Читать книгу Task-based grammar teaching of English - Susanne Niemeier - Страница 29

Grammar can be seen as a tool in the learners’ hands (and minds) which allows them to articulate their ideas exactly as they want these to be perceived. Language users can actively choose among different forms in order to get their own conceptualizations of given situations or events across to their interlocutors. This active choice goes by the name of ‘construal’, which can be defined as the ability of humans to mentally recreate (or construe) a situation in alternative ways (cf. TAYLOR 2002: 11). For example, the same situation can be presented in various levels of detail, certain participants can be foregrounded or backgrounded (as in the active vs. passive example quoted earlier, cf.page 47), different kinds of words can be used (as in ‘terrorist’ vs. ‘freedom fighter’) and different styles can be applied (as in colloquial use vs. formal use).

To use LANGACKER’s words (2008: 68), “there is no completely neutral way to describe situations – expressions necessarily construe them in a certain manner” as well as from a certain perspective. Furthermore, it is important to mention that a situation frequently does not exactly mirror reality but is a language user’s mental construction, as “much of what we express linguistically is imaginative in nature, even in talking about actual occurrences” (ibid.: 69). For example, when speaking about the picture of a car on a road, it is quite usual to say “the car is driving along a road”. However, the motion of the car is not real but imagined, because the picture only shows the car to be at a specific point of the road. Still, due to their world knowledge, people can predict the movement of the car reasonably well.

The use of figurative language, such as metaphorization and metonymisation, plays a major role in construal. To refer again to the above-mentioned example “the car is driving along the road”, it is obvious that ‘car’ is used metonymically, as it is not the car that is driving but the driver, so the metonymy in question is ‘salient entity for less salient entity’, i.e., the more conspicuous car is mentioned instead of the less conspicuous driver. Metonymy is pervasive in language, even more pervasive than metaphor, as otherwise language would be very redundant and boring. An example for a metaphorical construal is “I spent an hour with my grandmother”, where the verb ‘spend’ has been borrowed from the concrete domain of money in order to provide an understanding of the more abstract domain of time, the underlying conceptual metaphor being TIME IS MONEY. However, the dividing line between metaphor and metonymy is fuzzy, and these two types of figurative language can be imagined to form a continuum (cf. NIEMEIER 2017).

According to LANGACKER (2008: 71), “though generally implicit, these various kinds of mental constructions are crucial to both the form and meaning of expressions. They are facets of an elaborate conceptual substrate that supports and makes coherent the notions overtly expressed”. In other words: speakers frequently leave gaps in what they say, which the listener can fill in, and where the content is not explicitly stated but is only implied. Meaning is not only IN the words or constructions, but additionally needs elaborate mental coding processes (by the speaker) as well as decoding processes (by the listener), in which background knowledge (especially cultural knowledge), experience, memory and other cognitive abilities play an important role.

Many of the standard (or quasi-neutral) construals are language-specific and conventionalised – and “conventional usage almost always has conceptual motivation” (LANGACKER 2008: 72). TAYLOR (2002: 368) quotes the example of the English mass nouns ‘information’, ‘advice’, ‘evidence’, ‘research’ and ‘news’, which in German are count nouns1 (‘Information/Informationen’, ‘Ratschlag/Ratschläge’, ‘Beweis/Beweise’, ‘Forschung/Forschungen’, ‘Neuigkeit/Neuigkeiten’), and which Germans therefore see as countable and thus as being able to add an indefinite article and a plural morpheme. Therefore, these concepts are conventionally seen as structured in different ways by speakers of these two languages. L2 learners frequently carry over their native language concepts into their L2 interlanguage, as they are not aware of the different construals.

Apart from such conventionalizations, construal is additionally influenced by the speaker’s perspective and choice of linguistic items. In an example such as “the apple fell from the tree” vs. “the apple fell on Peter’s head”, two perspectives on one and the same situation are presented, depending on what the speaker deems as more important. In these examples, the source-path-goal image schema is involved. People know from their daily experience that a path starts somewhere (in this case: the fall of the apple started from the tree), continues for a while (in this case: the apple fell through the air), and ends somewhere (in this case: the apple landed on Peter’s head), but not all elements of the source-path-goal schema need to be mentioned, usually one element is enough for the other elements to be intuited. DIRVEN/VERSPOOR (2004: 85) speak of a ‘goal-over-source principle’, meaning that humans are normally more interested in the goal than in the source. But again, this depends on what a speaker wants to focus on – if it is important that the apple fell from the tree (and not from the roof, for example), the focus will be on the starting point. If it is important that the apple landed on Peter’s head (and not on Mary’s, for example), the focus will be on the goal.

It is evident that more than the choice of lexical and grammatical elements is involved in formulating what LANGACKER calls a “usage event”. His definition of a usage event is that it is an

… instance of language use as initiated by a language user who is in command of not only the linguistic expression but also other factors such as memory, planning, problem-solving ability, and general knowledge of the world, as well as a full apprehension of the physical, social cultural and linguistic context. (LANGACKER 2000: 9)

A speaker needs to invoke all kinds of knowledge in order to convey the particular perspective s/he intends to convey. L1 speakers share such knowledge because it is conventionally encoded in their language, and such shared background allows them to select the linguistic means to get their perspective across. However, L2 speakers do not have the same access as native speakers to the linguistic conventions encoded in the L2, they may have different background knowledge and possibly different perceptions of the context. For example, English uses “at this moment”, whereas German uses “in diesem Moment” – ‘in’ as a three-dimensional container preposition indicates that a ‘moment’ might be perceived as somewhat longer by Germans than by native English speakers, who use the zero-dimensional ‘at’, whereas containment (of time) is implied in the German language.

To use another example, the progressive aspect is not grammaticalized in German, which is why German learners of English usually have major problems with its use in English. In English, every activity or process needs to be scanned for ongoingness, whereas German normally leaves this open. A sentence such as “Daria reitet” can either mean that she is doing it right now (“Schau mal da hinten auf dem Feld, da reitet Daria”) or that it is her hobby (“Daria reitet immer am Dienstag”). In English, however, there is a clear differentiation between “Daria is riding” for the first German sentence and “Daria rides” for the second German sentence and speakers of English have to select which of these two different meanings they want to express. Progressivity can of course also optionally be expressed in German, but only with lexical – i.e., not with grammatical – means (“sie ist gerade am Reiten”, “sie reitet gerade”, “sie reitet jetzt, in diesem Moment” etc.), and therefore progressivity does not have the same relevance as it does in English. Insofar, German learners of English have a different mindset than native speakers of English when it comes to expressing progressivity, as they are not used to deciding between the use of the progressive or the non-use of the progressive for every single verb they encounter. Instead, they frequently think that they can just leave it open whether an activity or process is in progress or not, as they are used to this from German – however, this does not work in English2.

A very important notion in cognitive grammatical explanations of diverse grammatical phenomena are the notions of ‘trajector’ (the primary focal participant in a situation) and ‘landmark’ (the secondary focal participant)3. The trajector is prototypically the smaller, more mobile element, and the landmark is prototypically bigger and less mobile, very similar to the figure-ground concept from gestalt psychology. In every situation or relation, one element is foregrounded and another element is backgrounded. For example, people rather speak about “the chandelier over the table” instead of “the table under the chandelier”4.

Trajector-landmark relations are also valid for grammatical relations. For instance, as already mentioned, in the active voice the subject is foregrounded, whereas in the passive voice the object is foregrounded5. Another example relates to word order: although the situation spoken about is exactly the same, the focus between “a cat is on the mat” vs. “on the mat there is a cat” differs. The trajector always has prominence, which is why in the first sentence the cat is more important and is accordingly the first element focused upon by the hearer, whereas in the second sentence the mat is given prominence and the hearer then performs a mental scan from the mat to the cat. It can therefore be claimed that although these two constructions are quite alike, they are not identical and it becomes evident that the speaker tries to lead the hearer towards a specific perspective, namely the one s/he wants to transmit.

A final characteristic of cognitive grammar that needs to be mentioned here relates to the notion of iconicity in grammar. Iconicity is a concept borrowed from semiotics. An iconic sign resembles what it stands for. In a non-linguistic context, signs on airports depicting starting or landing planes are iconic because they show an image of what they stand for. Iconic principles can be found in language as well. For instance, the plural-s morpheme added to a lexical morpheme means ‘more of what the noun refers to’, or in other words: more morphemes stand for more meaning. Word order is also frequently iconic, as, for example, the sequence of determiners in “the famous delicious Italian salami pizza” cannot be turned around. It is of course possible to omit one or more of the determiners, but it is not possible to speak about “*the Italian delicious salami pizza”, because the sequence of determiners mirrors the conceptual distance between the determiners and the noun. In the example just mentioned, ‘salami’ inherently describes what the pizza topping consists of, ‘Italian’ refers to the country the pizza originates from, ‘delicious’ means that something is edible and tastes good, whereas ‘famous’ is the vaguest determiner in this example, as it can relate to anything from pop stars to books6.

To sum up, cognitive grammar offers meaningful explanations of conventional construal patterns and can therefore be used to not only make learners aware of potential construal conflicts between their L1 and their L2 but also to make them aware of the different construal options that they have in their L2. The following sub-chapter presents reasons why cognitive grammar is an approach that lends itself well for being applied to foreign language instruction, especially due to its focus on the centrality of meaning.