Jerrold Katz
Jerrold Jacob Katz ( born 1932 in Washington, DC, USA, † February 7, 2001 in New York, NY) was an American philosopher and linguist.
Katz made in 1954 with a degree in philosophy at George Washington University. Over the next three years (1954-1956) he worked in the counterintelligence of the U.S. Army. At Princeton, he received his doctorate in 1960.
He first visited in 1963, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT ) as a research participant, but then rose to the rank of professor of philosophy. In 1975 he moved to the New York City University ("The Graduate Center of The City University of New York" ) and taught the subjects of philosophy and linguistics and also lectured at universities around the world.
Katz was a pioneer in the field of interpretive semantics and related philosophical aspects. Its publication had " Semantic Theory" ( Harper & Row, 1972) major influence on the philosophy, linguistics, psychology and cognitive science, just new. Overall, Katz wrote ten books and published more than seventy scientific publications.
The semantic theory
→ see also:
- Jerry Fodor and Noam Chomsky
- Semantic Theory and Transformational Grammar
- Linguistics Wars - Lakoff against Chomsky
Jerrold Katz published the semantic theory together with the cognitive scientist Jerry Fodor as a supplement to Noam Chomsky's version of the generative transformational grammar.
Prehistory
→ see also Konstituentenanalyse
Chomsky and his colleagues did not want to add to the large number of already existing language descriptions another, but they had the goal - in conjunction with the scientific knowledge of their time - to explain how the language system works, ie with which rules a speaker can formulate correct sentences and a hearer understands this. Prerequisite for such competence is the creativity of the speaker / listener: He can not just conventionally understandable sentences of a language nachzuformen and understand, but to form new each according to his needs and to decipher these previously unheard strings. The known rules allow therefore a projection onto infinitely many previously unknown combinations. As an explanation Fodor served imagination, responsible for these language skills are abstract structures of the language of the Spirit, which are localized in certain brain regions ( phrenology ): These transformations generated by the diverse structures and meanings of linguistic expressions. Fodor assumes a genetic predisposition, so each person can have these language skills. When learning to speak the child must acquire in their social environment, only the lexical items and morphemes, and bind them with the structures. As Chomsky was Fodor believes that the human brain operates similarly to a computer and that the processes can be written in mathematical formulas. So you can try by causal sequences and rules that language - and thus the process of speech production and understanding - simulate and model a universal base language for an ideal speaker / listener. Basic shape of the tree graph: The graph above shows the decomposition of a sentence in Chomsky Konstituentenanalyse - used in the computer science - mathematical symbols in graph theory used in conjunction with algorithms The be. In his early version of the generative transformational grammar Chomsky involve only the grammatical categories and relations of the sentence. The neglect of the meaning of the word has been criticized by various scientists. Therefore Katz and Fodor developed the theory of the semantic component. This model integrated Chomsky in his standard theory.
The model of semantic interpretation
Katz and Fodor put their research field once over the previous Chomsky grammar model ( parts of speech, sentence structure, etc ) from - and secondly in relation to the extra-linguistic contexts (such as the speech situation and the social context ), knowledge of which is essential for the understanding of many linguistic expressions and examines the linguistic pragmatists.
The upper limit set both that their model is unable to capture the way with its formal notation such as the understanding of a sentence is based on knowledge of external relationships. Katz / Fodor order to distance themselves from earlier notions of semantics, which raised these claims. By limiting only the knowledge of a speaker of its language ( linguistic competence ) to be determined. To be distinguished from their semantic theory, then the theory of speech production / voice recognition, which - taking into account psychological aspects such as the motivation and the current memory performance - explains how the rules are used in the real production. In this context, developmental factors, genetic susceptibility, cognitive learning processes and socialization conditions must be considered. , " As purchased or used " condition for such a model of speech production that seeks to clarify, however, was their theory of language, which examines "what is acquired and used ." Katz / Fodor thus see their semantic interpretation as the basis of a complete theory of language contexts.
The lower limit of the range of semantic theory they shall determine the competence of the participant's voice, which is not explainable by the grammar alone. They explain the difference by comparing a human with the deficits of a translation machine that the lexical entry each morpheme of a sentence - with a collection of possible meanings - mechanically assigns ( = grammar). To demonstrate Katz and Fodor, that it - at the right semantic interpretation - Application rules ( projection rules ) requires that - based on the grammatical and lexical features - select for the grammatical sentence structures the appropriate meanings. This competence is referred to as " ability to interpret sentences ." This content relationships, ambiguities, anomalies and paraphrases, etc. are found. With their semantic theory, they try to supplement Chomsky's system by the interpretation ability of the speakers explained, and this process is modeled. The set of rules that gives a meaning to the sentence ( semantic component) denote Katz / Fodor semantic interpretation.
As Katz / Fodor proceed with the modeling of this process is shown by the following example sentence: The man hits the colorful ball: After the pattern of the graph shown above, the sentence is broken down into its lexical and structural units to the words. In an extension of the tree graph Katz / Fodor enter all properties and the possible meanings of the words, such as ball and colorful:
Ball (1) [ N → concrete social activity → high → → Assembly for the purpose of dancing ..] ball (2) [ concrete physical object → N → → spherical to play ... ] ball (3) [ N → concrete physical object → solid projectile to spin using a → machine for use in the war .... ] colorful ( 1) [ adjective → Color → rich in terms of contrast and variety of bright colors < Physical Object v social activity > ... ] colorful ( 2) [ adjective → → judgmental has a distinctive character, vividness or picturesque < aesthetic object v social activity > ... ], etc. Katz / Fodor begin the process of interpretation at the lowest level ( ie with the NP within the VP) with the balance of the lexical entries of the individual ambiguous words and chains with respect to homonymy and tolerability (colored, colored ball → ball). The possibilities of meaning are combined with the help of projection rules in the parent node. The NP ( the colored ball ), about meeting with the predicate (V )
Meet [V → [ [ transitive ] ] → action → verb it instantaneity → → Intensity fails with a blow or determined by a projectile → somehow contextually ... ] in relation, again checks the various meanings, selects the fits (compatibility) and summarizes the amount of the derived branches in the VP- node together. In each case, the decision ( disambiguation ), which is semantically normal and abnormal falls. Finally, the NP (subject) the man with the VP is associated. With the projection of the top S - node semantic interpretation is complete.
The semantic relations rules can - as a complement to the process described above - can be formulated as follows - - simplified:
1 << S [ NP VP ] >> I (S ) = B [ I ( NP ), I ( VP )] ( verbalized: If S NP VP dominates the chain, then: The set contents stating that the content of NP causes the contents of VP, ie "The Man" is the actor )
2nd VP << [ V NP] >> I ( VP) = W [I (V ), I ( NP )] ( verbalized: If VP dominates the chain V NP, then: The VP- content indicates that the content of V is applied to the contents of the NP, that is, the operation of the meeting will affect the condition and movement of the ball )
3 NP << [ART N ] >> I ( NP) = I ( N) ( verbalized: If NP dominates the chain ART N, NP and N have the same content, ie: the category ART is no content assigned )
4 NP << [ (ART ) ADJ N ] >> I ( NP) = E [I (ADJ ), I ( N )] ( verbalized: If NP dominates the chain ART ADJ N, then is the content of ADJ in the relation E to content of N, that is, " colorful " a property of the ball )
In summary, the semantic interpretation process is in principle based on the sentence structure, ie the parts of the sentence and that in the Konstituentenstrukturbaum the information from the bottom up are compared with each other.
Discussion
→ see also The Linguistics Wars - Lakoff against Chomsky
In the field of linguistics criticism is that Katz / Fodor do not want to mathematically adequately model variable context and speech situation-dependent meanings of words and phrases and can: the delimitation of their theory with respect to the use of language in speech constellation and related fields between the speech participants is determined by the mathematical modeling and not from the comprehensive tasks of linguistics. This is a discussion about the algebraization from the philosophy of language, especially the logic taken. Both Katz / Fodor and Chomsky are bound to a view of science that deals in the tradition of Rudolf Carnap and other representatives of the (logical empiricism ) with an analysis of language along the lines of mathematical language, which they consider as the universal language of science.
The methodological critique is connected to the basic question of the nature of language and the task of a grammar. The semantic theories of TG are mainly questioned on the part of pragmatics - with reference to Ludwig Wittgenstein's view that the meaning of a word is equal to its use. To deny, for example, reference semanticist, socio-and psycho - linguists, the hypothesis of a universal base language with an ideal speaker / listener. Choose as a starting point the everyday use of language that includes not only successful communication unwanted and deceit ( lies, obfuscation by vagueness of expression, persuasion and other manipulations ). To explain the phenomenon that misleading or ambiguous utterances from different listeners are subject to different interpretations, the semantic theory with different codes must work in and out of errors of the speaker / listener in a rule. But even then the intentions of voice users in concrete situations with the methods described above can not be detected.
Support receive the pragmatists on the part of radical constructivists and specifically the neurobiologists Maturana and Varela, who are of the opinion that it is one of Fodor, among others postulated speaker-hearer is not idealization of reality, but that each individual speaker / listener develops his skills in a cybernetic process of early age through his socialization and speaking / listening are individually filtered.
A further impairment learns Jerry Fodor's goal is not only to map the brain regions focused on accrued base system, but with the transformation rules to explain both the creation and the recognition of the language, by new research in cognitive science. Thus, the manifold network of brain has the ability to thoroughly parallel processing (connectivity ). While Fodor suspected the language of the mind in certain brain regions, is now known to be involved in language processing, a whole series of relatively wide distributed areas are involved, which form the majority language processing zones in the second year of life. This would with a genetic system based structures lose from this perspective, the approach of generative transformational grammar its foundation.
Literature
→ see also literature