Michael R. Perkins

The Functions of Formulaic Language: An Integrated Model.

1. Introduction1.1. The nature of formulaic language‘Formulaicity’ and ‘formulaic sequence’ will be used in this paper to describe, in aneutral way, a phenomenon that encompasses various types of wordstring whichappear to be stored and retrieved whole from memory. Our working definition ofthe formulaic sequence will be:a sequence, continuous or discontinous, of words or other meaning elements,which is, or appears to be, prefabricated: that is, stored and retrieved wholefrom memory at the time of use, rather than being subject to generation oranalysis by the language grammar.This includes, at the one extreme, tightly idiomatic and immutable strings, such asby and large, which are both semantically opaque and syntactically irregular, and, atthe other, transparent and flexible ones containing slots for open class items, like NPbe-TENSE sorry to keep-TENSE you waiting (Pawley and Syder, 1983, p. 210).Perkins (in press) defines formulaicity as follows: ‘‘manifested in strings of linguisticitems where the relation of each item to the rest is relatively fixed, and where thesubstitutability of one item by another of the same category is relatively con-strained’’. If we take formulaicity to encompass, as some do, also the enormous setof ‘simple’ lexical collocations, whose patterns are both remarkable and puzzlingfrom a formal grammatical point of view (e.g. Sinclair, 1991), then possibly as much

Modal expressions in English

This work, which is both theoretical and descriptive, covers the entire range of modal expressions in English. It is organized so that the more general issues are dealt with first, followed by a more detailed analysis of the semantics of modal expressions. It is then supplemented by an assessment of how such an analysis is relevant to pragmatic and developmental perspectives on the expression of modality.

Pragmatic ability and disability as emergent phenomena.

A holistic approach to pragmatic ability and disability is outlined which takes account both of the behaviour of individuals involved in the communicative process, and also of the underlying factors which contribute to such behaviour. Rather than being seen as resulting directly from a dysfunction in some kind of discrete pragmatic “module” or behavioural mechanism, pragmatic impairment and also normal pragmatic functioning are instead viewed as the emergent consequence of interactions between linguistic, cognitive and sensorimotor processes which take place both within and between individuals.

Structural patterns in conversations with a woman who has autism

The experience of conversing with a person who has autism is often described as unsatisfactory. This article offers some suggestions as to why that might be. Conversation between an adult diagnosed as autistic and a researcher was transcribed and analyzed using the methodology of Conversation Analysis. The analysis highlights differences in conversational style between the two participants based on features such as topic movement, topic maintenance, repairs, interference from earlier structures and common collocations, overlaps, latching, and pauses. It is suggested that many of the features of the subjects talk which result in an overly repetitive style may be cognitively motivated.

Is pragmatics epiphenomenal? Evidence from communication disorders

Abstract In recent years there has been a converging trend in the study of pragmatics, grammar, language acquisition and neurolinguistics which sees as secondary epiphenomena a wide range of phenomena which were once regarded as primary. Examples of this trend in pragmatics include relevance theory, which explains speech acts and implicatures in terms of a more fundamental principle of relevance, and conversation analysis, which sees notions such as ‘topic’ as by-products of conversational coherence. In this paper I adopt a similarly ‘minimalist’ approach which focuses on the cognitive aetiology of pragmatics. Pragmatics is seen as the consequence of interactions between a set of linguistic and nonlinguistic cognitive subsystems which determine the crucial balance between how much information is encoded linguistically and how much is left unsaid on the grounds that it is recoverable from the linguistic and nonlinguistic context of utterance. Since it is often only when a complex system goes wrong that we become aware of the individual contributions of its component subsystems, my empirical evidence for the various cognitive entities discussed in this paper is the behaviour of people with communication disorders. Data from of a wide range of developmental and acquired language pathologies are presented in support of my argument. The approach adopted makes it possible to be more precise about the cognitive basis of pragmatics.

Validation of linguistic analyses in narrative discourse after traumatic brain injury

Narrative discourse tasks are a common feature of assessment and research after traumatic brain injury (TBI) and other types of brain damage. Although stimulus materials and analysis methods have been developed from a variety of theoretical perspectives, many do not challenge cognitive–linguistic skills sufficiently to highlight individual difficulties in assessment after TBI. This study employed a complex story recall task and it aimed to develop analysis methods that were sensitive to differences in recalled narratives and which could be validated against the perceptions of external raters. Twenty TBI adults and 20 matched control subjects were tested and their narratives analysed in terms of six measures (T-units, Noun:Pronoun Ratio, Scenes, Errors, Comments and Tentative Statements). Two groups of raters (one professionally trained, the other not) judged the transcribed narratives on ratings of Content and Clarity. Multiple regression analyses established that two of the linguistic measures in combination predicted ratings of Content, while a further three in combination predicted ratings of Clarity. Cut-off scores were established in order to categorize the TBI and control subjects’ performance. The validated measures provide the foundation for analyses of complex narrative as a means of assessment after TBI.

The core meanings of the English modals

Analyses of word-meaning can usually be divided into those which assign a meaning to a word IN ISOLATION FROM a specific context of use, and those which regard the meaning of a word as being largely, if not entirely, DEPENDENT UPON a specific context of use. The ultimate expression of the latter ‘polysemantic’ approach is probably that of the later Wittgenstein who argued that ‘every difference in a word’s use is a consequence of and evidence for a difference in its meaning’ (Wertheimer, 1972: 49). One recent example of the former ‘monosemantic’ approach is that of Bolinger (1977) whose stated purpose is to ‘reaffirm the old principle that the natural condition of a language is to preserve one form for one meaning, and one meaning for one form’ (p. x); also, the proponents of lexicalism are likewise ‘monosemantic’ in inclination in that they stress the primacy of lexical units over the syntactic relations which exist between them. Both these approaches have their advocates, and it should be stated at the outset that neither is necessarily right or wrong; each can only be judged according to whether the phenomena it is used to interpret are thereby illuminated.

‘Here’s the Weavery Looming Up’ Verbal Humour in a Woman with High-Functioning Autism

A case study of Grace, a 29-year-old woman with high- functioning autism, is presented. Grace is unusual for a person with autism in that she produces a great deal of humorous and creative word play. She is also unusual in that she writes and then audio-records ‘letters’ to her family, and produces copious cartoon-like drawings which she annotates, with the result that multiple examples of her humour are available in permanent form. We present examples of Grace’s use of puns, jokes, neologisms, ‘portmanteau’ words, irreverent humour, irony, sarcasm and word play based on her obsessional interests. The examples are used to illustrate the forms and content of Grace’s humour, and are discussed in relation to current theories of autism and of normal humour.

Conversational success in Williams syndrome: communication in the face of cognitive and linguistic limitations

Williams syndrome (WS) is characterized by apparent relative strengths in language, facial processing and social cognition but by profound impairment in spatial cognition, planning and problem solving. Following recent research which suggests that individuals with WS may be less linguistically able than was once thought, in this paper we begin to investigate why and how they may give the impression of linguistic proficiency despite poor standardized test results. This case study of Brendan, a 12‐year‐old boy with WS, who presents with a considerable lack of linguistic ability, suggests that impressions of linguistic competence may to some extent be the result of conversational strategies which enable him to compensate for various cognitive and linguistic deficits with a considerable degree of success. These conversational strengths are not predicted by his standardized language test results, and provide compelling support for the use of approaches such as Conversation Analysis in the assessment of individuals with communication impairments.

Clinical pragmatics: An emergentist perspective

Clinical pragmatics has been a major growth area in clinical linguistics and speech and language pathology over the past two decades. Its scope is vast: if we define pragmatics in broad terms, there are no communicative disorders which do not involve pragmatic impairment at least to some degree (Perkins, 2003). Early work in the area tended to focus on the application of pragmatic theory in the analysis of pragmatic impairment (e.g., speech act theory (Hirst, LeDoux, & Stein, 1984), conversational implicature (Damico, 1985) and, more recently, relevance theory (Leinonen & Kerbel, 1999)) and on the development of pragmatic assessments, tests and profiles which included a theoretically eclectic range of items drawn from both pragmatic theory and elsewhere (e.g., Bishop, 1998; Penn, 1985; Prutting & Kirchner, 1983). In more recent years there has been an increasing interest in the neurological and cognitive bases of pragmatic impairment (e.g., Paradis, 1998; Perkins, 2000; Stemmer, 1999) and in the use of interactional approaches such as conversation analysis (e.g. Goodwin, 2003). This special issue of Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics draws on all of these areas but focuses on a particular aspect of pragmatic impairment which has often been overlooked—namely, that the behaviours we describe as pragmatic impairments are in fact the outcome of very varied and highly complex processes. This neglect is partly due to a common tendency to see pragmatics as a separate ‘‘level’’ or even ‘‘module’’ of language, on a par with syntax and semantics. Influenced on the one hand by speech act theory, with its distinction between language structure and communicative acts, and on the other hand by clinical populations who were either able to communicate well despite being linguistically impaired or else were poor communicators despite having good linguistic ability, clinicians assumed there to be a clear dissociation between linguistic and pragmatic competence. Although there is still considerable neurological evidence for a broadly modular view in terms of the lateralisation of linguistic and pragmatic functions, there is also compelling evidence for seeing pragmatic impairment as a more complex, non-unitary phenomenon. Non-modular, or ‘‘interactional’’, views of pragmatic impairment have been influenced by connectionist and functional models of linguistic and cognitive processing (e.g., Bates, Thal, & MacWhinney, 1991), by a growing awareness of the role played in pragmatics by cognitive capacities such as inference, theory of mind and executive function (Martin & McDonald, 2003), and by approaches such as Conversation Analysis (e.g.,