverb gives me a sudden desire to do so, because I think Hoff may have been on the right track by associating De (="Te") with the smallness, modesty, and general self-abnegation of Piglet. Hoff's message, I presume, is that we should all be a little like Piglet. Reading liberally, we might have it that in this proverb, the term shan 善, "good," describes the basic motivation to improve the self in an honest way, and the Chinese opinion is that the virtues of smallness, modesty and more generally the ability to adjust to the situation at hand will be the result of this basic good motive.

A little context:

The Shuo yuan 說苑, or "Garden of sayings," is a first-century BCE compilation by the great archivista Liu Xiang. To Liu Xiang, working hard every day in the Han Imperial Library, the work must have been like so many files that I have created to store little stories, images, sayings -- snippets, really -- that don't seem to go anywhere else but somehow seem to the reader who encounters them that they should not be lost, that they have some utility, either as wisdom or as records, but always because they bring the past back to life.

If you go over to The Chinese Text Project, a tremendous undertaking by Donald Sturgeon (thanks, Mr. Sturgeon!) you can see the entire text of the "Garden." You will see first of all that it is divided into twenty sections; all of these proverbs come from the 16th section, titled Tan cong 談叢, or "Grove of conversation." This metaphor of a garden, which contains little "groves," seemed whimsical to me at one point, and then quaint later, but Pauline Yu points out that it is actually a sophisticated design principle:

...[I]n fact, in the Chinese tradition if a large collection of works by more than one author is not called a "grove of letters" (wen lin 文林), then it will more than likely be named some variety of "literary garden" (wen yuan 文苑). Anthologies, indeed, are in many respects very much like gardens, for they are usually carefully designed, with individual works or plants selected and ordered according to a particular scheme or sequence. (from "Charting the Landscape of Chinese Poetry")

I unfortunately do not know much about the "Garden of sayings," and so won't go into the possible schemes and sequences in it here -- though I really feel like doing that right now rather than working on my dissertation.

Section 16, "Grove of conversation," has 74 short texts, all of which seem to be proverbs or long paragraphs of proverbs. Paul takes his first proverb from entry 22, which is the longest of them all:

無不為者，無不能成也；無不欲者，無不能得也。眾正之積，福無不及也；眾邪之積，禍無不逮也。力勝貧，謹勝禍，慎勝害，戒勝災。為善者天報以德，為不善者 天報以禍。君子得時如水，小人得時如火。謗道己者，心之罪也；尊賢己者，心之力也。心之得，萬物不足為也；心之失，獨心不能守也。子不孝，非吾子也；交不 信，非吾友也。食其口而百節肥，灌其本而枝葉茂；本傷者枝槁，根深者末厚。為善者得道，為惡者失道。惡語不出口，苟言不留耳；務偽不長，喜虛不久。義士不 欺心，廉士不妄取；以財為草，以身為寶。慈仁少小，恭敬耆老。犬吠不驚，命曰金城；常避危殆，命曰不悔。富必念貧，壯必念老，年雖幼少，慮之必早。夫有禮 者相為死，無禮者亦相為死；貴不與驕期，驕自來；驕不與亡期，亡自至。踒人日夜願一起，盲人不忘視。知者始於悟，終於諧；愚者始於樂，終於哀。高山仰止， 景行行止，力雖不能，心必務為。慎終如始，常以為戒；戰戰慄慄，日慎其事。聖人之正，莫如安靜；賢者之治，故與眾異。

All of the statements here seem to be proverbs, though there a fun and interesting variation in their quality. I'm out of time right now, but I will make an exercise out of translating each of these little proverbs in turn. To begin:

無不為者，無不能成也；無不欲者，無不能得也。

He who has nothing that he does not do has nothing he cannot complete; he who has nothing he does not want has nothing he cannot obtain.

He who tries it all can finish it all; he who desires it all can get it all.

The first translation is an effort to represent the literal meaning of the Chinese, which applies double negatives and nominalization to achieve a Yoda-like effect of wisdom. In the second, I try to rewrite it as a proverb more congenial to Western standards (suggestions eagerly accepted).

This first proverb seems a little unwise, doesn't it? Unless I've made some major mistake (quite possible), it seems to recommend that we should be infinitely ambitious and greedy. I suppose it was intended to be spoken to lazy boys who are too self-satisfied, but still, I can't imagine ever using this proverb.

More to come!
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一本書

沒事之士

我妹妹送我愛人這本書，書裡有她寫的筆記，說說什麼”本書當然是垃圾文學，不過閱讀的時候我會笑出來。希望你也這樣欣賞。“我一開始立刻覺得起來本書不值得讀下去，因為真的是垃圾文學。但是我那一天要到老家去，坐飛機看垃圾文學輕輕松松，我碰到這個舒服的感覺了就決定了看下去。

我閱讀了這個長篇小說三分之一才發現了主角”沒事之士“("Sir Apropos of Nothing")怎麼能夠引起一種年輕人的注意。小說的背景是封建社會，人人都保持“忠”(honor)這一纇得道德，但是主角跟一般得年輕人一樣都不服從傳統的道德。主角不服從而住封建社會的矛盾是諷刺幽默的來由。

等一下讀完就會繼續談我的反應。
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Reading Group: The Ricci Map

Illustration: "Conception of Heaven and Earth," an inset on the first panel of the map. The three disks described in the passage below are clearly visible here.

Our school has come into possession of a huge, 1602 world map by Matteo Ricci.

UPDATE: Today's New York Times profiles the map in its current exhibition space at the Library of Congress. Thanks to my new friend RAA for the link!

The piece is so large and sprawling that only when you hunker down and stare at it in detail does it start to become clear how staggering an accomplishment it is. What a testament to the Jesuit passion for knowledge and craftsmanship! Surely this adds powerfully, or could have, to the Chinese sense of self?

Below the fold, my in-progress look at the document.


A digital copy of the map is available here.

A simpler, single-file version is on Wikipedia. I'm working on getting a printout of this. The text of the colophon seems to be on Wikipedia as well, juan 75 in a larger document called "Gazetteer of Maps of Seas and States" 海國圖誌.

Ann points out that Prof. Kenneth Ch'en wrote a paper on the subject back in 1939:

Ch'en, Kenneth and Matteo Ricci. "Matteo Ricci's Contribution to, and Influence on, Geographical Knowledge in China." Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 59, No. 3 (Sep., 1939), pp. 325-359. (My notes on that here)

Our little group set to work to translate from the beginning of the colophon. Here's our progress so far:

◎國地總論中（原無今補）○利瑪竇《地圖說》

General Statement on States and Regions (Original, without modern supplement)

From Matteo Ricci, Sayings on Maps 地圖說


地與海本是圓形而合為一球，居天球之中，形（誠）如雞子，黃在青內。有謂地為方者，乃語其定而不移之性，非語其形體也。天既(槩)包地，則彼此相應。

Earth and sea originally are round in shape and matched to make one globe which resides in the center of the Heavenly Globe, in form like a chicken's egg, the yellow inside of the clear. Those who call the earth "square" are speaking of its fixed certitude and immobile nature; they are not speaking of the shape of the body. Heaven covers and extends completely over the earth, and so each reflects the other.

故天有南北二極，地亦有之，天分三百六十度，地亦同之，天中有赤道，自赤道而南二十三度半為南道，赤道而北二十三度半為北道。按中國在北道之北


Thus it is that Heaven has the two Southern and Northern poles, and Earth also has them. Heaven is divided into 360 degrees, and Earth also shares this. The middle of Heaven has an Equator (chidao). From this Equator 23.5 half degrees south, we have the Southern Road. Twenty-three and a half degrees north of this Equator is called the Northern Road. The placement of China is to the north of the Northern Road.

日行赤道，則晝夜平，行南道則晝短，行北道則晝長。故天球有晝夜平圈列於中，晝短晝長二圈列於南北，以著日行之界，地球亦設三圈，對於下焉。

When then sun progresses at the Equator, day and night are equal. Progress along the Southern Road makes for days that are short; progress along the Northern Road makes for days that are long. Thus the Celestial Globe has a Disk of Equal Day and Night set in its midst, and and two Disks, one for shorter days and one for longer days, set in the south and north, respectively; these mark out the boundaries of the progression of the sun. The Earth also is set up with three disks, which face opposite too and are beneath these (?)

A close up of the "Equator, Line of Days and Nights Being Equal," just above the Southern Road, here labeled as "Line of Shorter Days."

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Sima Qian's letter, continued

I found a bit of time to work on my classical Chinese in the afternoon, after translating the latest article for pay and making a few lecture notes for tomorrow's class.

Zeng Jing (Ming dynasty), Portrait of Ge Yilong

僕賴先人緒業，得待罪輦轂下，二十餘年矣。所以自惟，上之不能納忠效信，有奇策材力之譽，自結明主；次之又不能拾遺補闕，招賢進能，顯巖穴之士；外之不能備行伍，攻城野戰，有斬將搴旗之功；下之不能積日累勞，取尊官厚祿，以為宗族交遊光寵。四者無一，遂苟合取容，無所短長之效，可見於此矣。

Your servant depends on the accumulated work of his late father, having obtained the wait for punishment under the royal carriage for more than twenty years now. This is why I think of this: First of all I was not able to bring in loyalty with utmost confidence, [nor] to have a reputation for marvelous strategems or courage, [nor] in recommending enlightened rulers. Second, there was also no way to make good on omissions, to repair the gaps, [nor] have I sought worthy men to advance their abilities, [nor] brought to light good men from caves on high. Third, I was not able to take a place within the ranks of soldiers, attacking castles or making war in the wilderness, [nor] did I ever make an attack that destroyed a general and captured his flag. Lastly, I could never accumulate days of exhausting labor. I [never] took a respected office with ample salary, [never] made my clan or my friends any glory or any favorites. Of these four, not one; so following, that I improperly took my shelter [even though] I lack any accomplishments, small or large -- you can see from this!

The passage about Sima Qian's sense of failure is especially difficult because Sima Qian does not provide enough negative particles; the reader should tell from context that Sima Qian is speaking in a completely self-deprecatory way. Watson n. 112 on p. 216 also refers us to a nice passage in which Sima Qian establishes the "five merits" of a successful man:

太史公曰：古者人臣功有五品，以德立宗廟定社稷曰勳，以言曰勞，用力曰功，明其等曰伐，積日曰閱。

The Grand Historian remarks: In ancient times men-subjects of merit held five grades. Establishing their clan temples and certifying their sacrificial altars by means of their inner virtue was called xun 勳, "meritorious service." By means of words is called lao 勞 "labor." Using strength is called gong 功 "achievement." Enlightening one's rank is called fa 伐 "eminence." Accumulation of days is called yue 閱 "experience."(Historical records, juan 18, "Table of Gaozu's subjects of merit")

Of particular interest to me here is the proof of the idea that Sima Qian constructs values for himself when he constructs the values of others. He measures himself against the successful government servants of the past, and feels keenly the lack of the values he finds in others.

Sources:

Watson, Burton. Ssu-Ma Chʻien, Grand Historian of China. New York: Columbia University Press, 1958, pp. 57-67 and notes pp. 207-220.

Ban Gu and Yan Shigu. Han Shu. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, ?, vol. 9, pp. 2725-2736. This is one of those editions with commentary drawn from a variety of places, yet it remains extremely difficult to make anything out. At least the typeface comes in a suitably large size. The edition that Watson uses is the 1900 edition of Wang Xianqian Link王先謙 (1842-1918) which seems to be available here: TC Wilson Library East Asian AC149 .K9x v.384-389

http://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/報任安書 [last accessed Nov. 10] I'm always pleased to find a whole version on Wikisource -- good formatting for cutting and pasting and for printing.

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Learning about Language Learning

What is best way to teach Chinese?

Contained here are a few texts glimpsed while I edit a Chinese student's masters thesis in language education:


One reference is to:

Harrison, I. (1996). Look who's talking now: Listening to voices in curriculum renewal. In K.M. Bailey & D. Nunan (Eds.), Voices from the language classrooms (pp. 283-303). New York: Cambridge University Press

points to other essays of interest from that volume:









Some volumes of what has been "an emerging field" since 1996:





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Reading Group: Legal History

One of the most worthwhile things that A. does is hold a weekly classical Chinese reading group in the evenings. This week we read from texts from one of my classmates, Hu Xiangyu, who studies Chinese legal history. One paragraph of Chinese translations of Manchu customary law was actually not all that difficult, if a bit fragmented ("barbarian," says Xiangyu).

Rule of Law

A few terms I learned that I thought were interesting:

牛綠額真: Niru captain. Niru is a basic unit of the Manchu bannermen, aristocratic warrior dudes. Barbarian samurai of the north. You wouldn't want to mess with these guys, especially in the mid-17th century, when they honed their fighting skills to such a level that taking down the Ming dynasty was no problem for them.

私分: an "illicit" share in ill-begotten goods. Not a terribly significant legal term, but a reminder of the frought history of the word 私, private, "self." More to come on that one.

身價: Body price. Among the Manchus, at least, every life has a price.

慎重獄情之意: to deal with a legal case with all due solemnity, lit. "deal cautiously and properly, knowing the feeling of prison."

明允: justice. It's compelling to see that early on there was a legal term that seems to correspond with the modern sense of justice.

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