Daniel Wedgewood: Degrees of abstraction in grammar - a pragmatic procedural perspective

Given the wide array of frameworks used in the study of grammar, it might seem that linguists could hardly disagree more over the basic assumptions underlying their analytical approaches. However, in this talk I raise the possibility that, even across major theoretical divides like 'functionalist' versus 'formalist', linguistic theory tends to be located within a small part of the space of possible approaches - and perhaps not the most appropriate part, considering what we hope to achieve.

My contention is that models of grammar tend to share a particular degree of abstraction, with grammatical objects characterised as pairs of form and meaning. I contrast this with a different kind of approach, one that directly characterises the process of mapping forms to meanings. While at one level this constitutes a mere difference of perspective, I will argue that it is one that has crucial methodological implications, with real consequences for the likely output of analysis. In particular, the possibility of incorporating insights from pragmatic theory into grammatical analysis is hampered by conventional models of grammar but is naturally facilitated if grammar is modelled as part of the overall process of interpretation. One result of this is that conventional frameworks tend to be biased against semantic underspecification analyses.

I will support these arguments with considerations of abstraction and theoretical perspective in other sciences, and with a piece of linguistic analysis: I suggest that the so-called 'focus position' of Hungarian is best analysed as a grammatically encoded procedure - which then obviously calls for a procedural analysis of grammar and interpretation.