Emotions, Metacognition, and the Intuition of Language Normativity: Theoretical, Epistemological, and Historical Perspectives on Linguistic Feeling 9783031179129, 9783031179136

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Emotions, Metacognition, and the Intuition of Language Normativity Theoretical, Epistemological, and Historical Perspectives on Linguistic Feeling Edited by

dav i d rom a n d m ic h e l l e du

Emotions, Metacognition, and the Intuition of Language Normativity

David Romand  •  Michel Le Du Editors

Emotions, Metacognition, and the Intuition of Language Normativity Theoretical, Epistemological, and Historical Perspectives on Linguistic Feeling

Editors David Romand Centre Gilles Gaston Granger Aix-Marseille University Aix-en-Provence, France

Michel Le Du Centre Gilles Gaston Granger Aix-Marseille University Aix-en-Provence, France

ISBN 978-3-031-17912-9    ISBN 978-3-031-17913-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17913-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and ­transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

First of all, we would like to thank Cathy Scott, the executive editor of the book series “Language and Linguistics,” without whom the making of this book would not have been possible. We are very grateful to her for having, from the beginning, expressed confidence in our project, for having encouraged us to write and submit a book proposal, for having supported the realization of the book, and for her helpfulness and availability throughout the publishing process. Our thanks are also due to the editorial committee of the book series, which issued a favorable opinion regarding the acceptance of the book proposal, as well as to the two anonymous referees who, in addition to favorably reviewing it, provided us with insightful feedback that allowed us to significantly improve the overall quality of our work. We tried, as far as possible, to take into account their remarks and suggestions during the progress of our work. Regarding the technical realization of the book, we express our thanks to Dhanalakshmi Muralidharan, Lalitha Sivaram, Lakshmi Radhakrishnan, Sarah Hills, and Petra Treiber for their valued assistance. In addition, we are grateful to the Centre Gilles Gaston Granger (UMR 7304, CNRS-Aix-Marseille University, France), our research institution, for having supported us at various steps of the publication process. In particular, the Centre accommodated and funded the workshop “Comprendre intuitivement la normativité du langage. Réflexion v

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interdisciplinaire autour du ‘sentiment linguistique’” [“Intuitively Understanding Language Normativity. Interdisciplinary Reflection on ‘Linguistic Feeling’”] that we organized on October 22, 2021, at the Maison de la Recherche (Aix-en-Provence), which was an important moment in the realization of the volume. Besides its director, Pascal Taranto, we warmly thank Julie Humeau for her administrative assistance, and Sylvie Pons and Monique Nicolas for technical help within the framework of the organization of this event. We are also grateful to the research commission of the Arts, Lettres, Langues et Sciences Humaines (ALLSH) Faculty of Aix-Marseille University, which awarded a grant, without which the holding of this event would not have been possible. Moreover, we thank the Centre Granger for having covered the costs of manuscript proofreading, most of the book’s contributors being nonnative speakers of English. Here, too, we would like to thank Julie Humeau for having been in charge of the related administrative issues. We are also thankful to our chief proofreader, Andrew Haigh, who spent much time in improving the English of a good part of the texts. We would also like to thank Barbara Every and Mercedes Gilliom, who proofread some parts of the manuscript at a very late stage of its preparation and whose editing skills were helpful for its finalization. Finally, we extend our sincerest thanks to our eleven authors, namely, Lorenzo Cigana, Hanna Ehlert, Els Elffers, Emanuele Fadda, Ad Foolen, Jean-Michel Fortis, Chloé Laplantine, Ulrike Lüdtke, Jeffrey Maynes, Gilles Siouffi, and Frank Unterberg, who accepted the invitation to take part in this unusual editorial project. They brilliantly succeeded in meeting our expectations regarding the possibility of realizing a synoptic, cross-disciplinary volume on linguistic feeling by calling on scholars from various intellectual horizons. We are grateful to our authors not only for their commitment throughout the publishing process, but also for the many informal discussions on linguistic feeling and related issues that we had with them, notably on the occasion of the above-mentioned workshop held in Aix.

Contents

1 I ntroduction  1 David Romand Part I Cross-disciplinary Approaches to Linguistic Feeling from Herder to Wittgenstein  73 2 “What  the Germans Call Sprachgefühl.” Sprachgefühl in Early German Linguistics. Selected Examples of Ways of Understanding 75 Frank Unterberg 3 Assent,  Sentiment and Linguistic Feeling in Jac. van Ginneken’s Psycholinguistics103 Lorenzo Cigana 4 On  the Normative Side of Saussure’s “Linguistic Feeling”123 Emanuele Fadda 5 S  apir’s Form-Feeling and its Historical Context147 Jean-Michel Fortis vii

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6 Edward  Sapir: Form-Feeling in Language, Culture, and Poetry173 Chloé Laplantine 7 Meaning-Blindness,  and Linguistic Feeling: Wittgenstein on How We “Experience” Meaning197 Michel Le Du Part II Current Scientific and Philosophical Perspectives on Linguistic Feeling 213 8 Intuitions  in Linguistics: A Blessing or a Curse?215 Els Elffers 9 The  Good, the Bad, and the Yucky: Valenced Linguistic Intuitions and Linguistic Methodology243 Jeffrey Maynes 10 Linguistic  Feeling in Real Life and in Linguistics267 Ad Foolen 11 Linguistic  Feeling and Grammaticalization: From Concepts to Case Studies301 Gilles Siouffi 12 Linguistic  Feeling: A Relational Approach Incorporating Epistemology, Theories of Language, and HumanMachine Interaction317 Ulrike M. Lüdtke and Hanna Ehlert I ndex345

Notes on Contributors

Lorenzo Cigana  (Bressanone, 1984) is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics (NorS) at the University of Copenhagen. His main research interests include the issue of form and formalization in language sciences, structuralism, and structuralist linguistic with a special focus on Danish structuralism and glossematics. He is currently carrying out the project INFRASTRUCTURALISM, whose aim is to establish an open-source infrastructure providing the international academic community access to correspondences and manuscripts from the archives of Louis Hjelmslev and other Danish structuralist linguists in a digitalized and commented form. Hanna Ehlert  (1979) is a research assistant at the Institute for Special Education (Department of Speech and Language Therapy and Inclusive Education), Leibniz University, Hannover, Germany. Her research focuses on automation in developmental language research and language assessment as well as dynamic assessment. Among her publications are Oral Text Production, Oral Text Reception, and Emotions (2022) and AgeInvariant Training for End-to-End Child Speech Recognition Using Adversarial Multi-Task Learning (2021). Els Elffers  ([email protected]) is a retired lecturer in Dutch Linguistics at the University of Amsterdam. Most of her publications are about the ix

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­ istory and philosophy of linguistics, in particular about nineteenth- and h twentieth-century relations between linguistics and psychology. Emanuele Fadda  (Cagliari, 1972) teaches linguistics and semiotics and coordinates the graduate programs in Communication in the Department of Humanities at the University of Calabria. He is a member of the editorial board of Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure. Among his fields of interest are the history of philosophical-linguistic ideas (in particular, Saussure, Peirce, G. H. Mead, U. Eco, and others), the relations between semiotics and aesthetics, and the proxemic features of the interactions on the web. His latest books are Peirce (2013), Sentimento della lingua (2017), and Troppo lontani, troppo vicini (2018). Ad Foolen (1950) is a retired linguist at Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. His research focused on discourse particles, emotional expressivity, and the history of linguistics. He contributed to The Routledge Handbook of Semantics with a chapter on expressives (2016), and for the handbook Language and Emotion (De Gruyter, 2022), he wrote a chapter on language and emotion in the history of linguistics. Jean-Michel Fortis  (b. 1964) is a member of the Laboratoire d’Histoire des Théories Linguistiques, in Université Paris Cité (France). In the past few years, his research has focused on the history of American linguistics, especially the transition from transformational grammar to cognitive linguistics, on spatial relations in languages and their role in linguistic theorizing, that is, on so-called localist conceptions, and more generally on relations between linguistic ideas and psychological matters. In the former area of research, he has notably published a paper entitled “Generative Grammar and Cognitive Linguistics: On the grounds of a theoretical split in American linguistics” (2015). More recently, localism was the subject of a chapter on Anderson’s case grammar, in which an attempt was made to situate Anderson’s model in the long-­term history of localist ideas (2018). Chloé Laplantine  is researcher at Université Paris Cité and Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, CNRS, Laboratoire d’Histoire des Théories Linguistiques, F-75013 Paris, France. Chloé Laplantine has had his work published extensively on Emile Benveniste’s linguistics and poetics. She

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has edited his manuscript notes on Baudelaire and is preparing an edition of his fieldwork notebooks on the Tlingit and Haida languages. She has also had research published on the relation between linguistics and poetics in the work of Franz Boas and Edward Sapir. Michel Le Du is a full Professor of Philosophy at Aix-Marseille University (France). Previously, from 2000 to 2017, he taught at the University of Strasbourg (France). His main fields of interest are the philosophy of social science, the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of language, and Wittgenstein. He authored, among other works, Qu’est-ce qu’un nombre ? (2004) and La nature sociale de l’esprit, Wittgenstein, la psychologie et les sciences humaines (2005), and contributed to numerous philosophical journals. He has also translated into French works by Peter Winch, Norman Malcolm, and Peter Hacker, and is completing a book on metaphor. Ulrike Lüdtke  (1963) is a professor at the Institute for Special Education and Head of the Department of Speech and Language Therapy and Inclusive Education, Leibniz University Hannover, Germany. She is also co-director of the Leibniz Lab for Relational Communication Research. Her work focuses on automation in developmental language research, language, and emotion as well as speech and language therapy in sub-­ Saharan Africa. She has edited Emotion in Language: Theory—Research— Application (2015) and Handbook of Speech-Language Therapy in Sub-Saharan Africa (2022). Jeffrey Maynes  is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Philosophy, St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. He works in the philosophy of language and mind, with a focus on experimental philosophy and critical thinking pedagogy. Among his publications are “The Method(s) of Cases” (2021), “On the Stakes of Experimental Philosophy” (2017), “Critical Thinking and Cognitive Bias” (2015), and “Linguistic Intuitions” (2013, with Steven Gross). David Romand  is a philosopher, historian of knowledge, and language theorist and is currently an associate researcher in the Centre Gilles Gaston Granger (Aix-Marseille University, France). He has worked on the history of psychology, the history of philosophy, the theory and his-

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tory of aesthetics, and the history and theory of language sciences, with a strong emphasis on the nineteenth-century/early-twentieth-century German-speaking context and the issue of affectivity. For a couple of years, his research interests have focused on the question of the relationships between affectivity and linguistic knowledge, notably on the question of the role of epistemic feelings in language, the psychoaffective approach of semantics and semiotics, and the issue of linguistic feeling. Among his recent publications are two co-edited books on Theodor Lipps (Sdvig Press) and biomorphism (Editions Naima). He is currently preparing two monographs in English, one devoted to Lipps and to Gomperz’s psychoaffective theory of language. Gilles Siouffi  is a full Professor of French at Sorbonne Université and an expert in the history of French language and history of linguistic ideas. He has worked on the imaginary of language in the seventeenth century, the historical establishment of norms in French, and the diversity of usages. Moreover, he is carrying out studies on contemporary French, attitudes vis-à-vis language, and the notion of linguistic feeling. He has to his credit two authored books, including Penser le langage à l'Age classique (2010), and a co-authored book (Mille ans de langue française, 2007), and is the author of “Histoire externe” in the Grande Grammaire historique du français (2020). He has also edited Une histoire de la phrase française, des Serments de Strasbourg aux écritures numériques (2020) and Le sentiment linguistique chez Saussure (2019). Frank Unterberg studied communication studies, German studies, and psychology (MA) and received his doctorate (DPhil) in 2019 in German linguistics from the University of Duisburg-Essen, with a dissertation entitled Sprachgefühle: wissenschaftliches und alltagsweltliches Sprechen über Sprachgefühl – zur Geschichte, Gegenwart und Vieldeutigkeit eines Begriffs [Sprachgefühle: Scientific and Everyday Discourse on Sprachgefühl – About the History, Present, and Ambiguity of a Term]. His main focus and interests are German philosophy of language, language awareness, scientific and everyday reflection on language.

List of Tables

Table 8.1 Justificationist versus naturalized views of intuitions Table 12.1 The relational epistemological basis for linguistic feeling: from objectivism to intersubjectivity Table 12.2 The relational linguistic basis of linguistic feeling: from monologue to dialogue

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1 Introduction Linguistic Feeling: Revisiting a Concept Between Linguistics, Philosophy of Language, and Affective Science David Romand

Taken together, the twelve contributions to the present volume offer, for the first time, an encompassing theoretical, epistemological, and historical account of the concept of linguistic feeling. A still relatively uncommon expression in English, “linguistic feeling” refers, in brief, to the subjective capacity to apprehend language normativity, by spontaneously deciding on whether the linguistic properties that you are perceiving are either compliant or noncompliant with the theoretical knowledge that you, as a member of a definite linguistic community, are supposed to have about language. Here, to put it differently, we are dealing with this basic mental activity, which is specifically aimed at language itself, that allows the subject, insofar as they are acquainted with the language in question, to spontaneously appraise as linguistically correct or incorrect

D. Romand (*) Centre Gilles Gaston Granger, Aix-Marseille University, Aix-en-Provence, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Romand, M. Le Du (eds.), Emotions, Metacognition, and the Intuition of Language Normativity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17913-6_1

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what is said, heard, read, or written. Linguistic feeling is an issue that has established itself, for a long time, as a key issue of language sciences and that has experienced, in the last few years, a considerable amount of renewed interest in a variety of disciplinary fields. What I call here “linguistic feeling” has been referred to in English by other more or less synonymous expressions, such as “linguistic instinct,” “linguistic intuition,” “metalinguistic intuition,” or “metalinguistic judgment”—to mention only a few.1 For the sake of consistency, it was important to make the terminology uniform, and I came to the conclusion that “linguistic feeling” is, in the case at stake, the most appropriate expression. Although the expression is attested in English (e.g., Timofeeva 2015), “linguistic feeling” may sound somewhat unfamiliar to the Anglophone audience, and the fact is that it ultimately corresponds to the adaptation of the German term “Sprachgefühl.”2 My choice was motivated, first and foremost, by the fact that the German-speaking investigations on Sprachgefühl, which emerged as early as the late eighteenth century and that have been carried out uninterruptedly until the present time (Unterberg 2020, this volume), constitute, by far, the longest and richest research tradition on the issue. In any case, the aim of the book is to revisit, beyond the terminological changeability and variety of cultural/national traditions, the chief concerns regarding linguistic feeling, as previously defined. This implies discussing at length, not only present, but also past contributions to the research topic, to expand on the analysis beyond the confines of the English-speaking context, and to endorse an overtly cross-­disciplinary approach, within language sciences and between language sciences and other fields of investigation. Recent historiographical advances (e.g., Fortis 2015, 2019; Fadda, 2017; Unterberg 2020; Siouffi 2021a) have permitted us to realize how central the concept of linguistic feeling has been, for more than two centuries, in the history of language sciences,  On the variety of the expressions used in English, see in particular Schindler et al. (2020), Siouffi (2021b), Courbon (2021), and Ad Foolen (this volume). 2  It is worth noting that the term“Sprachgefühl” is sometimes used as is in English-speaking linguistic literature. Cf. Anttila (1976) and Strässler (1984). According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, in which a special entry is devoted to it, “Sprachgefühl” entered the English language as early as 1894. Nevertheless, no reference is given in support of this assertion ([Sprachgefühl] n.d.). On the use of the term “Sprachgefühl” in English, see also Foolen’s contribution to the present volume. 1

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and to highlight the diversity of the intellectual contexts in which it has developed. Although basically a contribution to linguistics and philosophy of language, the present volume is also closely related to psychology, philosophy of mind, theory of knowledge, and, to a lesser extent, aesthetics and literary studies. As its title suggests, it gives prominence to emotion, intuition, and metacognition: three basic psychological concepts that, in the last decades, have experienced an astonishing level of renewed popularity, which the book’s contributors revisit in an original way. Special attention will be devoted to the question of the relationship between linguistic knowledge and affectivity, an issue that seems to be particularly promising for the theoretical and epistemological discussion of linguistic feeling. In this respect, the present volume should also be regarded as a contribution to the expanding, cross-disciplinary field of affective science. This opening chapter is divided into five sections. In the first section, I highlight that although it has long been recognized as a separate topic, the issue of linguistic feeling has not become a unified field of investigation thus far—one of the book’s main objectives being to create a dialogue between a number of diverse research traditions that have evolved largely independently of one another. In the second section, I discuss how theorists have conceived its role in language processes and its place in the study of language, by successively addressing the question of its typological analysis, of its involvement in the appraisal of linguistic form, and of its significance for linguists and philosophers. In the third section, I deal with the psychological nature and foundations of linguistic feeling: besides its chief characteristics, I review the main conceptions regarding its “etiology,” by discussing, among other things, the view that it may result from a monitoring process. The fourth section is devoted to the crucial issue of whether linguistic feeling is actually, psychologically speaking, a “feeling.” In addition to recalling that, after having been, for a long time, a problematic issue, the psychoaffective approach to linguistic feeling has recently gained popularity in the literature, I insist on the fact that there are good arguments in favor of the view that the intuitive experience of language normativity has to do with affectivity in general and with epistemic feelings in particular, while striving to identify what

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kinds of affective states it may consist of. In the fifth and final section, I briefly present the contributors’ eleven thematic essays and show how, taken together, these historical, theoretical, and epistemological contributions to the multifaceted issue of linguistic feelings may significantly help renew research on a pivotal but still largely underrated subject in language sciences.

1 Research Traditions on Linguistic Feeling: An Overview and an Attempt at a Clarification 1.1 A Fluctuating Terminology and a Variety of Approaches As stated earlier, “linguistic feeling” is only one of the many terminological constructs used, since the late eighteenth century, to refer to the subject’s capacity to intuitively apprehend language normativity. A syntagma of German origin (Sprachgefühl), which is still very popular in the German-speaking area, not only in the specialized literature, but also in colloquial language (e.g., Gauger and Oesterreicher 1982; Unterberg 2020), the expression has become relatively common, as a loan translation, in other languages, especially in French. As Gilles Siouffi highlighted (2021b), the two twin forms “sentiment linguistique” and “sentiment de la langue”3 have been used for a long time by French-speaking authors, and not simply by linguists and philologists.4 The fluctuating terminology associated with the issue of linguistic feeling reflects the fact that the concept has been explored through a variety of research traditions, which have developed, often without relation to one another, and within different national, disciplinary, or epistemological contexts.

 The expression “sens de la langue” [linguistic sense] is also encountered.  As Foolen reminds us in his contribution to the present volume, the corresponding expression (“taalgevoel”) is also commonly used in Dutch. For the adaptation of Sprachgefühl in other languages, see Gauger and Oesterreicher (1982, p. 18). 3 4

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Interestingly, the proponents of the various research traditions, in addition to sharing, as a rule, the same general definition of linguistic feeling, agree on the general characteristics which the corresponding phenomenon is supposed to consist of.5 Nevertheless, it is worth noting that, although basically dealing with the same issue, the various research traditions on linguistic feeling are sui generis paradigms that each shed an original light on the issue at stake. Here I would like to briefly review the chief paradigms and to highlight their characteristics, in order to draw a general cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary overview of the research on linguistic feeling.

1.2 The German-Speaking Research Tradition on Sprachgefühl In his essay “‘Sprachgefühl’: A mental faculty or stored knowledge?” (1984, p. 195), Jürg Strässler speaks of Sprachgefühl as “a typically German concept,” suggesting that we are dealing with an issue that is inexorably linked to its historical-cultural context of emergence. The fact is, investigations on Sprachgefühl constitute an autonomous research tradition and one cannot really understand the issue of linguistic feeling in general without saying a word or two about how German-speaking scholars have addressed it for more than two centuries. The German-­speaking research tradition on Sprachgefühl has resulted in a rich, mostly linguistic, literature that is largely disregarded by current, mostly English-­speaking, theorists of language.6 Both the expression “linguistic feeling” and the corresponding concept emerged within the German-speaking area as early as the late eighteenth century (Unterberg 2020, pp. 28–113, this volume).

 The issue of the chief distinctive marks of linguistic feeling, as commonly identified in the literature, is expounded in detail in Sect. 3.1. 6  Significantly, it is completely ignored in the synoptic book on linguistic intuitions recently edited by Schindler et al. (2020). 5

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At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the expression “Sprachgefühl” 7 became a commonly used and a tacitly relatively well-defined term8 of the then-emerging field of German linguistics. Over the course of about a century, the corresponding notion established itself, so to speak, as an operative concept which, without really being theorized and without becoming an autonomous subject, was integrated into the theoretical framework of the linguistic research of the time, such as the study of morphology, phonetic changes, and language evolution. Significantly, concerns about Sprachgefühl were encountered in the works of most of the leading contemporary German linguists: Franz Bopp, Jacob Grimm, Wilhelm von Humboldt, August Schleicher, Hermann Paul, and Georg von der Gabelentz—to mention only the most well-known—are among those who discussed, more or less in depth, the issue at stake (Unterberg 2020, pp. 114–199, this volume). The question of Sprachgefühl became less popular during the interwar period, due to the deep epistemological changes, and notably the ebbing of psychological approaches, that affected German-speaking language sciences at that time, although it was far from disappearing totally from linguistic research (e.g., Dunger 1927; Bühler 1934; Lindroth 1937).9 From the 1950s onward, the research tradition on Sprachgefühl has experienced a gradual renewed interest within German-speaking linguistics; the old concept of Sprachgefühl, which had tended thus far to be investigated within the framework of broader linguistic concerns, became an object of study per se and the topic of a growing number of specialized writings. This revival was aroused by the publication, in 1956, of the  The variants “Sprachengefühl,” “Gefühl für die Sprache,” and “Gefühl für Sprache,” as well as the (more or less) equivalent expressions “Sprachinstinkt” (linguistic instinct) and “Sprachsinn” (linguistic sense) are also encountered in the linguistic literature. Cf. Unterberg (2020). 8  As Unterberg (2020, pp. 21, 155, 163) reminds us, in line with Knobloch (1980, p. 51), August Schleicher was perhaps the first author who tried to overtly define “Sprachgefühl,” a term that, in his view, refers to “the feeling for the function of the word and its parts” and to “the tutelary spirit of the linguistic form” (Schleicher 1888, p. 65; my translation, as are all those proposed in the present chapter). Nevertheless, it would not be until the end of the Second World War and Friedrich Kainz’s seminal contributions that theorists of Sprachgefühl would strive to define it systematically. Cf. Kainz (1943–1944, 1956). 9  The fact remains that the period in question proves to be important for the evolution of ideas on Sprachgefühl, insofar as the latter, by becoming the subject of specific publications (Dunger 1927; Lindroth 1937), tended to establish itself as an autonomous linguistic issue. 7

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fourth volume of Friedrich Kainz’s Psychologie der Sprache (1956, pp. 296–393), which contains a 100-page-long chapter entirely devoted to the issue of Sprachgefühl. Here, together with the article “Über das Sprachgefühl” (1943–1944) that Kainz published a dozen years before, we are dealing with what is probably the first systematic study carried out on the subject, with Kainz discussing at length, as no one else had before him,10 the nature and status of Sprachgefühl, but also its role and place in language and linguistics. Kainz’s contribution can be regarded as the starting point of a growing number of studies specifically devoted to the question (e.g., Weisgerber 1962; Eppert 1976; Knobloch 1980). The publication, in 1982, of the volume Sprachgefühl? Vier Antworte auf eine Preisfrage [Linguistic Feeling? Four Replies to a Prize Question], by Gauger et al., marked a turning point in the recent history of the research tradition on Sprachgefühl. This volume, which addresses Sprachgefühl from a variety of conceptual and methodological perspectives, is the very first book entirely devoted to it. In the last four decades, scholarship on Sprachgefühl has expanded and diversified within the framework of both theoretical and applied linguistics, a general tendency that was recently epitomized by Frank Unterberg’s dissertation thesis (2020), which proposes an encompassing historical and theoretical discussion of the issue of linguistic feeling in the German-­speaking context (see also: Rath 1985; Neuland 1993; Molitor 2000; Trad 2009; Langlotz et al. 2014b; Langlotz, Lehnert, and Schul, 2014a; Unterberg, this volume).

1.3 New Insights from the History of Linguistics The history of linguistics is another field of investigation which, in the last few years, has shed new light on the issue of linguistic feeling. Here one can identify three major lines of research that, taken together, have substantially helped reappraise the centrality of the concept in language sciences. The first line of research I would like to comment on regards the history of the concept of Sprachgefühl, as defined in the previous subsection.  In particular, the theoretical developments proposed by Kainz in his 1956 chapter go much further than those proposed by Lindroth in his 1937 article “Das Sprachgefühl, ein vernachlässigter Begriffs” (1937), which was one of his direct sources of inspiration. 10

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In the last decades, historical investigations on the question have been carried out, first and foremost, by the theorists of Sprachgefühl (e.g., Gauger et al. 1982; Trad 2009), even if a few genuinely historical studies have been published as well (Lawrenz 1969; Ising 1987). A few years ago, the historiography was strongly renewed by Frank Unterberg, who, in his above-mentioned doctoral dissertation, has systematically addressed the question of the genealogy of Sprachgefühl from the eighteenth century to the present day (Unterberg 2020, pp. 28–283, this volume). Here, as other scholars before him, Unterberg is not simply interested in the evolution of ideas on Sprachgefühl, but also in how revisiting old contributions to the question can be useful for language scientists today. A second line of research regarding the renewal of historical studies on linguistic feeling is to be found in the Saussure scholarship, which, in the last two decades, has permitted a reassessment of its place within the francophone context. Saussure’s concept of sentiment linguistique or sentiment de la langue, which has been gradually “rediscovered” since the early 1990s (Reicher-Béguelin 1990; Laplantine 2005; Nyckees 2008; Chidichimo 2009), recently became the subject of two books, namely, Emanuele Fadda’s monograph Sentimento della lingua. Per un’antropologia linguistica saussuriana [Linguistic Feeling. For a Saussurean Linguistic Anthropology] (2017) and Gilles Siouffi’s edited volume Le Sentiment linguistique chez Saussure [Linguistic Feeling in Saussure] (2021a; for review: Romand 2022b), whose contributions provide an updated and encompassing view of recent advances in the domain (see also: Courbon 2012; Siouffi 2019, this volume; Testenoire 2018).11 A long overlooked aspect of the Saussure scholarship, sentiment linguistique—a metalinguistic property that has been shown to be a key notion of Saussurean thought.12 These recent advances have also helped specify the intellectual context and the conceptual genealogies of Saussure’s sentiment linguistique, by discussing its significance in light of French and German  See also Fadda’s and, to a lesser extent, Siouffi’s contributions to the present volume.  Vincent Nyckees (2021, p. 48) defines Saussure’s sentiment linguistique as “the acquired capacity, inherent to every speaker of a definite language and which manifests itself through his or her linguistic practice, to spontaneously analyze the forms of such a language,” and that “result[s] from his or her long-lasting immersion in the corresponding linguistic community (in particular if we are dealing with his or her mother tongue and if he or she has reached linguistic ‘maturity’).” 11 12

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linguistic and psychological traditions (Siouffi 2021b; see also: Courbon 2021; Monneret 2021). Beyond its mere historical/exegetic dimension, the research program on Saussure’s sentiment linguistique is important, because it has highlighted the centrality of the notion of linguistic feeling for an author whose thinking has been highly influential in language sciences. Finally, it is worth mentioning a third line of historical research on linguistic feeling, namely, those studies that have permitted us to revisit the importance of the concept in pre-Chomskyan American linguistics, more specifically, in Edward Sapir’s theory of language. Recent advances on the topic owe much to Jean-Michel Fortis, who, during the 2010s, published a series of works specifically devoted to Sapir’s concept of “form-feeling” (Fortis 2014, 2015, 2019). As Fortis emphasizes, form-­ feeling, as defined by Sapir, is “the intuitive grasp of a linguistic, behavioral, or cultural pattern, a grasp by which means an actor speaks and acts in accordance with the patterns peculiar to his or her social environment” (Fortis 2015, p. 155). Also called—among a variety of expressions— “feeling for form,” “form intuition,” “feeling for relation,” “relational feeling,” or “feeling for patterning,” it corresponds to an irreflective mode of apprehending “the phonological/morphosyntactical apparatus of language” (Fortis 2019, p. 65). In addition to discussing the ins and outs of Sapir’s concept of form-feeling, Fortis had the insight to specify its genealogy, suggesting that it may be rooted in the notion of Formgefühl as it was elaborated in German-speaking aesthetics and the science of art in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.13

1.4 The (Post-)Chomskyan Tradition: The Research Program on “Linguistic Intuitions” A direct outcome of the rise of generative grammar in the 1950–1960s, the study of linguistic intuitions appears as the sui generis approach by which current language theorists have revisited the question of linguistic feeling within the English-speaking context. Here we are dealing with a  Two updated studies on the Sapirian concept of form-feeling are proposed by Fortis and Laplantine in the present volume. 13

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field of investigation that has established itself as an authentic research program from the early 2000s onward and that has flourished mostly— but not exclusively—within the field of the philosophy of language. Although having developed without reference to the German-speaking paradigm of Sprachgefühl and in spite of some particular traits, theoretical concerns about linguistic intuitions can be subsumed, with good reason, under the generic concept of “linguistic feeling.” The expression “linguistic intuition” was made popular by Noam Chomsky in his writings on generative grammar, especially in his highly influential monograph Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965). In §4 of Part I (Chomsky 1965, pp. 18–27), entitled “Justification of Grammar,” Chomsky provides some clarifications about “the linguistic intuition of the native speaker” or “the speaker-hearer’s linguistic intuition”—the expression “linguistic intuition,” which appears eight times, being used, in the paragraph in question, in parallel with those of “intuition of the native speaker,” “speaker’s intuition,” and “intuitive knowledge of the language.” As he explains, linguistic intuition has to do with a certain way of “justifying a generative grammar,” namely, the “level [of ] descriptive adequacy,” according to which “the grammar is justified to the extent that it correctly describes its object, namely the linguistic intuition—the tacit competence—of the native speaker” (Chomsky 1965, pp. 26–27). By identifying linguistic intuition with “tacit competence”—also known as “tacit knowledge”—Chomsky de facto regards it as underpinning grammaticality judgments.14 Nevertheless, in spite of its importance in the model of generative grammar, Chomsky’s notion of linguistic

 Here it is worth recalling the gist of Chomsky’s essential distinction between grammaticality and acceptability, as well as that between the two corresponding notions of competence and performance. As nicely summarized by Barbara Luka (2005, p. 497): “The term grammaticality […] as described by Chomsky [corresponds to the fact] that an utterance is grammatical if it conforms to the rules of grammar. Chomsky contrasts this use of grammaticality with a technical sense of the term acceptability, which he defines with respect to language use: that is, an utterance is acceptable if it is natural and completely comprehensible […]. Under this strict Chomskyan distinction, grammaticality is an issue of linguistic competence, while acceptability judgments are a matter of linguistic performance […].” As we will see, theorists of linguistic intuitions, although they all more or less follow on from the Chomskyan tradition, do not always respect the distinction between grammaticality and acceptability. 14

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11

intuition remains an under-thematized concept, to which he ascribes a methodological/epistemological value rather than a theoretical one.15 In the 2000s, reflection on the issue of linguistic intuition, as initiated by Chomsky, experienced considerably renewed interest in the field of the philosophy of language and, to a lesser extent, linguistics, giving rise to a research program on linguistic intuitions, which, while being directly inherited from the paradigm of generative grammar, would not boil down to this alone. One of the driving forces behind this renewed interest was Michael Devitt, who, since 2006, has written a series of much commented upon works on the topic (e.g., Devitt 2006, 2010, 2013, 2020); nevertheless, the popularity of these writings should not obscure earlier seminal contributions, such as those by Robert Fiengo (2003) and Barbara Luka (2005). Devitt’s publications have caused a long-lasting controversy among theorists of language about the epistemological and methodological status of linguistic intuitions, but also, more importantly, about their function and “etiology.” A comprehensive account of this two-decade-long investigation on linguistic intuitions was recently proposed by Samuel Schindler, Anna Drożdżowicz, and Karen Brøcker in their edited volume Linguistic Intuitions. Evidence and Method (2020). The main achievements of this paradigm will be discussed, together with those of other research traditions on linguistic feeling, in the following sections of the present chapter.16 Taken together, studies on linguistic intuitions, as they have been carried out in the last two decades, have permitted us to revisit, within English-speaking areas, many issues regarding linguistic feeling that had been previously addressed within other research traditions, especially that of Sprachgefühl. Nevertheless, it should be kept in mind that we are dealing with a sui generis approach to linguistic feeling that stands out in four  Interestingly, since the 1980s, theorists of Sprachgefühl have revisited Chomsky’s ideas in light of their own research tradition. In addition to comparing the question of linguistic intuition with the old concept of Sprachgefühl, they have discussed its relation to the issue of competence and grammaticality, performance and acceptability, while highlighting its problematic status within the framework of Chomskyan linguistic theory (Unterberg 2020, pp. 212–223; see also: Gauger et al. 1982; Langlotz et al. 2014a). 16  See also Els Elffers’s and Jeffrey Maynes’s contributions to this volume. 15

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respects, namely: (a) theorists of linguistic intuitions advocate an ahistorical and American-centered approach to the issues at stake, which has led them to completely disregard the other existing contributions to the domain;17 (b) although they can be both philosophers and linguists, they tend to develop an approach to the problem that has more to do with the philosophy of language than with linguistics properly speaking; (c) they tend to advocate an extensive approach to the relationships between intuition and language normativity, by insisting in particular on the semantic dimension of the question;18 (d) in line with Chomsky’s original concerns, they attach great importance to the question of how intuitive processes can underpin and justify the study of language.

1.5 The Notion of “Epilinguistic Activity”: Culioli’s Contribution A relatively recent, but rather secondary contribution to the issue of linguistic feeling is the notion of epilinguistic activity (activité épilinguistique), which was proposed in the late twentieth century by the French linguist Antoine Culioli (1924– 2018).19 Although Culioli did not provide any systematic exposition of his ideas on the question, his developments deserve to be mentioned because they have become influential within the French linguistic tradition on which they have made a lasting impact in relation to concerns about linguistic feeling (e.g., Authiez-Revuz 1995; Julia 2001).20 In Pour une linguistique  In this respect, it is worth noting that Sapir’s research on form-feeling (Fortis Laplantine, this volume), which was a major contribution to the issue of linguistic feeling within the interwar American context, has been completely disregarded by current theorists of linguistic intuitions. 18  Such an insistence on the semantic aspects of language is problematic because, as we will see in Sect. 2.2, the notion of linguistic feeling  basically has to do with linguistic form, that is, with linguistic knowledge considered independently of the meaning of statements. The fact remains that studies carried out, for two decades, in the field of linguistic intuitions are far from being reducible to semantic issues and that, taken together, they largely overlap with the basic tenets of the issue of linguistic feeling as defined in the present volume. 19  Here I would like to thank one of the two anonymous referees of the book proposal for having drawn my attention to Culioli’s contribution and providing me with useful references. 20  Regarding the theorists of linguistic feeling in the French-speaking tradition, it is also worth mentioning, besides Culioli and Saussure, Gustave Guillaume (1883–1960), whose research on sentiment linguistique and sentiment de la langue was discussed at length by Philippe Monneret in a recent essay. Cf. Monneret (2021). 17

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de l’énonciation [For a Linguistics of Enunciation], which brings together his major essays, he defines epilinguistic activity as “the non-conscious metalinguistic activity of every subject [that] differs from deliberate metalinguistic activity” (Culioli 1999, p. 74). Regarding metalinguistic activity, he defines it, more generally speaking, as the “reflection on our own linguistic activity,” that is, as the “never ending transforming and deforming process” (Culioli 2000 [1991], p. 181) that corresponds to “the linguist’s activity, insofar as he describes, depicts, and, eventually, simulates the observed phenomena (production and products) relating to language and linguistics” (Culioli 1999, pp. 53–54). Although, to the best of my knowledge, Culioli did not use the expression “linguistic feeling” (or its variants), his developments on epilinguistic activity are clearly appealing to this notion. In any case, he insists on the fact that “every subject has a non-conscious metalinguistic activity (epilinguistic activity) that intertwines with his or her explicit metalinguistic activity (which does not necessarily mean ‘conscious’), each time he is reflecting on his or her experience of one or more languages” (Culioli 1999, p. 162). A key issue of Culioli’s theory is the notion of “epilinguistic gloss” (glose épilinguistique), which he defines as “the texts produced by a subject, spontaneously or as a result of a solicitation, when he or she is commenting on a previous text,” a text, he insists, that reflects “the utterer’s practice of language” (Culioli 1999, p. 74).

2 The Role of Linguistic Feeling in Language Processes and the Study of Language 2.1 Function and Typological Analysis of Linguistic Feeling Whatever the research tradition they may belong to, theorists agree, as a rule, to consider linguistic feeling as being involved in a variety of functions. As Unterberg (2020, p. 132) reminds us, for Franz Bopp, one of the most important representatives of the research tradition on

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Sprachgefühl in the early nineteenth century, “linguistic feeling appears as the fact of knowing of and about linguistic forms, meanings, and grammatical procedures of previous and current language states […].” Here we are dealing with a functional conception of linguistic feeling that, mutatis mutandis, has been taken up by more recent theorists of Sprachgefühl, such as Manfred Geier (1982, pp. 148–149), who identifies the latter with “a feeling for phonological, syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic wellformedness […].” A similar view of the functional scope of linguistic feeling is encountered in the field of linguistic intuitions. For instance, Maynes and Gross (2013, p. 715) insist on “the variety of subfields such intuitions subserve” and regard them as playing a role in “phonology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics.” These few excerpts, which were picked up from a variety of contexts, exemplify the widely shared idea that linguistic feeling consists of a multifunctional metacognitive activity. An issue that, in the wake of Devitt’s seminal publications (2006, 2010), has aroused much debate among theorists of linguistic intuitions is the question of whether they have to do with grammaticality or acceptability. In this respect, scholars commonly speak of “grammatica lity/acceptability intuition,” “grammaticality/acceptability judgment,” “judgment of grammaticality/acceptability,” or “intuitive grammaticality/acceptability judgment.” It would be useless to discuss, in the present chapter, the stakes of a debate that, in addition to being rather technical, is impaired by some terminological confusion (Brøcker 2020, pp. 72–73). In any case, the question of the functional implications of linguistic feeling has, for a long time, led linguists and philosophers of language to propose a typological analysis of the corresponding metacognitive phenomena. Since at least the second half of the nineteenth century, they have striven to identify, more or less accurately, various categories of linguistic feelings, in light of the specific role they are supposed to play in language processes. Nevertheless, one is forced to highlight that no agreement has been reached thus far regarding, either the nature of the categories of feelings at stake, or the definition of the terminology proposed, and that the typologies proposed have more often a descriptive rather

1 Introduction 

15

than an explanatory significance. Nevertheless, as we will see, definite types of linguistic feelings recurrent in the literature. In his 2021 essay devoted to the significance of sentiment de la langue in Saussure’s time, Siouffi (2021b, p. 23) discusses the typology proposed, in the early 1860s, by the French lexicographer Emile Littré. The latter, Siouffi reminds us, identified a “feeling of cases” (sentiment des cas), a “feeling of vowel change” (sentiment du changement des voyelles), a “feeling of reasons” (sentiment des raisons), a “feeling of correct use” (sentiment de l’emploi correct), a “feeling of long and short vowels” (sentiment des longues et des brèves), etc., without proposing any detailed analysis of the corresponding phenomena however. In the same essay, Siouffi (2021b, p. 31) also briefly comments on the typological analysis of Sprachgefühle proposed, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, by Gabelentz, who spoke, for instance, of a “feeling of sound” (Lautgefühl), a “feeling of analogy” (Analogiegefühl),21 or an “etymological feeling” (etymologisches Gefühl). Here it is worth mentioning Lindroth (1937, p. 11) who, without proposing any systematic typological analysis, spoke of (a) a “phonemic feeling” (Phonemgefühl), which relates to not only phonemic but also prosodic aspects of language, and of (b) a “stylistic feeling” (Stilgefühl), which he regarded as a “subspecies” (Unterart) of linguistic feeling, because “we are dealing with a difference of [linguistic] level, for instance between expressions that are factually equivalent” (Lindroth 1937, p. 11). Two decades later, in addition to briefly commenting on Lindroth’s typology, Kainz (1956, p. 353) would identify, for his part, “a feeling for morphemes” (ein Gefühl für die Morpheme) and “a syntactic feeling” (ein syntaktisches Gefühl). The question of what the functional implications of linguistic feeling consist of has also been addressed, in the last two decades, within the framework of the research program on linguistic intuitions, beyond the above-mentioned debate about grammaticality and acceptability judgments. Three categories of linguistic intuitions, namely, syntactic, semantic, and phonetic/phonological intuitions, sometimes also called  The link between analogy and linguistic feeling is an important issue that will be addressed below, in Sect. 3.2. See also Unterberg’s and Siouffi’s contributions to this volume. 21

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“judgments,”22 are recurrent in the literature.23 Nevertheless, only a limited number of theorists have carried out a systematic typological analysis of the metalinguistic phenomena at stake and have tried to specify their functional properties. This is the case of Robert Fiengo (2003), who compares and contrasts semantic and phonetic intuitions, on the one hand, to syntactic intuitions, on the other hand—three categories of intuition of which he strives to identify the distinctive marks. It is also worth mentioning John Collins, who, in a recent essay (Collins 2020), dwelled on the distinction between syntactic (grammatical) and semantic intuitions, which he defines as the intuitions that “reveal,” respectively, “the conditions for a sentence to have an interpretation (or a contribution to an interpretation)” and “constraints on what can be said with a sentence with a fixed interpretation” (Collins 2020, p. 89). While the expression “syntactic intuition” is, as a rule, unproblematic, since it consensually refers to the intuitive judgment of sentence well-­formedness, that of “semantic intuition” is more ambiguous and can take on different meanings, according to the authors (e.g., Fiengo 2003; Collins 2020; Droźdźowicz 2020).24 In his contribution to the present volume, Siouffi insists on the importance of distinguishing between lexical, morphological, and syntactic feelings. This trichotomic typological approach to linguistic feeling turns out to be essential for understanding how we succeed in intuiting language normativity. Let me now say a word about each of these three categories of feelings, which can be regarded, in my view, as the chief functional expressions of this complex psychological phenomenon called linguistic feeling. Lexical feeling is, as the name indicates, the (alleged) dimension of linguistic feeling that specifically relates to lexical items and which allows the subject to spontaneously decide on whether the latter are compliant  The significance and equivocalness of such a term within the framework of linguistic intuition studies will be discussed in Sect. 3.2. 23  For a survey, see the various contributions encompassed in Schindler, Drożdżowicz, and Karen Brøcker’s edited volume (Schindler et al. 2020). Such a trichotomy had been already contemplated in the 1980s, within the field of Sprachgefühl studies, by Geier (1982, pp. 148–149) who spoke of “a feeling for phonological, syntactic, semantic or pragmatic well-formedness.” 24  Not to mention the fact that, as highlighted before, addressing the issue of linguistic feeling in light of semantic concerns is problematic. 22

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or noncompliant. Here we are dealing with a metacognitive activity that is supposed to accompany the auditory, visual, and perhaps also motor perception of, not only single and compound words, but also more complex structures such as locutions and idiomatic expressions. To put it differently, lexical feeling consists of one’s capacity to appraise, in the context of an utterance, the well- or ill-formedness of linguistic units that are supposed to be meaningful independently from the grammatical significance they may have. In such a case, what the individual evaluates is not simply a perceptual image, but a perceptual image about which he or she knows whether (a) it has a definite linguistic meaning and (b) it belongs to the lexicon of the language being uttered. The role of lexical feeling is to inform us about whether and to what extent lexical items we perceive are actually semiotic entities that mean something within a given linguistic system. The hypothetical way in which one intuitively apprehends the well- or ill-formedness of words, locutions, or idiomatic expressions will be discussed in Sect. 4.4. Morphological and syntactic feelings are two putative functional dimensions of linguistic feeling that can be subsumed under the broader category of “grammatical feelings.” By “morphological feeling,” I refer to one’s intuitive capacity to appraise, within a definite utterance or a meaningful part of it, the consistency or the lack of consistency of morphological features, whereas I call “syntactic feeling” the functional dimension of linguistic feeling that is supposed to accompany the syntactic properties of utterances and to make us experience them—or meaningful parts of them—as something well- or ill-structured. Considering the interdependence between morphology and syntax, these two kinds of feelings should be regarded as joint manifestations of linguistic consciousness. Nevertheless, insofar as each of these two kinds of feelings relate to relatively well-identified psychological entities, there are, in my view, good reasons to consider them as two functionally autonomous expressions of linguistic feeling. Morphological and syntactic feelings relate to auditory or visual percepts that the subject spontaneously experiences, respectively, as morphological and as syntactic properties. Importantly, the properties in question are not evaluated in isolation, but insofar as they establish definite relationships between each other. In this respect, morphological

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and syntactic feelings can be said to be, par excellence, relational feelings.25 Here we are dealing with two complementary metacognitive activities that correlate with a unified, dynamically organized totality: Not only do morphological and syntactic properties make sense only within the framework of a meaningful and formally consistent linguistic structure, but they are characteristically apprehended in succession, as linguistic form gradually unfolds in consciousness. In Sect. 4.4, I will say a word about the possible psychological foundations of grammatical feelings. Finally, besides lexical, morphological, and syntactic feelings, we should distinguish, in my view, two further putative, relatively secondary manifestations of linguistic feeling, namely, phonological feeling and stylistic feeling—a distinction that echoes, to some extent, Lindroth’s above-­ discussed typology. What I call “phonological feeling” is the metacognitive activity through which the individual is supposed to spontaneously decide on whether sound properties and their organization in consciousness prove to be consistent or not within the framework of a definite linguistic system. The so-called phonological feeling has more to do with prosodic rather than with phonemic compliance, the latter being, in all likelihood, more directly related to lexical and morphological feelings. What I call stylistic feeling is the functional dimension of linguistic feeling that is possibly involved in evaluating the formal consistency of language, beyond its purely grammatical aspect and the simple level of utterances. It makes sense to assume that, in both instances, but especially in the second one, we are dealing with a form of evaluative experience that is closely related to the aesthetic appraisal of language and that shares many commonalities with the so-called aesthetic feeling.

2.2 Linguistic Feeling and Linguistic Form August Schleicher, who is sometimes said to have made linguistic feeling a scientific concept (Knobloch 1980, p. 51), defined it as “the feeling for the function of the word and its parts” and as “the tutelary spirit of the linguistic form (Sprachform)” (Schleicher 1888, p. 65). As Unterberg  On the notion of “relational feelings,” see Fortis’s chapter devoted to Sapir’s form-feeling.

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(2020, pp. 163–154) reminds us, “form,” in Schleicher’s theory of language, refers to “the way in which the expression of meaning and the expression of relation (e.g., basic and inflectional morphemes) coalesce or are fused with each other”—a conception of linguistic form that is in keeping, mutatis mutandis, with the one which was at the time prevalent in German-speaking language sciences (Knobloch 1988). So, according to Schleicher, the role of linguistic feeling is to inform the subject about whether or not the mode of organization of the constituent elements of a definite language are likely to correctly convey a definite meaning. Such a view would be taken up and developed further, one century later, by Gauger and Oesterreicher (1982; see in particular pp. 19–27) in their above-mentioned prize-winning essay on linguistic feeling and linguistic sense. According to them, linguistic feeling “deals with a kind of knowledge [Wissen] about the correctness or appropriateness of definite linguistic forms [sprachlicher Formen]” (Gauger and Oesterreicher 1982, p. 44). As a metacognitive phenomenon, it specifically has to do with “linguistic correctness” (sprachliche Richtigkeit), or, more exactly, with what is linguistically correct and incorrect, and does not involve the apprehension of semantic contents per se. “[L]inguistic correctness,” Gauger and Oesterreicher highlight, “is independent from sense [Sinn], intention, and truth; it is independent from ‘thinking’ [Denken]— broadly speaking—that lies in sentences; it is […] the only exclusively linguistic criterion” (Gauger and Oesterreicher 1982, p. 24). Insofar as it relates, not to the cognizance of the world (Kenntnis der Welt), but to the cognizance of language (Kenntnis der Sprache), linguistic feeling serves to evaluate properties of a formal nature, namely, (a) grammar (das Grammatische), that is, in a narrow sense, morphology and syntax, (b) phonetics (das Lautliche), and (c) the word choice. The question of the relation between linguistic feeling and linguistic form has also been addressed, although not systematically, within the research program on linguistic intuitions. For instance, Fiengo (2003, p. 254; my emphasis) identifies linguistic intuitions with “[our] ability to judge the properties of linguistic forms”—a concept under which, as stated earlier, he also subsumes judgments about semantics. Although theorists of linguistic intuitions are interested in semantic judgments, they tend to focus, as Gross (2020, p. 14) reminds us, on the issue of

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syntactic intuitions, that is, on judgments of sentence well-formedness— a notion that, in all likelihood, is in keeping with the issue of linguistic form as defined above.26 The idea that linguistic feeling is specifically involved in the appraisal of linguistic form, that is, of the organizational structure by virtue of which language phenomena become meaningful, underlies many linguistic and philosophical studies, both past and present. Nevertheless, one is forced to admit that, since the nineteenth century, only a few theorists have expressed it explicitly. Here we are dealing with the very core of the functional analysis of linguistic feeling and the theoretical issue at stake deserves some clarification. Linguistic feeling is said to consist of the intuitive apprehension of language normativity insofar as it informs us about the compliance or noncompliance of a form of lexical, syntactic, morphological, or phonological knowledge that prevails within a definite linguistic community. The knowledge in question, as already highlighted by Gauger and Oesterreicher, is about what language elements and language rules are supposed to be, not about what they are supposed to speak of. In other words, as a metacognitive activity, linguistic feeling relates to everything pertaining to the signifier, that is, to the properties of a perceptual nature that are the vehicle of linguistic meaning, while having, as such, nothing to do with the signified, namely, with the conceptual content that is expressed by the meaningful units of language.

2.3 The Place and Status of Linguistic Feeling in the Scientific and Philosophical Study of Language The issue of the place and status of linguistic feeling in the study of language has been addressed in different ways throughout its history and within the various research traditions in which it has been discussed. There are three chief epistemological/methodological ways of conceiving  The view that the appraisal of language normativity consists of evaluating the formal properties of language is also encountered in Sapir, for whom, as stated earlier, linguistic feeling is nothing but a “form-feeling” involved in the apprehension of “the phonological/morphosyntactical apparatus of language.” Cf. Fortis (this volume). 26

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linguistic feeling in light of linguistics and the philosophy of language— each of which deserves a brief survey. The first and most fundamental approach regarding the place and status of linguistic feeling is that of considering it as a constituent property of ordinary language activity, and so as a “natural” topic of linguistics or the philosophy of language. According to this view, linguistic feeling, as a ubiquitous and pivotal component of linguistic consciousness, should be treated like any other key manifestation of the language function. Here we are dealing with the conception of linguistic feeling that, as a rule, has been endorsed, since the late eighteenth century, by theorists of Sprachgefühl. Considered from such a theoretical (and, eventually, empirical) perspective, linguistic feeling has been discussed within a great variety of linguistic schools and currents, in light of both a synchronic and a diachronic approach to language (for an overview see Kainz 1956; Gauger et al. 1982; Unterberg 2020; Siouffi 2021a). There is a second, more specific and more epistemologically oriented way of addressing the question of the place and status of linguistic feeling in the study of language. Here we are dealing with those investigations that are interested in linguistic feeling as long as it is supposed to be a source of evidence for linguists, and, eventually, philosophers. In such a case, linguistic feeling is regarded as a valid subject, not because it is a manifestation of ordinary language activity, but because it may constitute a means of having access to properties of language and linguistic theory, especially grammar, and of warranting their soundness. Such a view has been, from the beginning, a characteristic mark of the research program on linguistic intuitions and should be regarded as a direct legacy of Chomsky’s generative grammar research program. As Brøcker et al. (2020, p. 1) recall in their introduction to their above-mentioned book, two chief questions underpin the research program in question: (a) the justification question (“[w]hat is the justification of using linguistic intuitions as evidence?”) and (b) the methodology question (“[a]re formal methods of gathering intuitions epistemically and methodologically superior to informal ones?”). For two decades, scholars working on linguistic intuitions have striven to answer these questions, not only theoretically, but also experimentally (for an overview, see Schindler et al. 2020). The question of whether and to what extent linguistic intuitions

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can serve as an evidential basis for language sciences is the core topic of Elffers’s contribution (Chap. 8).27 Nevertheless, at this level, an important clarification should be made. When reading current literature, indeed, one is forced to admit that, beyond the fact of addressing the question of their evidential value, most theorists of linguistic intuitions de facto investigate them as such, by discussing their nature, origin, and functional implications, as they would do for any other constituent property of language. Without diminishing the importance of the view that linguistic intuitions have an evidential value for the study of language, we can say that such a view appears, to some extent, to be a rhetorical way of dealing with the issue of linguistic feeling, inherited from the generative grammar tradition, of dealing with the issue of linguistic feeling. The fact is that, taken together, theoretical outcomes of the research tradition on linguistic intuitions are closely related to those of the research tradition on Sprachgefühl. Finally, it is worth saying a word about the third way of addressing the issue of linguistic feeling, namely, the didactic approach. Indeed for some scholars, linguistic feeling appears as a pivotal pedagogic tool for the transmission of native or foreign language. This approach has been observed mostly within the research tradition on Sprachgefühl, as shown by Unterberg in his doctoral dissertation (2020).28 Although a relatively marginal view compared with more theoretical approaches, such a practical conception of linguistic feeling is as old as the rise of concerns about Sprachgefühl. One of its early proponents is August Hartung, for whom the teaching of German language aims “first and foremost to refine the correct linguistic feeling [das richtige Sprachgefühl]” (Hartung 1792, p. III). In the late nineteenth century, the main supporter of the didactic approach of linguistic feeling was Rudolf Hildebrand (1890), who, as Unterberg (2020, p. 191) reminds us, “advocate[d] […] the fact of steering toward linguistic feeling.” Here we are dealing with a way of considering linguistic feeling that is still vivid today, beyond the limits of the German-speaking area (e.g., Trad 2009; Roehr-Brackin 2018).

 Such an issue is also addressed by Maynes and Foolen in their respective chapters.  See also Foolen (this volume).

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3 Properties, Nature, and Foundations of Linguistic Feeling 3.1 Chief Distinctive Marks of Linguistic Feeling Even if it had not been completely disregarded before, the question of the constitutive properties of linguistic feeling was systematically addressed, in the late 1930s, by Lindroth (1937, pp. 7–11), and, even more conspicuously, from the 1950s onward, by the theorists of Sprachgefühl, in the wake of the emergence of the latter as an autonomous field of investigation (see in particular Kainz 1956, pp. 325–356; Gauger and Oesterreicher 1982, pp. 50–55; Fiehler 2014, pp. 37–38; and Unterberg 2020, pp. 284–460). German scholars have permitted us to clarify the question of what characterizes linguistic feeling, although they are not necessarily in full agreement with each other on the nature of its distinctive marks. To the best of my knowledge, no such attempts at systematically characterizing linguistic feeling are encountered in the research program on linguistic intuitions. Nevertheless, in the last two decades, theorists of linguistic intuitions (e.g., Fiengo 2003; Luka 2005; Textor 2009; Maynes 2012, this volume; Maynes and Gross 2013; Gross 2020) have discussed in depth the issue at stake, coming to conclusions that are, mutatis mutandis, similar to those reached by the theorists of Sprachgefühl. Here my intention is to review, in a critical way, the six distinctive marks that have been most commonly ascribed to linguistic feeling.

3.1.1 Linguistic Feeling Is an Intuitive Phenomenon The most obvious characteristic trait of linguistic feeling, since it has to do with the very way of defining it, is the fact of being an intuitive way of knowing. Although, as we will see in the next subsection, there is no agreement about its nature and foundations, linguistic feeling is widely regarded as an “immediate and irreflective” activity by which we “involuntarily” and “automatically” grasp something. Linguistic feeling is a non-inferential phenomenon which, even though it allows us to have access to epistemic processes of a linguistic nature, does not imply per se

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the mobilization of propositional knowledge. This does not preclude theorists, especially theorists of linguistic intuitions, from speaking of such a phenomenon as a “judgment.” The question of whether and to what extent linguistic feeling can be identified with a judgment is still a matter of debate, as I will explain in Sect. 3.2. Importantly, some theorists have insisted on the importance of distinguishing linguistic feeling from what Barbara Luka (2005, pp. 488–489) called “analytic skills” or “analytic reasoning,” that is, the metacognitive activity by which the individual reflectively and discursively apprehends linguistic knowledge. The fact is that one’s capacity to evaluate language normativity consists of the alternation of two experientially and functionally distinct, but complementary ways of apprehending language processes. “Analytic reasoning” is a phenomenon that typically allows the subject to retrospectively contemplate information that he or she has intuited by means of linguistic feeling, especially when that information proves to be noncompliant. Here we are dealing with a characteristic aspect of linguistic metacognition that, although it has not always been made clear by theorists, proves to be essential to understanding the role and place of linguistic feeling in the experience of language.

3.1.2 Linguistic Feeling Is a Metalinguistic Activity A second property that is acknowledged to be an essential feature of linguistic feeling is, unsurprisingly, its metalinguistic (or “epilinguistic”) character, that is, the fact of being an activity about the language itself— in the case in point, about the nature of linguistic form. As stated earlier, current English-speaking linguists and philosophers often speak of the manifestation of linguistic feeling as “metalinguistic intuitions” or “metalinguistic judgments,”29 while Culioli, for his part, referred to it as an “epilinguistic activity.” Although this point is not always explicitly discussed in the literature, linguistic feeling appears as a particular form of  See in particular Schindler, Drożdżowicz, and Brøcker (2020).

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metacognition—the individual’s capacity to monitor, at all times, the course of his or her own mental processes and the consistency of his or her own epistemic activities (e.g., Metcalfe and Shimamura 1994; Dunlosky and Metcalfe, 2009; Proust 2013)—applied to the specific case of linguistic knowledge. It has, as a metacognitive phenomenon, an evaluative power, which consists of informing us about whether the formal properties of language, as they are actually occurring, are in compliance with what they are supposed to be.30

3.1.3 Linguistic Feeling Tells Us Something About the Normative Dimension of Language A further essential characteristic of linguistic feeling, which also has to do with the very way of defining it, is the fact that it relates to the normative dimension of language. Linguistic feeling is said to be an evaluative activity of language normativity insofar as it allows the subject to spontaneously decide on whether rules, as they are supposed to prevail in a given linguistic system and to be accepted within a definite linguistic community, are complied with or broken. “Norms that monitor and control usage, that separate what is correct from what is false,” Kainz (1956, p. 343) reminds us, “taken together, build, linguistic feeling.” Or, to put it in Gauger and Oesterreicher’s words (1982, p. 40): “[The] knowledge of norms, [the] not always very definite consciousness from which criteria of evaluation show themselves, is the linguistic feeling.” It would be beyond the scope of the present chapter to dwell on the old and much debated issue of the place and status of normativity in language (e.g., Mäkilähde et al. 2019; Mortensen and Kraft 2022; Foolen, this volume; Maynes, this volume). Nor will I come back to the question of what kind of normative knowledge linguistic feeling specifically refers to (as stated earlier, the latter basically serves to apprehend the properties of linguistic form).  The question of the link between metacognitive and evaluative powers is discussed in detail below, in Sect. 4 devoted to the psychoaffective theory of linguistic feeling. 30

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Here I would simply like to say a word about three pivotal issues regarding the relation between linguistic feeling and language normativity. First, it is widely admitted that linguistic feeling has to do with norms or rules as they prevail in “langue” or “competence” and as they are instantiated through “parole” or “performance.” As Kainz (1956, p. 326) explains, the role of linguistic feeling is “[to] establis[h] the correspondence between speech performance (‘parole’), considered as an individual action, and the conventional system of rules of a definite ‘langue.’” Linguistic feeling, whether regarded as “the voice of competence” (Devitt) or as “the voice of performance” (Drożdżowicz), appears as the expression of normative linguistic knowledge inherent in the individual’s mind (Fiehler 2014, p. 37).31 Second, the fact that the normative knowledge which linguistic feeling relates to is, par excellence, a socially built and validated form of cognizance raises the question of whether linguistic feeling can be said to carry an experience of a collective nature. Kainz (1956, p. 355) mentions the fact that, as soon as one assumes “the existence of a supra-individual language within an overarching linguistic community,” one should admit the existence of “a collective linguistic feeling” [ein kollektives Sprachgefühl] that “consists of the coincidence between linguistic usages [Gepflogenheiten] depending on education and socially homogeneous groups”—however without concurring with such a hypothesis (see also Lindroth 1937, p. 9). Among the theorists who have addressed the question of how linguistic feeling relates to both individual consciousness and the experience of collectiveness, special mention should be given to Saussure. In his contribution to the present volume (Chap. 3), Emanuele Fadda discusses what he calls “the normative side” of Saussure’s linguistic feeling: he highlights that as it is grounded in both “instinct” and “institution,” it allows the speaking subject to apprehend the collective dimension of language. Foolen, for his part, devotes a large part of Chap. 10 to how norms and habits, more specifically through standardization and attitudes, may interact with the manifestation of linguistic feeling, by assuming, among other things, that the latter may be “the feeling of belonging to the  The question of how, as the result of a “monitoring process,” linguistic feeling may consist in putting in relation parole/performance and langue/competence is addressed in Sect 3.3. 31

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relevant community.”32 In any event, as Fiehler (2014, p. 37) reminds us, while linguistic feeling does not make sense except in light of a given, socially established linguistic system, it only exists, as an experiential phenomenon, insofar as it manifests itself in one specific individual’s mind. Third, it is worth noting that, although linguistic feeling is always defined in light of a socially established linguistic system, its normative value is not absolute, but rather relative as the linguistic norm itself used to be. To begin with, it should be kept in mind that linguistic feeling is always defined in relation to a specific (e.g., lexical, morphological, syntactic, phonological, or stylistic) normative aspect of language and that such normative properties are likely to change according to whether we are dealing with heard, spoken, read, or written language. Moreover, as stated earlier, insofar as linguistic knowledge ultimately only makes sense at the individual level, linguistic feeling necessarily has an idiosyncratic dimension, to some extent (Kainz 1956, p. 350). Importantly, various “kinds” of linguistic feelings may, so to speak, coexist, within the same individual: in addition to having a typically well-formed and stable linguistic feeling for his or her mother tongue, the speaker/hearer is likely to develop additional ones for secondarily acquired languages. Moreover, while having to do with the standard form of language, linguistic feeling should take into account the normative modulations existing within a definite linguistic system. As Kainz (1956, p. 350) emphasizes, it can take “particular characters and particular shapings […] through dialect, common language, jargon, professional language.” Gauger and Oesterreicher (1982, pp. 44–45), for their part, insist on the fact that “linguistic feeling only steps in insofar as, besides the correct, standardized forms, there exist variants of different (regional or sociocultural) kinds” (pp. 44–45).  Nevertheless, it would be, in my view, misleading to assume that linguistic feeling has to do with the experience of sharing linguistic knowledge with other individuals or with the feeling of belonging to a given linguistic community. It is true that the knowledge which linguistic feeling relates to is normative insofar as it results from a process of learning and is valid for a plurality of individuals by virtue of social conventions. The fact remains that the role of linguistic feeling is to tell us what linguistic knowledge ought to be—that is, to inform us about language normativity as a state of affairs—not to tell us why linguistic knowledge is supposed to be so—that is, to inform us about the origins of language normativity, its conditions of appearance, or the way of justifying it. Its role, to put it differently, is to allow the subject to appraise the normative properties of the linguistic form per se, irrespective of the reasons why the latter should be experienced as something normative. 32

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According to them, linguistic feeling helps us identify literary, archaic, vulgar, dialectal, or fashionable “cues” and so “distinguish between the correct ‘form’ and variants that express different connotative values” (Gauger and Oesterreicher, p. 44; see also: Langlotz, Lehnert, and Schul 2014, p. 16). Finally, it should be kept in mind that linguistic feeling may change over time as language itself evolves, either on the scale of historical times or at the level an individual lifespan. Whereas some theorists, like Saussure, regarded linguistic feeling as the expression, par excellence, of the synchronic state of the linguistic system (Nyckees 2021), others, like Bopp or Schleicher, emphasized, on the contrary, the need to consider it diachronically (Unterberg 2020, pp. 126–132, 161–163, this volume).33 More recently, Fiehler (2014, p. 37) insisted on the fact that “[t]he system of norms [linguistic feeling has to do with] is acquired throughout linguistic-communicational socialization and is elaborated and modified across one’s lifespan.”34

3.1.4 Linguistic Feeling Is at the Interface Between Consciousness and the Unconscious Linguistic feeling is also typically regarded as an experiential property whose characteristic is to move at the interface between consciousness and the unconscious. Such an idea is not new, since, as highlighted by Unterberg (2020, pp. 129–133, 175–176, 311–314), the question of the relation of linguistic feeling to the conscious and unconscious dimensions of mental life was already addressed by Franz Bopp (1833) and was discussed further by many other theorists of Sprachgefühl, among them Hermann Paul (1920). This issue was recently shown to be a pivotal aspect of Saussure’s reflection on the sentiment de la langue (Depecker 2021; see also Nyckees 2021, pp. 53–54). While identifying sentiment de  As Unterberg (2020, p. 162) recalls, for Schleicher “[t]he history of each language is also the history of a waning linguistic feeling […].” 34  As we can see, the reflection on the fluctuating normative character of linguistic feeling has been developed first and foremost within the research tradition on Sprachgefühl. Nevertheless, see also Foolen (this volume). 33

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29

la langue with “linguistic consciousness” or “the consciousness of speaking subjects,” as its name indicates, Saussure regarded it as an expression of langue, that is, of the knowledge, defined on the scale of a given linguistic community, that is contained in the individual’s brain and that the latter is not directly aware of. The issue of consciousness and unconsciousness has been contemplated in the field of linguistic intuitions too. As Brøcker (2020, p. 69, my emphasis) reminds us, generative linguists traditionally assume that “when the speaker is presented with a sentence, the speaker unconsciously derives an answer from the rules that are represented in their mind.” Generally speaking, the view that linguistic feeling has to do with unconscious rather than conscious life is based on two assumptions: (a) the fact that linguistic feeling basically relates to “tacit linguistic knowledge” (langue, competence); (b) the fact that, because of its intuitive nature, linguistic feeling is an involuntary and automatic phenomenon that manifests itself largely unbeknownst to the subject. Regarding the first point, Fiengo (2003, pp. 257–258), remarks, rightly, that “[w]e should distinguish […] between intuitions, which are conscious states, and the processes of which we are unconscious that perhaps underlie our intuitions.” He insists on the importance of considering the problem from both “the conscious” and from “the unconscious” side, by taking into account, on the one hand, the components of intuitive experience per se and, on the other hand, the processes from which it is supposed to originate. The fact is that “feeling” or “intuiting” language properties as compliant or noncompliant consists of experiencing something, though transiently, with some degree of consciousness. On the other hand, it can reasonably be assumed that linguistic feeling is likely to occur in two alternate experiential forms, namely, as a “latent” and as a “manifest” linguistic feeling, according to whether the language processes it accompanies are experienced, respectively, as something that meets or that does not meet expectations.35 It makes sense to assume, indeed, that, as long as the standard is met, linguistic feeling remains in the background of  The expressions “latent feeling” and “manifest linguistic feeling” (latentes/manifestes Sprachgefühl) were proposed by Lindroth (1937, pp. 7–8; see also Kainz 1956, p. 352), however without reference to the positive and the negative way of intuitively apprehending language normativity. 35

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consciousness, and that it is only when a deviation from the standard is detected—when, so to speak, an “error signal” (Gross 2020) is sent—that it becomes clearly conscious.

3.1.5 Linguistic Feeling Is a Valenced Experiential Phenomenon A further chief characteristic of linguistic feeling, which is de facto admitted by most theorists, even though rarely discussed explicitly in the literature, is the fact that it manifests with a definitive valence. Linguistic feeling consists, in other words, of either a positive or a negative reaction to linguistic information to be evaluated. When metacognitively apprehending the linguistic information, the subject spontaneously experiences—to mention the expressions commonly encountered in the literature—as “right” or “wrong,” “correct” or “incorrect,” “appropriate” or “inappropriate,” “acceptable” or “unacceptable,” “grammatical” or “ungrammatical,” etc.: one’s linguistic feeling always manifests in one of two opposite experiential directions. In light of the developments proposed in the previous paragraph, it can reasonably be assumed that the two positive and negative forms of linguistic feeling occur each with a definite degree of consciousness, and that it is only when linguistic norms are violated, that is, when linguistic feeling is experienced negatively, that it becomes fully conscious. This idea was made clear by Lindroth (1937, pp. 10–11) and Kainz (1956, p. 353), who regarded linguistic feeling as having a pleasurable or a displeasurable coloration according to whether linguistic information is apprehended as compliant or noncompliant. Among theorists of linguistic intuitions, the issue of valence has been addressed in depth by Gross and Maynes (Maynes and Gross 2013; Gross 2020; Maynes, this volume). They have focused on linguistic intuition as a negatively valenced phenomenon, that is, as the subjective correlate of what is linguistically “unacceptable,” “bad sounding” or “yucky.” In a recent contribution, Gross (2020, p. 21; see also Maynes, this volume) identified negative valence as one of the essential

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31

phenomenological components of linguistic intuitions.36 As discussed further in Sect. 4.3.1, the fact that linguistic feeling has a valence is a strong argument in favor of the view that it consists of a psychological process of an affective nature.

3.1.6 Linguistic Feeling Is a Ubiquitous Phenomenon of Linguistic Consciousness There is a last issue that, although often only implicitly addressed by theorists, proves to be an essential characteristic of linguistic feeling: The fact that intuitively apprehending the normativity of language is a ubiquitous property of linguistic consciousness. There are good reasons to think that linguistic feeling is involved in all manners of experiencing language, whether the fact of hearing, speaking, reading, or writing it. In this respect, it can be said to be a metacognitive accompaniment of visual, auditory, and even motor means of conveying linguistic information. In reality, there is no reason why linguistic feeling would be restricted to the externalized forms of language and should not be regarded too as a property of “inner language,” the purely introspective manifestation of language experience. Similarly, even if the issue of linguistic feeling has been addressed in the case of articulated language, it can be reasonably supposed to be a constituent element of gestural language as well. The question of the ubiquity of linguistic feeling has been explicitly tackled by a number of theorists of Sprachgefühl (e.g., Lindroth 1937, p. 7; Kainz 1956, pp. 325 and 352; Gauger and Oesterreicher 1982, p. 23; Henne 1982, p. 113; Geier 1982, p. 157; Fiehler 2014, p. 37). In his 1937 article, Lindroth (1937, p. 7) assumed the existence of both a “productive” and a “reproductive” linguistic feeling (produktives/reproduktives Sprachgefühl), insisting on the fact that linguistic feeling is likely to occur in the “producer” as well as in the “receiver.” Such a view was taken up and specified further by Kainz (1956, pp. 325, 352). As he explained: “Receptive and productive, as well as impressive and active-expressive factors are combined in linguistic feeling, [which] allows us to detect  Gross’s analysis of the phenomenological components of linguistic intuitions will be expounded in detail in Sect. 3.3.1. 36

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[Erkennen] and to rectify defective contingencies of others’ language [Sprachfügungen anderer], so enabling us to spontaneously speak and write in a correct way, that is, to adjust [Angleichung] what is produced by us to the usage regarded as a norm value” (Kainz 1956, p. 352).

3.2 Psychological Nature and Etiology of Linguistic Feeling Regardless of the research tradition, linguistic feeling used to be more or less explicitly identified with a psychological phenomenon. The psychological character of linguistic feeling has been most overtly discussed by theorists belonging to the psycholinguistic and generativist traditions (see in particular: Kainz 1956; Fiehler 2014; Santana 2020, pp. 134–141). Even in Saussure, whose name is traditionally associated with the rise of structuralism and an anti-­psychological turn in language sciences, there may be good reason to speak of sentiment linguistique as a psychological concept (Siouffi 2021a). The fact remains that, especially within the field of linguistic intuitions, a few scholars have been willing to distance themselves from the prevailing psychological/mentalistic paradigm. This is the case of Devitt, whose “Modest View,” in contrast to the “VoC [Voice of Competence] view,” is sometimes said to be a “non-mentalistic conception” of linguistic intuitions (e.g., Maynes and Gross 2013, p. 725), and that of Drożdżowicz, who, in a recent essay (2020, p. 115), criticized the perceptual, internalist views on intuitions while advocating an alternative, externalist approach likely to take into account “factors other than conscious experience to explain the evidential status of intuitive judgments about meaning and to ground the methodological practice of appealing to them.” Nevertheless, when closely reading the authors in question, one is forced to admit that, beyond their statements of principle, the explanatory models they propose actually largely continue to deal with psychological/mentalistic concerns. Although it has experienced significantly renewed interest in the last few decades, the question of the psychological nature and origins of linguistic feeling is not new and can be said to be as old as the study of the

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33

concept itself.37 Regarding the early attempts at explaining linguistic feeling, it is worth mentioning the place devoted, in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century models, to the issue of analogy. Here we are dealing with a well-known and crucial notion of language sciences (Itkonen 2005; Wanner 2006) which, according to the APA Dictionary of Psychology ([Analogy] n.d.), is basically concerned with “the process by which the regular patterns of inflection, word formation, and the like in a language are extended to novel or anomalous instances”—a phenomenon that, within the German-­speaking context of the time, was construed in terms of representational and associational processes. As Unterberg and Siouffi highlight in their contributions to the present volume, analogy was at the heart of Paul’s and Saussure’s reflections on Sprachgefühl and sentiment linguistique.38 The discussion of the role of analogical processes in the making of linguistic feeling was pursued further in the twentieth century and, after the Second World War, it was contemplated in particular by Kainz, who regarded both memory (Gedächtnis) and analogy (Analogie) as the two complementary “action constituents” of linguistic feeling. Recent advances regarding the question of what linguistic feeling consists of owe much to the theorists of linguistic intuitions. Interestingly, they commonly speak of the “etiology” of linguistic intuitions to describe phenomena and processes those intuitions may be ascribed to. As stated earlier, theorists of linguistic intuitions often refer to them as “judgments”—an expression that sounds particularly unclear and ambiguous in light of the issue in play. In their influential 2013 essay, Maynes and Gross (2013, pp. 715–716) dwell on the problematic character of this denomination in the corresponding literature. According to them, if linguistic intuitions are actually judgmental phenomena, one is forced to admit that, considering their intuitive nature, they are judgments of a very particular kind. In this respect, they suggest that linguistic intuitions would benefit from being identified with the fact of “find[ing] oneself with the judgment” and wonder whether or not they occur instantaneously and without reflection, while insisting on the importance of 37 38

 For review, see Unterberg (2020).  See also Unterberg (2020, pp. 175–176) and Siouffi (2021b, p. 30).

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regarding them as distinct from “conscious reasonings.” Maynes and Gross also consider the alternative view according to which linguistic intuitions should be identified, “not with any kind of judgment, but with some noncommittal, pre-judgmental representational state—an experience, appearance, or seeming […]” (Maynes and Gross 2013, p. 716). Here we are dealing, mutatis mutandis, with what Drożdżowicz calls, in a recent contribution (2020), “the perceptual view on linguistic intuitions,” that is, the conception that “speakers’ intuitive judgments are based on perceptual-like conscious experiences of understanding that language users typically undergo when listening to utterances in a familiar language” (Droźdźowicz 2020, p. 109). Devitt is among those who, beyond simply using the term, explicitly identify linguistic intuitions with the manifestation of a particular kind of judgment. According to him, indeed, “[linguistic] intuitions are propositional attitudes or thoughts […] with propositional contents expressible by sentences […]” (Devitt 2020, p. 52). Nevertheless, such a statement does not prevent him from describing them as “immediate perceptual judgments” or “linguistic perceptual judgments,” and so he takes a stance that is, at the same time, close to the so-called perceptual view. The perceptual view is well embodied by Mark Textor (2009, p. 404), for whom linguistic intuitions “are not judgements, but passive evaluations of bits of language that are perceptually given to us,” which he also calls “felt evaluations” or “perceptual seemings.” Rey is another exponent of the perceptual view of linguistic intuitions, which he regards as “hav[ing] the same status as standard reports of perceptual experience in vision […]” (Rey 2020, p. 37). More specifically, in his view, “[i]n the case of language, what are produced by perceptual processes are structural description (SDs) of at least some phonological and syntactic properties of various linguistic objects […]” (Rey 2020, pp. 37–38). Droźdźowicz (2020) criticizes the perceptual view of intuitions on the basis of various theoretical and epistemological arguments (which will not be reviewed here) and contrasts it with “the reliabilist view”—the conception that aims to “deriv[e] the evidential utility of speakers’

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35

judgments about meaning from the reliability of the psychological mechanisms that underlie their production” (Droźdźowicz 2020, p. 109).39 Beyond the question of whether linguistic intuitions are phenomena of a judgmental, pre-judgmental, perceptual, or perception-like nature, theorists have also addressed the problem of the status of linguistic knowledge and linguistic intuitions allow us to have access to. The debate about the etiology of linguistic intuitions has been dominated, since the mid2000s, by the question of whether the latter can be identified with “the Voice of Competence” (VoC), that is, whether they are “reverberations” of the tacit knowledge—consisting of both a definite lexicon and grammatical rules—that the individual has about language. The supporters of the VoC view, or, more exactly, of the “competence-based views” (Brøcker et al. 2020, p. 2)—among whom it is worth mentioning Fitzgerald (2010), Maynes (2012), Gross (2020), and Rey (2020)—agree to consider linguistic intuitions as being directly rooted in competence, just as performance itself is. The most stringent opponent to such a conception is Devitt (2006, 2010, 2013, 2020), who has advocated the alternate approach called “Modest Explanation of linguistic intuitions.” Here suffice it to recall that, for Devitt, one’s capacity to intuitively apprehend language normativity originates in folk-linguistic knowledge elaborated by the “central processing system.” Another opponent to the VoC view is Carlos Santana, who, while criticizing Devitt on several points, agrees with him on the general statement that “[linguistic] intuitions are unconsciously shaped by knowledge of theories of language, not by knowledge of language itself ” (Santana 2020, p. 140). In the above-proposed developments, I intentionally left aside two issues regarding the psychological nature and the etiology of linguistic feeling: the view, shared by a number of current theorists, that linguistic feeling is a monitoring process; and the question of the psychoaffective foundations of the phenomenon at stake. Regarding their theoretical centrality, these two issues will be addressed separately, respectively, in Sects. 3.3 and 4.

39

 Such an explanatory model of linguistic feeling will be briefly discussed in Sect. 3.3.

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3.3 Linguistic Feeling as the Result of a Monitoring Process The view that linguistic feeling originates in the manifestation of a monitoring process is a theoretical approach that has grown in importance over the last few years and which has been, to date, the most sophisticated attempt yet made at answering the question of its etiology. Here we are dealing with an explanatory approach that, interestingly, has been endorsed by scholars belonging to both the research tradition on Sprachgefühl and that on linguistic intuitions. Furthermore, while the concepts and the vocabulary used in either case prove to be closely related to each other, the models proposed within each of the two traditions have been elaborated in parallel, without cross-fertilization. The commonalities existing between the two are, in all likelihood, due to the fact that they share the same sources of inspiration, namely, monitoring-based theories of speech production and speech comprehension studies.40 In any event, within the framework of both paradigms, we find this idea that one’s intuitive apprehension of language normativity is underpinned by one’s capacity to anticipate, control, and if need be, correct linguistic information as it flows in consciousness, and so to be kept informed, at all times, about whether and to what extent the information in question meets expectations. More specifically, this monitoring process, as envisioned by theorists of linguistic feeling, is the automatically triggered and always-on mechanism by which one’s theoretical knowledge about language (“langue,” “competence”) is put in relation to how such knowledge is concretely instantiated (“parole,” “performance”), and by which the nature of lexical, syntactic, morphological, and other properties which are supposed to occur in consciousness is compared with the nature of those that effectively occur in it. According to this view, linguistic feeling is the subjective experience that results from such a dynamic relational-­comparative activity, especially in the event that implicit expectations regarding language are not met.  This point will be developed further in Sects. 3.3.1 and 3.3.2. Regularly mentioned by the authors belonging to both traditions, studies by Willem Levelt seem to have been particularly influential in the emergence of monitoring-based models of linguistic feelings. Cf. Levelt (1983, 1989). 40

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3.3.1 Monitoring-Based Models of Sprachgefühl and Linguistic Intuitions Among the theorists of Sprachgefühl, Rainer Rath was probably the very first who, in the mid-1980s, built an authentic explanatory model of linguistic feeling appealing to the issue of monitoring. As he explained in his 1985 article “Sprachgefühl und Korrektur” (1985), linguistic feeling is nothing but “an entity involved in control [Kontrolle] and evaluation [Bewertung] of one’s own speech” (Rath 1985, p. 146) that “steers [steuert] corrective behavior” (Rath 1985, p. 158). Such a “central steering entity” (zentrale Steuerungsinstanz) originates for him in the speaker’s twofold capacity to recognize norm discrepancies and to make corrections to them. Here it is worth noting that Rath basically conceived his “linguistic feeling in action” (Sprachgefühl in Aktion) as a self-corrective process whose specific function is to monitor one’s own speech normativity, not to monitor the normativity of other speakers’ utterances. Three decades after the publication of Rath’s article, Reinhard Fiehler published “Ist das Sprachgefühl ein Gefühl?” (2014), an essay in which he expounds what probably remains the most sophisticated monitoring-­ based model of linguistic feeling proposed to date, within and beyond the German-speaking context. As Fiehler admits, his approach to linguistic feeling draws inspiration from research on monitoring and self-­correction as they were developed in the 1980s, in particular by Willem Levelt (1983, 1989), in the field of speech production (and comprehension) studies. The fact is that Fiehler overtly speaks of linguistic feeling as a “monitoring process” (Monitoringprozess), more specifically, as “a permanent mental monitoring process” (ein permanenter mentaler Monitoringprozess), which allows a given individual to react, in an irreflective, involuntary, automatized, and immediate way, vis-à-vis both their own and others’ “linguistic-verbal” and “communicational” behavior. According to him, the two basic constituent elements of such a process are expectations (Erwartungen) and norm representations (Normvorstellungen), that is, the cognizance that something, respectively, will and has to behave in a definite way. Expectations, Fiehler emphasizes, have to do with the fact of knowing the normal forms to be used in a

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given situation, and is therefore concerned with comparing them with the forms that are effectively observed and of deciding on whether the latter are compliant or noncompliant, consistent or discrepant. Regarding the issue of norm representations, he insists that are dealing with both linguistic and communicational norms that ultimately are only valid on the scale of the individual, even though they are socially determined and that they are likely to vary both over time and according to the linguistic/ communicational context at stake. The monitoring process that linguistic feeling is supposed to consist of can be analyzed, in Fiehler’s view, on the basis of a threefold “structure,” namely: (a) the fact of confronting one’s own or the others’ actual “linguistic-­communicational behavior” with the one that is supposed to be observed in light of prevailing expectations and norms; (b) the twofold result of such a confrontation, which can consist in either a concordance or in a discrepancy (Diskrepanz); (c) in case the result of the confrontation is discrepant, the process of evaluation (Bewertunsgprozess), which can be either positive or negative, that is, felt as something either appropriate or inappropriate, and which results in a “mental disposition [mentale Einstellung] to the linguistic-communicational behavior in question” or, perhaps, in a “disposition to act” (Handlungsdisposition), whose function is “to thematize, correct, or approve” the result (Fiehler 2014, p. 35). Evaluation, according to Fiehler, is composed of four “dimensions,” namely, “expectedness” (Erwartbarkeit), linguistic correctness (sprachliche Richtigkeit), “linguistic-communicational appropriateness” (sprachlichkommunikative Angemessenheit), and “linguistic-stylistic aesthetics” (sprachlich-stylistische Ästhetik)—four properties that, for the sake of brevity, will not be reviewed in detail here. When all is said and done, it is worth emphasizing that while he identifies a linguistic process with a monitoring process, Fiehler explicitly regards it as a psychological phenomenon of an emotional nature.41 Within the framework of the research program on linguistic intuitions, the question of monitoring has recently become an important topic, whose two chief proponents are Gross (2020) and Drożdżowicz (2018,  This important point regarding the ontology of linguistic feeling will be discussed in Sect. 4.2.

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2020; see also Maynes, this volume). Here too, the explanatory models proposed prove to be directly inspired from monitoring-based theories of speech production and speech comprehension. Among the sources of inspiration, it is worth mentioning Levelt (1983, 1989), but also the more recent studies by Pickering and Garrod (2013) and Nozari and Novick (2017). Based on an analysis of “error signals,” Gross’s monitoring-based model of linguistic intuitions is expounded in detail in his contribution to Schindler, Drożdżowicz, and Brøcker’s volume (Gross 2020), but the outlines of his theory are already palpable in his 2013 article written together with Maynes (Maynes and Gross 2013). In that article, the two authors already contemplate the possibility that linguistic intuitions result from “the ability to monitor and to correct one’s own linguistic production” (Maynes and Gross 2013, p. 720), as well as the linguistic productions of others. In his 2020 chapter, Gross, while insisting on the fact that such an assumption is only a plausible working hypothesis, suggests that the manifestation of linguistic intuitions, especially that of judgments of unacceptability resulting from the breaking of syntactic rules, may be underpinned by “monitoring mechanisms.” More specifically, in his view, the etiology of such judgments is to be found in error signals that are provided by the speaker’s linguistic competence in light of “what is occurring in language-related mechanisms,” in particular of information “regarding the structure of the presented string” (Gross 2020, p. 22). According to Gross, error signals, as processed by “the monitoring system,” are typically accompanied by four kinds of experiences, which are characteristic of the resulting linguistic intuitions: (a) a “negative valence,” that is, the fact of feeling linguistic formation being perceived as “bad” or “yucky”; (b) a “motivational force,” which can be “corrective in production, corrective or aversive when interpreting others” (Gross 2020, p. 21); (c) a “sense of wrongness,” which subjectively indicates that a definite norm has been violated; (d) a “gradedness,” that is, the fact of occurring with various strengths, such as, for instance, various degrees of surprisal. While Gross discusses the role of monitoring mechanisms and negative error signals in the making of judgments of unacceptability, he also briefly addresses the question of what the process involved may be in the case of judgments of acceptability, which are

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supposed to occur when well-formed structures are perceived. In this respect, he wonders whether the corresponding intuitions may simply be due to the absence of error signals, the existence of “positive” non-error signals, or to other factors such as “comprehensibility,” that is, the fact that the speaker actually understands what is said (Gross 2020, pp. 26–27). Drożdżowicz (2018, 2020), for her part, advocates a “reliabilist” approach to linguistic intuitions, the epistemic value of linguistic intuitions—which, in the case in point, she identifies with “judgments about meaning”—depending, according to her, on “the reliability of the psychological mechanisms that underlie their production” (Droźdźowicz 2020, p. 109). The psychological mechanisms in question, insofar as they serve to confront the subject with an utterance, to semantically interpret the latter by delivering a definite “output,” and to make such an output available to the “central system,” constitute what she calls a “constant monitoring.” Here Drożdżowicz takes up the basic tenets of prediction models, according to which “the predicted production and comprehension representations of the linguistic features of utterances (phonological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic) are constructed beforehand and compared with the implemented representations as soon as the latter become available” (Droźdźowicz 2020, p. 117). She speaks of her model as “the voice of performance view,” although the monitoring processes she postulates do not only concern linguistic performance but also linguistic competence. In any case, it should be kept in mind that the monitoring-­ based model at stake is only loosely connected with linguistic feeling, since it focuses on “intuitive judgment about meaning” and not directly with the issue of linguistic form.

3.3.2 Criticisms of the Monitoring-Based Models of Linguistic Feeling Although they constitute an interesting and original attempt at answering the question of the etiology of linguistic feeling, monitoring-based models like those discussed above are not immune to criticism. A first criticism that can be raised is the fact that, taken together, the explanatory models in question correspond to a quite abstract manner of

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addressing the issue of linguistic feeling—an issue they are supposed to explain in a psychological way. Indeed they tell us little about the very nature of mental entities and processes that the intuitive apprehension of language normativity consists of or results from. Even Fiehler, who overtly identifies linguistic feeling with a phenomenon of an emotional nature and who, among the above-mentioned theorists, is the one who proposes the most sophisticated analysis, does not really succeed in clarifying that point. Second, in line with the previous remark, the various models in question can also be criticized for providing too general a discussion of the foundations of linguistic feeling. Here the concept of “monitoring process” appears as an all-explanatory tool that nonetheless leaves unclear a number of theoretical issues. By considering the monitoring process as a unitary and multifunctional activity of the mind, theorists tend to see in it something like a “mental faculty.” The use, by English-speaking scholars, of umbrella terms such as “error signal,” “output,” or “central system” is particularly revealing in this respect. A third and more substantial reproach that can be aimed at monitoring-­ based models of linguistic feeling relates to the question of whether this kind of theoretical construct is actually suitable for explaining the psychological phenomenon in play. As mentioned earlier, the various models proposed, whether by German-speaking or English-speaking authors, are directly inspired by speech production and speech comprehension studies. These studies are based on the assumption that language processes are consistent because they result from the subject’s capacity to anticipate their occurrence in consciousness, by constructing in advance a pattern in light of linguistic knowledge that they are supposed to have and by comparing it with what is effectively perceived in consciousness. In reality, it is not clear whether such a general model is transposable, per se, to the specific case of linguistic feeling, since the latter, indeed, is not directly concerned with the issue of the elaboration of language processes, but simply with the fact of evaluating their well-formedness. Moreover, the concept of a monitoring process, as conceived on the model of speech production and speech comprehension theories, implies that one has the power of mobilizing, at all times, a great variety of more or less elaborated mental contents—an activity whose complexity seems to be hardly

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compatible with the character of immediacy and irreflectiveness traditionally associated with linguistic feeling.

4 Toward a Psychoaffective Theory of Linguistic Feeling The question of whether linguistic feeling is an activity of a psychoaffective nature, that is, a psychological phenomenon that shares the ontological/functional properties of emotions and cognate mental states, is, as the title suggests, a pivotal concern of the present volume. At first sight, such a question may sound trivial, since, at least regarding the German-­ speaking tradition of Sprachgefühl, the issue at stake is said to be a “feeling” and therefore would seem to be identified with what is, par excellence, a form of affective state. The fact is that, in linguistic feeling studies, “feeling” often appears as a rather unproblematized notion that is only superficially related to psychoaffective concerns. As we will see, for a long time, theorists have neglected to discuss in depth the question of the link between linguistic feeling and affectivity and have remained particularly unclear about the possibility of considering the former as a manifestation of the latter. It is only from the post-war period onward that they have systematically addressed the question of whether the psychological phenomenon at stake should be construed or not in affective terms. Although, as a rule, scholars have until recently advocated the view that so-called linguistic feeling cannot be identified with a “feeling” or an “emotion” properly speaking, the idea that we are dealing here with an entity of a psychoaffective nature has become popular among scholars in the last few years. This new way of addressing the question of linguistic feeling is palpable, not only in the German-speaking tradition of Sprachgefühl, but also in the English-speaking research program on linguistic intuitions as well as in the historical studies on linguistic feeling— a novel theoretical perspective that should be placed within the context of the renewed interest for affectivity and its role in language sciences. In addition to briefly discussing the corresponding theoretical contributions, I will argue that there are actually good reasons to think that

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linguistic feeling is a phenomenon of a psychoaffective nature and, more specifically, that it should be ascribed to the manifestation of epistemic feelings—the category of affective states that are supposed to carry a definite form of knowledge.

4.1 Linguistic Feeling and the Issue of Affectivity: A Long-Lasting Problematic Relationship The emergence, between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, of concerns about linguistic feeling is closely related to the interest in the issue of affectivity which was then on the rise in German-speaking countries. As nicely shown by Unterberg (2020, pp. 20–21, 41–42, 52, 54–55; this volume), the making of the notion, but also of the very expression of “Sprachgefühl,” can really be understood only insofar as they are placed within the context of the so-called culture of feeling (Gefühlskultur)—that is, the fondness for feeling-related issues that was observed in many quarters of German thought, arts, and society of that time. Unterberg reminds us, in particular, how Herder, who was a key figure concerning the reflection on feeling in the second half of the eighteenth century, was probably also the first to make use of the expression “linguistic feeling”(“Sprachengefühl”) (Unterberg 2020, pp. 20, 32, 82; see also Klein 2014, p. 23). Moreover, he discussed how two early theorists of Sprachgefühl, namely Campe and Adelung, while significantly helping elaborate the notion in question, also addressed, more generally speaking, the question of the place of “feeling” in mind and language (Unterberg 2020, pp. 50–82, 96–108). As I have tried to highlight in a number of my previous works (e.g., Romand 2015, 2016, 2017), between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, German scholars gradually succeeded in thematizing the psychological concept of feeling (Gefühl), an epistemic turn in the history of psychological thought that would eventually result, in the nineteenth century, in the rise of affective psychology and of the crossdisciplinary field of affective sciences. Since the 1810s–1820s, feeling began to be regarded, in German-speaking psychology, as a definite class

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of mental states, besides that of representations (Vorstellungen), the class of mental states that form the contents of one’s consciousness. Interestingly, none of the pioneering theorists of linguistic feeling advocated the above-discussed view of feeling, a concept that, as Unterberg has emphasized, they did not clearly distinguish from that of “sensation” [Empfindung]. Nevertheless, this did not preclude Campe (1969 [1808]), for instance, from considering pleasure and displeasure as an important component of Sprachgefühl. Such a state of affairs is actually by no means surprising insofar as the authors in question wrote at a time when the psychological concept of affective state was not fully theorized in German psychology (Romand 2015, 2016, 2017). More surprising is the fact that, between the early nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, the notion of “linguistic feeling,” as promoted by linguists, remained a psychologically poorly defined notion that is only superficially related to the concept of “feeling,” as advocated by psychologists. Such a discrepancy is all the more intriguing given that, between the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century, as I showed in a series of recent publications (Romand 2019, 2021, 2022a), affective psychology has a strong impact on language sciences, especially in German-speaking countries. The only author of the time who explicitly spoke of “linguistic feeling” as a phenomenon of a psychoaffective nature was, as far as I know, Heinrich Gomperz. However, one is forced to admit that, in his Semasiologie (1908, pp. 226, 238, 245), “Sprachgefühl” is a notion—which he does not try to thematize—that makes sense in light of his feeling-based model of semantics and that does not appeal to the issue of the intuitive apprehension of language normativity.42 Another major contemporary proponent representative of the psychoaffective approach to language, Jac. van Ginneken, for his part, appears reluctant to construe linguistic feeling in psychoaffective terms. In his Principes de linguistique psychologique (1907, pp. 74, 78, 87, 97, 118, 276, 509), he uses the expression “sentiment de la langue” or “sentiment linguistique” several times. While clearly meeting the standard definition of “linguistic  On Gomperz’s “semasiology,” that is, on his attempt at refounding semantics, but also semiotics, on the basis of affective psychology, see my recent contributions (Romand 2019, 2022a). 42

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feeling,” he does not intend to theorize the corresponding concept. Here the important point is that, for van Ginneken, linguistic feeling, insofar as it is supposed to tell us something about the objective foundations of linguistic knowledge, cannot be ascribed to the manifestation of “feelings” (sentiments), but, rather, to this other category of mental phenomena that he called “assent.”43 Between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the recently elaborated concept of epistemic feeling played an important role in the way of conceiving language processes, in the wake of the “psychoaffective turn” that affected language sciences (Romand 2019, 2021, 2022a), but, strangely enough, it appears that it had virtually no impact on the way of addressing the question of linguistic feeling. Nevertheless, the contributions by Saussure and Sapir are a good example of how, in the first decades of the twentieth century, the concept of linguistic feeling is answerable to specialized studies on affectivity. As nicely shown by Siouffi (2021b, this volume) and Fortis (2014, 2015, 2019, this volume), Saussure’s “sentiment linguistique” and Sapir’s “form-­ feeling,” while not being directly interpretable in terms of affective states, appeal, both conceptually and terminologically, to the psychoaffective research tradition. In particular, they have highlighted the strong genealogical connection of the issues in question with affective psychology, and, more generally speaking, affective sciences, as they developed in the German-speaking area between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The fact remains that the question of whether linguistic feeling consists of a phenomenon of a psychoaffective nature—in other words, whether it really is a “feeling”—has been explicitly raised relatively recently, namely, after the Second World War. Here Friedrich Kainz, whose importance to the history of linguistic feeling has been pointed out previously, appears as a seminal figure. In the chapter of the fourth volume of his Psychologie der Sprache, in which he discusses the issue of  This point is analyzed in detail by Lorenzo Cigana in his contribution to the present volume. See also Romand (2021). 43

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linguistic feeling, Kainz devotes a whole section to the question of whether it is “a feeling properly speaking” (ein Gefühl im echten Sinne) (Kainz 1956, pp. 301–306). He unambiguously answers this question in the negative: “The so-called linguistic ‘feeling’ is not a feeling properly speaking, but an act of objectual consciousness (ein Akt des Gegenstandbewußtseins), viz. a cognizance (Wissen) that is functioning with a feeling-like immediacy […],” insofar as it is nothing but “an abridged logical experience of relations” (Kainz 1956, p. 301). Here we are dealing with “an extra-emotional phenomenon” (ein außeremotionelles Phänomen) (Kainz 1956, p. 300) that can nonetheless be regarded, in his view, as a “reaction of a quasi-emotional nature” (Reaktionen quasi-­ emotioneller Art) (Kainz 1956, p. 306) or as an “analogon emotionis” (Kainz 1956, p. 307). The so-called linguistic feeling can be subsumed, in other words, under the category of “feelings broadly and improperly speaking” (Gefühle im weiteren und uneigentlichen Sinn), that is, those “undifferentiated and holistic reactions in which an embryonic cognizance and volition are contained, in which cognizance lacks full rationalization, volition lacks a clear orientation towards a firmly identified and pursued purpose, and both of them lack full explicitness” (Kainz 1956, p. 304). Such a manifestation of “objectual” or “causal” consciousness contrasts with that of “state consciousness” (Zustandsbewußtsein), the kind of conscious experience characteristic of feelings properly speaking, that consists of “the pre- and extra-logical reaction of the ego vis-à-vis the quality, intensity, flow and context of perceptions and representations” and which corresponds to “the immediately and elementarily evaluative answer of the ego to its own experiences” (Kainz 1956, p. 302). Linguistic feeling, Kainz emphasizes, may have a “pleasurable-unpleasurable tonality” (Lust-Unlustbetonheit); nevertheless, he insists, “in such a case emotional content (der emotionelle Gehalt) is secondary and derived” (Kainz 1956, p. 301). The way of addressing the question of the relationships between linguistic feeling and affectivity expounded by Kainz in his Psychologie der Sprache would be largely taken up by German-speaking linguists until the end of the twentieth century. In the early 1960s, for instance, Weisgerber (1962, p. 165) asserts that “linguistic feeling is by no means something feeling-like [Gefühlsmässiges] in the sense of the emotional

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[Emotionalen], [but] an irreflective cognizance, the fact of having something […].” Such a view would still prevail, two decades later, in the seminal book by Gauger et al. on linguistic feeling (1982; see also Knobloch 1980). For Gauger and Oesterreicher (1982, p. 44), when speaking of the latter, “we are actually not dealing with a feeling, with a kind of phenomenon that used to be called a ‘feeling’; rather, we are dealing with a kind of cognizance [Wissen] about the correctness or appropriateness of definite linguistic forms.” Henne (1982, p. 132), in his contribution to the same volume, writes for his part: “Linguistic feeling is not a feeling in the sense of the physiological and psychological concepts (e.g., subjective arousals of the limbic systems); rather, linguistic feeling is a vague but reliable cognizance of linguistic experience that works like a feeling.” In the field of linguistic intuitions too, although the issue of affectivity has never been addressed as explicitly as within the research tradition on Sprachgefühl, scholars have until recently largely ruled out the idea that linguistic feeling may be of a psychoaffective nature. As discussed earlier, for theorists of linguistic intuitions, as a rule the latter correspond to the manifestation of judgment-like or perception-like phenomena rather than to the manifestation of affective processes.

4.2 Psychoaffective Trends in Current Research on Sprachgefühl and Linguistic Intuitions Characteristically, in the past few years we have been witnessing, the emergence of a growing number of investigations that stress the need of construing the issue of linguistic feeling in psychoaffective terms. This tendency is palpable among both theorists of Sprachgefühl and theorists of linguistic intuitions, who, depending on the case, have addressed the question of the relationship between linguistic feeling and affectivity more or less implicitly or explicitly. Moreover, recently, as stated in Sect. 1.3, some scholars have revisited the role played by affective sciences in the history of the concept of linguistic feeling (Fortis 2014, 2015, 2019; Siouffi 2021b). Taken together, these investigations have helped shed new light on a key theoretical aspect of the issue at stake.

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In German-speaking countries, the idea that linguistic feeling is a psychoaffective phenomenon was contemplated as early as the beginning of the 1990s by Eva Neuland in her book chapter “Sprachgefühl, Spracheinstellung, Sprachbewußtsein” (1993). According to Neuland, linguistic feeling is a prevenient dimension of “linguistic attitudes” or “dispositions” (Spracheinstellungen), that is, the socially shared “views on language,” in which they also take part as their “affective-evaluative component” (affektiv-evaluative Komponente). In this respect, it consists of “emotions” (Emotionen) and “affective qualities” (Gefühlsqualitäten). But it would be Reinhard Fiehler’s merit, two decades later, to lay the foundations for an authentically psychoaffective model of linguistic feeling. To the best of my knowledge, the theoretical developments that he proposes in his above-mentioned work “Ist das Sprachgefühl ein Gefühl?” (2014) have remained thus far the most sophisticated and, as a matter of fact, the only systematic research on the relationships between linguistic feeling and affectivity that has been carried out thus far within and outside the German-speaking area. According to Fiehler, linguistic feeling, which, as stated earlier, he regards as a result of a monitoring process, can be legitimately said to be an “emotion” (Emotion), because it meets the three criteria that, in his view, allow us to define emotions: “linguistic feeling is a special form of inner experience [inneren Erlebens] (criterion 1). We are dealing with an involuntary, automatized, and immediate reaction (criterion 2), and we are dealing with an evaluative response [evaluative Stellungnahme] (criterion 3)” (Fiehler 2014, pp. 38–39). Importantly, what Fiehler calls “emotions” consist of two specific “components of experience” (Bestandteile des Erlebens), namely, “feelings” (Gefühle) and “sensations” (Empfindungen): whereas “prototypical feelings” (prototypische Gefühle) correspond to activities such as anger, disgust or joy, sensations (which for Fiehler are “impure feelings” (keine reine Gefühle), are related both to activities such as irritation, uncertainty or curiosity, in which “definite cognitive processes are instrumental,” and activities such as tiredness and hunger, which are “physical states” (Fiehler 2014, p. 31). It is worth noting that Fiehler appeals, at least implicitly, to the role of epistemic feelings in the making of linguistic feeling. In this respect, it is worth recalling the place that he devotes, in his above-mentioned monitoring-based model, to expectations (Erwartungen) and their way of

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being resolved, positively or negatively, in consciousness. Here we are dealing with a form of experiential phenomena that has been recognized, for a long time, as a major category of epistemic feelings (Romand 2015, in press a, b). Nevertheless, Fiehler (2014, p. 41) insists that expectations, because they relate to “cognitive processes,” should be “characterized as sensations (Emfindungen)” rather than as feelings (Gefühle), and so cannot be identified with affective states properly speaking. The fact is that, in spite of proposing a sophisticated psychoaffective model of linguistic feeling and highlighting the role played in it by expectation-related phenomena, he fails to thematize the idea that linguistic feeling may consist of the manifestation of epistemic feelings. In the English-speaking research tradition, Fiengo’s 2003 article is one of the very first which addressed the question of the link between linguistic intuitions and affectivity (Fiengo 2003). In this work, Fiengo suggests that intuiting language normativity has to do with “feeling,” however only en passant, without specifying his point of view: “[…] the content of an intuition may consist in the feeling that what we confront is syntactically possible, or that what we confront is not syntactically possible” (Fiengo 2003, p. 260; my emphasis). Such a statement would be taken up and developed further, six years later, by Textor in his above-discussed chapter “Devitt on epistemic authority” (2009). As Textor emphasizes, “Fiengo’s remark about intuitions as feelings gains plausibility if we consider recent work on emotions” (Textor 2009, p. 400). Here Textor insists on “the evaluative dimension of emotions” and on the fact that linguistic intuitions should be identified with “felt evaluations.” More specifically, linguistic intuitions are, in his view, “passive evaluations of ‘bits of language’ that we are conscious of and that are not arrived at by reasoning” (Textor 2009, p. 401). According to him, a sentence seems to be “acceptable” from the moment it “feels right” (and unacceptable from the moment it does not feel right). As stated earlier, Textor regards linguistic intuitions, on the other hand, as “perceptual seemings.” The fact is that, for him, “the evaluative and the perceptual aspect are,” in linguistic intuitions, “two sides of the same coin” (Textor 2009, p. 401). The view that linguistic intuitions should be construed in psychoaffective terms was addressed as early as 2005, although in a less explicit way, by Barbara Luka in her pioneering article “A model of linguistic

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intuition” (2005). Within the framework of her so-called MAPIL [Metacognitive Attribution and Preferences in Implicit Learning] model, Luka speaks of linguistic intuitions—which she also refers to as “linguistic judgments”—as “affective evaluations.” According to her, one’s metacognitive capacity to judge grammatical acceptability depends on one’s power of “evaluating the familiarity of syntactic structures, [by] comparing actual versus expected ease of processing” (Luka 2005, p. 491). Interestingly, she regards familiarity both as “an incidental result of processing” and as “a cue to evaluation,” suggesting that in this case we are dealing with a definite kind of experience. Although she overtly identifies linguistic intuitions with evaluative properties, at no time does she describe familiarity as a “feeling” or an “emotion.” Here Luka makes reference to a definite category of epistemic feeling (Romand in press b), however without recognizing its psychological status explicitly. Recently, Gross insisted on the importance of considering linguistic intuitions as the manifestation of definite “feelings,” without explicitly advocating, however, a psychoaffective conception of linguistic feeling (Gross 2020; see also Maynes, this volume). For him, as explained earlier, linguistic intuitions, as a result of monitoring processes, are characterized by a “negative valence,” a “motivational force,” a “sense of wrongness,” and some “gradedness”—that is, the capacity to occur “in various strengths”—such as “varying degrees of surprisal.” These four features are all the more easily identifiable with affective states that, as Gross emphasizes, they “may have an associated phenomenology: a felt sense of badness, motivation, and norm violation of some particular strength” (Gross 2020, p. 21). Significantly, he also refers to “the sense of wrongness” as a “feeling of wrongness” or a “conscious, pre-judgmental feeling of wrongness” (Gross 2020, pp. 29–30). Besides wrongness and surprisal, he identifies “feelings of effort and fluency” as further possible phenomenological traits of linguistic intuitions (Gross 2020, p. 30). Here linguistic intuitions are de facto conceived of as being in close relation with epistemic feelings, even if, in this case, such an eventuality is not overtly envisioned.

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4.3 Arguments in Favor of a Psychoaffective Conception of Linguistic Feeling We saw in the previous subsection that there may be good reason to admit that so-called linguistic feeling is a genuine “feeling” or “emotion,” that is, to regard it as a psychological phenomenon belonging to the category of affective mental states. Here my aim is to demonstrate the soundness of such an assumption, by showing that it is not only very plausible, but probably also the most satisfying from the psychological/epistemological point of view. In this respect, I would like to review the arguments that can be raised in favor of the psychoaffective approach to linguistic feeling. I will deal first with the arguments supporting the view that one’s capacity to intuit language normativity has to do with affectivity in general, and second with those supporting the view that it has to do with epistemic feelings in particular.

4.3.1 Linguistic Feeling Shares the Basic Psychological Features of Affective States As far as I know, Fiehler (2014), among all the theorists of linguistic feeling, is the only one who (in addition to overtly proposing a psychoaffective model) has tried to demonstrate that it shares the properties of an affective state. As briefly discussed in the previous subsection, in his view, linguistic feeling can be classified as an “emotion” on the basis of three criteria: (a) it has to do with “inner experience,” (b) it is an “involuntary, automatized, and immediate reaction,” and (c) it consists of an “evaluative response.” Here, partly in line with Fiehler’s developments— which, in my view, are not fully satisfying44—my intention is to highlight the basic ontological/functional commonalities between linguistic feeling and affective mental states, as commonly defined in the  Whereas, according to me, Fiehler rightly succeeds in specifying the psychoaffective nature of linguistic feeling by highlighting points (a) and (c), and also, to some extent, by highlighting point (b), he fails to identify the key issue of valence. Moreover, his demonstration can be criticized for being based on an idiosyncratic conception of “emotions,” in which affective states are not clearly distinguished from sensory phenomena. 44

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specialized literature.45 More specifically, I would like to show that linguistic feeling can be identified with a genuine “feeling,” because it shares the four basic characteristics of the affective function. First, linguistic feeling, as I have had ample opportunity to say, appears as a typical expression of the individual’s mental interiority:46 it corresponds, par excellence, to a phenomenon of a subjective nature. Here we are dealing with a highly distinctive trait of the intuitive experience of language normativity that has led many authors to spontaneously refer to it as “feeling.” The fact is that the manifestations of affective life, whatever they may be, are characteristically associated with the fact of feeling something, that is, with the subject’s capacity to apprehend, in relation to themself, their own contents of consciousness. While always manifesting together with a given phenomenology and usually accompanying definite mental contents, affective phenomena are, from the experiential point of view, nothing but the subjective “coloration” that they give to those mental contents. Second, as well highlighted by Fiehler and other theorists I commented on in the previous subsection, linguistic feeling can be identified with “an evaluative response,” with a “passive,” “felt,” or “affective evaluation.” One’s capacity to intuitively appraise language normativity has to do, indeed, with an evaluative function—in the case in point, with the function of evaluating the nature of linguistic form—and it is true that the fact of having an evaluative function corresponds to a fundamental property of affectivity. Affective phenomena are traditionally recognized as the mental states that allow the subject to appraise, that is, to construe in some way, the contents of consciousness or their mutual relationships, by providing them with a specific experiential coloration. Such an evaluative power depends only on the presence of definite affective phenomena in consciousness (together with the entities they are supposed to evaluate): It has a character of immediacy and irreflectiveness, which is directly in

 For the question of the ontological and functional properties of affective states, see in particular, among the rich existing contemporary literature: Deonna and Teroni (2012), Scherer and Mulligan (2012), Sander and Scherer (2014), and Tappolet (2022). 46  On this issue, see in particular Henne (1982, p. 135). 45

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keeping with the universally shared view that linguistic feeling is a psychological phenomenon of an intuitive nature. Third, as discussed in detail in Sect. 3.1, linguistic feeling can be characteristically defined as a metacognitive function, that is, as the monitoring activity that is directed, at all times, to one’s own cognitive processes—in the case in point, to the perceptual properties that linguistic form consists of—as they manifest themselves in consciousness. In this respect too, one’s intuitive experience of language normativity seems to share an essential distinctive mark with affective states. The latter can be said to be endowed with an evaluative power only as long as they effectively permit us to evaluate something by relating to definite contents of consciousness or to their way of interacting with each other. By being added to representational processes, which constitute their specific “substrate,” they manifest themselves as a kind of secondlevel consciousness. Affective phenomena are mental states that have the property of expressing their content only indirectly, through the contents of consciousness that they relate to and they provide with a specific experiential coloration. Such an eminently metacognitive property is sometimes said to be a phenomenon of a “twofold intentionality” (Meylan 2014, 177–178). Fourth and finally, the fact that linguistic feeling, as also specified in Sect. 3.1, is a conscious phenomenon that typically has a valenced character, which consists of either a positive or negative reaction vis-à-vis perceived linguistic properties, is a further strong argument in support of the assumption that it has to do with a psychological entity of an affective nature. It is a well-known fact that affective states, insofar as their evaluative power always manifests itself in either one of two opposite directions, are basically characterized by a definite valence. Affective valence is usually identified with the capacity of emotions, feelings, moods, etc., to be experienced according to the two poles of pleasure and displeasure (or their countless phenomenological nuances), although, as we will see in the next section, the concept can also be applied to non-hedonic properties, too.

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4.3.2 Epistemic Feelings Are a Good Candidate for Being the Chief Constituent Elements of Linguistic Feeling If we admit that linguistic feeling shares the basic ontological and functional features of an “affective state,” the question then arises as to what category of “feelings” or “emotions” exactly it may consist of. Here we are dealing, par excellence, with an experiential phenomenon that is associated with the manifestation of a definite kind of knowledge or cognizance. Linguistic feeling, as stated earlier, is characterized by the fact of symptomatically referring to the tacit knowledge that the individual, as a member of a given linguistic community, is supposed to have about a definite language. In this respect, it corresponds, to put it in the words of Kainz (1956, p. 304), to “the undifferentiated holistic reactions in which embryonic cognizance and volition are contained,” and thus should be regarded as being, so to speak, a kind of experiential “substitute” for epistemic processes that do not immediately have access to consciousness. More importantly, linguistic feeling also appears as the power of knowing something about what effectively manifests itself in linguistic consciousness. As an evaluative and metacognitive activity, it directly relates to information about linguistic form that is available, at a given time, in consciousness, and allows the subject to construe what they are currently experiencing as well-­formed or ill-formed. When all is said and done, the issue of linguistic feeling proves to be very appealing to this category of affective states that is usually referred to as epistemic (cognitive) feelings or emotions, the feelings or emotions—as I have already discussed several times—that, as the name indicates, have to do with the fact of knowing something, and not simply with the fact of feeling something as pleasurable or displeasurable. The notion of epistemic feelings, which aroused considerable psychological and philosophical research in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Romand 2015, 2019, in press a, b), has recently experienced a significantly increased level of interest in affective sciences, especially in the philosophy of emotions, and the existence of such a category of affective states is

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today largely admitted (Arango-Muñoz and Michaelian 2014; Meylan 2014; Candiotto 2020).47 Besides these general considerations, a number of more specific arguments can be raised in support of the view that linguistic feeling is basically concerned with epistemic feelings: First, it can be argued that the kind of knowledge that is characteristically conveyed by epistemic feelings has much in common with the one that has been traditionally associated with the manifestation of linguistic feeling. Epistemic feelings, as evaluative and metacognitive factors, are typically the expression of a subjective, non-sensory form of cognizance: Familiarity, expectation, surprise, deception, etc.—to take examples of epistemic feelings that might be involved in the intuitive apprehension of language normativity—are elementary experiences that, while each having a specific phenomenology, tell us something abstract in relation to what occurs in consciousness. Second, epistemic feelings, because they are allegedly characterized by a valence of their own kind,48 are good candidates for explaining linguistic feeling’s basic property of manifesting either positively or negatively. As long suggested by psychologists and philosophers of emotions (Romand in press a), we are dealing, in such a case, with affective states whose valenced character consists in the opposition, not between pleasure and displeasure, but between epistemic qualities themselves (e.g., familiarity vs. novelty, effort vs. resistance, certainty vs. doubt). Third, epistemic feelings can be regarded, with good reason, as constituent elements of linguistic feeling, insofar as they correspond to a well-known and well-characterized category of mental entities whose existence is well established, as stated earlier. So, we do not see why, instead of artificially ascribing one’s capacity to intuit language normativity to ad hoc mental entities or to obscure powers of the mind, whose psychological nature remains undetermined and existence hypothetical,  Nevertheless, it is worth noting that the question of whether so-called epistemic feelings (or epistemic emotions) can be regarded as genuine affective states is still debated in the current philosophy of emotions. Cf. Arango-Muñoz and Michaelian (2014), and Meylan (2014). 48  The fact that epistemic feelings may have a valence is challenged by some theorists. See in particular Meylan (2014). 47

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we should refrain from construing it in light of what can be legitimately considered as natural components of mental life. Fourth, and directly in keeping with the previous argument, it is worth noting that the fact of construing the issue of linguistic feeling in light of epistemic feelings gives us the opportunity to discuss it on the basis not only of a recognized category of mental entities in general, but also of definite kinds of mental entities in particular, whose individual psychological reality is admitted, and, in some instances, proven. This is the case of the two feelings of familiarity and expectation—two potential constituents of linguistic feeling—that, since the mid-nineteenth century, have been the subject of many theoretical and empirical investigations (e.g., Mangan 2000; Romand 2015, in press b). Fifth, the fact of interpreting linguistic feeling in terms of epistemic feelings gives us the possibility of accounting for a functionally and experientially complex psychological activity in light of more or less elementary, phenomenologically well-defined mental properties and of how they interact with each other. In doing so, we may have a unique way of explaining, in mentalistic terms, one’s capacity to intuitively apprehend language normativity. Sixth and last, the assumption that linguistic feeling mostly results from the manifestation of epistemic feelings is all the more interesting considering that the latter prove to be ubiquitous constituent elements of conscious life, that is, mental states that, far from being restricted to linguistic consciousness, are involved in a great variety of psychological functions. For instance, the feeling of familiarity is a well-known experiential dimension of perceptual, mnemonic, and linguistic processes (Romand in press b), whereas the feeling of expectation has been shown, for a long time, to be an important aspect of rhythm perception, time perception, causal perception, the sense of agency, and musical experience (Romand 2015). Here the point is that, by ascribing one’s capacity to intuit language normativity to elements known to take part in the making of other psychological functions, we no longer consider it as a sui generis mental activity, but rather as a manifestation of conscious life like any other that is integrated into its general functioning.

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4.4 What Kinds of Epistemic Feelings Might Linguistic Feeling Consist Of? Linguistic feeling is not, as the name may suggest, a simple and homogeneous psychological entity, but rather an experientially and functionally complex mental activity that is characterized by its dynamic character. Not only does it alternately manifest itself as a positively and negatively valenced process, but its phenomenology typically changes as linguistic information flows in consciousness and according to the properties of the linguistic form it relates to. Moreover, linguistic feeling, as defined within a linguistic system, characteristically develops throughout one’s lifetime (Fiehler 2014). It is also worth recalling that, within a definite linguistic community, the nature of linguistic feeling, as a shared experience, is likely to change over time (Schleicher 1888) and to vary, at a given time, from one individual to another (Fiehler 2014). If we accept the view that linguistic feeling results, first and foremost, from an interaction between a variety of epistemic feelings, then we should address the question of what exactly the latter qualitatively consist of and in which aspect of the intuitive apprehension of language normativity this or that kind of epistemic feeling is involved. Such a question, as far as I know, has never been addressed before and it can be answered only provisionally. A category of epistemic feelings that can reasonably be regarded as taking part in the making of linguistic feeling is the feeling of familiarity and cognate forms of experiences. The feeling of familiarity has been identified for a long time with the fact of being acquainted with something, that is, with the fact of experiencing something as having been encountered before. Here we are dealing with a seemingly elementary form of affective experience that is to be contrasted with the feeling of unfamiliarity or novelty, the affective state that makes us experience something as sounding “new,” as something that has never been encountered before. These two basic experiential opposites, especially the feeling of unfamiliarity, are likely to occur in consciousness through a variety of phenomenological nuances (e.g., weirdness, uncanniness, surprise, astonishment), according to whether they are mixed with feelings of pleasure and displeasure and with other categories of epistemic feelings (Romand in press b). The

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centrality of familiarity to linguistic intuitions, as stated earlier, was overtly contemplated by Barbara Luka (2005), although not within the framework of a psychoaffective approach to linguistic feeling. When considering the above-proposed typological analysis of linguistic feeling (Sect. 2.1), familiarity-related feelings are, in all likelihood, good candidates for being the constituent elements of lexical feeling. By “lexical feeling,” remember, we refer to the fact of intuiting whether single or compound words, locutions and idiomatic expressions, irrespective of their grammatical status, are formally correct or incorrect, insofar as (a) they are known to have a definite meaning, and (b) they are known to belong to the lexicon of a definite linguistic system. So, it can be hypothesized that, as soon as it is apprehended in consciousness, a definite lexical form is accompanied, either with a feeling of familiarity, when compliant with the lexical norm, or with a feeling of unfamiliarity and its various phenomenological nuances, when partly or fully departing from the norm. More specifically, unfamiliarity and unfamiliarity-­like feelings may typically be aroused by mispronunciation or misspelling, non-words, pseudo-words, or any lexical form alien to the language being experienced. On the other hand, it cannot be excluded that familiarity-­related feelings also play a role in the making of morphological and syntactic feelings, two further alleged functional components of linguistic feeling. Considering that, within well-formed statements, both morphological and syntactic features are organized (in close relation to each other) as definite perceptual patterns, it makes sense to hypothesize that familiarity-related feelings may play a role in evaluating the compliance or noncompliance of the latter. Whereas well-formed morphological and syntactic patterns may be experienced together with a feeling of familiarity—that is, recognized as previously encountered structural properties of the linguistic form—ill-formed ones may be experienced together with a feeling of unfamiliarity or any other unfamiliarity-like feeling.49 Another category of epistemic feelings that might be involved in the manifestation of linguistic feeling is the feeling of expectation and the two affective states that are supposed to ensue from it, the feeling of satisfaction  As discussed earlier, the idea that familiarity is instrumental in evaluating the nature of syntactic structures has already been contemplated by Luka (2005). 49

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and the feeling of delusion (Romand 2015). We saw above that Fiehler (2014) regarded expectation as a crucial aspect of his monitoring-based model of linguistic feeling, even if he did not directly construe it as an epistemic feeling. Such a (not necessarily phenomenologically simple) feeling is likely to manifest itself in the form of various experiential nuances, such as the feelings of suspense, imminence, yearning, etc. Satisfaction and delusion, the two experientially opposite kinds of epistemic feelings that, as a rule, expectation resolves into, are characterized by a strong pleasurable and displeasurable coloration. Here too, we are dealing with affective states that are likely to occur in consciousness with various phenomenological nuances, such as, on the one hand, relief or calming, and, on the other hand, disappointment or surprise. In any case, taken together, expectation, satisfaction, delusion, and cognate affective states may be good candidates—instead of familiarity-related feelings or synergistically with them50—for explaining the origin of morphological and syntactic feelings. The fact is that, whether hearing, uttering, reading, or writing a statement, the subject apprehends a succession of morphological or syntactic units that are supposed to relate to each other in such a way as to constitute unified structural patterns. So, they can reasonably be regarded as having the capacity to expect, in light of the nature of morphosyntactic properties that they have just experienced, the nature of morphosyntactic properties that are likely to occur next. Now, it can also be reasonably assumed that, when experiencing a morphological trait, a definite syntactic category, or a definite syntactic function, the subject proves to be either satisfied or disappointed, according to whether the trait, category, or function in question is or is not in accordance with the one expected, and so contributes (or not) to making the statement morphosyntactically consistent. Finally, it should be kept in mind that, while epistemic feelings can be regarded, with good reason, as the main constituent elements of linguistic feeling, affective states in the ordinary sense of the term, that is, pleasure and displeasure, are also in all likelihood, an essential experiential  Note that expectation, satisfaction, delusion, and cognate feelings on the one hand, and familiarity-­related feelings, on the other hand, are not necessarily phenomenologically exclusive from each other and may have common forms of expression, such as the feeling of surprise. 50

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dimension of the latter. As has been suggested for quite some time (Lindroth 1937; Kainz 1956), the two opposite feelings of pleasure and displeasure are good candidates for being the experiential correlates of, respectively, the negatively and the positively valenced sides of linguistic feeling. Negative expressions of linguistic feeling, which, as stated earlier, have a higher degree of consciousness, seem to systematically occur with a displeasurable coloration.51

5 How the Present Volume Aims to Contribute to the Issue of Linguistic Feeling Besides this long introductory chapter, the present volume encompasses eleven contributions written by twelve authors. The contributions are divided into two chief parts: Part I, which is devoted to “Cross-­ Disciplinary Approaches to Linguistic Feeling from Herder to Wittgenstein,” and Part II, which deals with “Current Scientific and Philosophical Perspectives on Linguistic Feeling.” Here the objective is to discuss the continuity and complementarity between past and present, and the scientific and philosophical studies about linguistic feeling, while also insisting on how variegated the ways of addressing the issue have been in language sciences. Part I’s opening contribution (Chap. 2) is Frank Unterberg’s essay, “‘What the Germans Call Sprachgefühl.’ Sprachgefühl in Early German Linguistics. Selected Examples of Ways of Understanding.” Unterberg proposes, for the first time in English, an encompassing overview of research on linguistic feeling within German language sciences between the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries. By showing how the issue of Sprachgefühl was pioneered by authors such as Herder and Campe  An essential experiential dimension of the three main forms of linguistic feeling, namely, lexical, morphological, and syntactic feelings, displeasurable and pleasurable affective states may play an even more important role in its “secondary” forms, namely, phonological feeling and  stylistic feeling. Here, as discussed in Sect. 2.2, we are dealing with two affective phenomena, akin to aesthetic feeling, that basically have to do with contentment and discontentment, and that thus, in all likelihood, appeal strongly to the manifestation of pleasure and displeasure. 51

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and theorized further by luminaries of German linguistics such as Bopp, Grimm, Humboldt, Schleicher, and H. Paul, he highlights the early emergence of concerns about the nature and function of linguistic feeling, as well as about its place in the study of language. The essay that follows (Chap. 3), by Lorenzo Cigana, is devoted to “Assent, Sentiment and Linguistic Feeling in Jac. van Ginneken’s Psycholinguistics.” Cigana’s analysis focuses on the Principes de linguistique psychologique (1907), the magnum opus of the Dutch linguist Jac. van Ginneken, which was, in the early twentieth century, a major contribution to psycholinguistics and a milestone in the study of the role of affectivity in language. He discusses in particular the twin notions of “assent” and “feeling,” which van Ginneken conceived as two non-­ representational categories of mental entities endowed with an objective and a subjective function, respectively, and which are involved in the morphogenesis of linguistic forms. In addition to discussing van Ginneken’s conception of the mind, Cigana also insists on the polysemousness of “feeling” (sentiment) in the Principes. In his conclusion, he wonders about how and to what extent, when placed within the context of the time and from a genealogical perspective, van Ginneken’s psycholinguistic developments may resonate with the traditional notion of linguistic feeling. Chapter 4, “On the Normative Side of Saussure’s ‘Linguistic Feeling,’” is written by Emanuele Fadda, one of the current leading experts on Saussure’s thought. In keeping with the recent reassessment of sentiment linguistique in Saussurean studies, Fadda shows that it is actually a pivotal notion of Saussure’s conception of language. His demonstration is rooted in the distinction between the “cognitive” and the “normative” side of Saussure’s linguistic feeling, that is, between how linguistic feeling is a “cognitive tool that allows for the classification and use of linguistic entities,” and how “the speaker feels compelled to use certain forms within a community”—two conceptually distinct but functionally inseparable aspects of the phenomenon at stake. Fadda then successively addresses the question of the link between linguistic feeling and the definition of the units of morphology, the role of “institution” (and “history”) in the making of its normative side, and its ontogenetic and phylogenetic dimensions.

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Chapters 5 and 6, written by Jean-Michel Fortis and Chloé Laplantine, respectively, are two complementary essays devoted to the issue of form-­ feeling in Edward Sapir, one of the leading American linguists of the interwar period. Taken together, these two contributions show that ideas about linguistic feeling were discussed early on within the American context, much before the rise of the research tradition on “linguistic intuition” in the wake of the appearance of generative linguistics. In his contribution “Sapir’s Form-Feeling and Its Historical Context” (Chap. 5), Fortis shows that concerns about the “feeling” or “intuition” of unconscious, socially determined linguistic patterns were a central aspect of Sapir’s linguistics. In addition to analyzing the ins and outs of the Sapirian concept of form-feeling, he addresses the question of its genealogy by emphasizing its possible relation to the aesthetic notion of Formgefühl and to the psychoaffective strand in language science, while discussing its significance in light of the formalist aesthetic tradition. Laplantine, in her contribution entitled “Edward Sapir: Form-Feeling in Language, Culture, and Poetry” (Chap. 6), insists for her part on the close relation between the Sapirian concept of form-feeling and Franz Boas’s approach to language, and on its cultural/poetic significance. Notably, she shows that form-feeling is at the heart of Sapir’s reflection on the role of individuality in culture formation and of his conception of poetry as opposing the subjective notion of “form” and “formalism,” conceived as an “outer obstacle.” The last chapter of Part I (Chap. 7) is Michel Le Du’s essay “MeaningBlindness, and Linguistic Feeling: Wittgenstein on How We ‘Experience’ Meaning.” Le Du dwells on Wittgenstein’s well-known rule-based conception of language by emphasizing the problematic status of experience in his theory of meaning, while discussing Wittgenstein’s developments on what the lack of such an experience may be like for the speaker “using” or “understanding” words (especially his key notion “meaning-blind speaker,” in light of the two concepts of “aspect perception” and “aspect blindness”). On the other hand, Le Du explores the role played by the multifaceted notion of “feeling” (Gefühl) in Wittgenstein’s analyses of meaning-related experiences. This allows him to highlight the commonalities between Wittgensteinian “experience” of meaning and the issue of linguistic feeling.

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Els Elffers is the author of the opening contribution in Part II (Chap. 8), entitled “Intuitions in Linguistics: A Blessing or a Curse?” She proposes a critical account of the “justificationist” approach to linguistic intuitions, the still largely prevailing view among linguists according to which intuitions consist of “basic facts” about the speaker’s competence. While reviewing the chief problems induced by this view (availability to native speakers, reliability, linguist as a biased informant), she highlights that this does not preclude intuitions from being a useful tool in linguistics. As an alternative approach, Elffers advocates the naturalistic view that “linguistic intuitions of professional linguists are conceived as ordinary, theory-laden but unreflective expert intuitions.” She discusses the advantages of such a view, but also the prejudicial influence that justificationism may have on it. In the wake of Elffers’s developments, Jeffrey Maynes’s contribution “The Good, the Bad, and the Yucky: Valenced Linguistic Intuitions and Linguistic Methodology” (Chap. 9) provides both an updated overview of current studies on linguistic intuitions, a research tradition for which he is one of the chief current representatives, and a personal reflection on their nature and justification—the main point here being the issue of their normative dimension. After discussing classic approaches to linguistic intuitions, especially the models proposed by Rey and Devitt, Maynes wonders about the origin of the normative character of linguistic intuitions, which consists of, in his view, positive or negative valence, motivational force, and prescriptive content. He concludes his essay by assuming that the normativity of linguistic intuitions, in addition to being consistent with a descriptive approach to linguistics, sheds light on their underlying mechanisms. In Chap. 10, Ad Foolen addresses the question of “Linguistic Feeling in Real Life and in Linguistics.” He begins with an extensive discussion of the use of the expression “linguistic feeling” and its variants in English, German, and Dutch. Then, he shows how, in the last decades, linguistic feeling has become an important issue in various quarters of linguistic research by discussing its place in structuralism, generative grammar, and usage-based cognitive linguistics. In the rest of his essay, he emphasizes that the notion of linguistic feeling makes sense in light of “social theory

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of norms and habits,” while addressing the question of variations in linguistic feeling and of its relation to consciousness and the unconscious. Written by Gilles Siouffi, Chap. 11 is devoted to “Linguistic Feeling and Grammaticalization: From Concepts to Case Studies.” Based on a critical reassessment of Hermann Paul’s Sprachgefühl, and, first of all, of Saussure’s sentiment linguistique, Siouffi’s contribution explores the link between the two concepts of reanalysis and linguistic feeling. Against Saussure, Siouffi argues that linguistic feeling is not “an unconscious intuitive perception of the system as it functions,” but a phenomenon aroused by usage-related difficulties, and that, far from being homogeneous, it is variable and involved in various kinds of reasoning. In this respect, he advocates a more extensive approach to linguistic feeling, likely to go beyond Saussure’s normative conception of the notion, which he discusses through various examples borrowed from syntax and morphology. Finally, in the closing contribution to the volume (Chap. 12), entitled “Linguistic Feeling. A Relational Approach Incorporating Epistemology, Theories of Language, and Human-Machine Interaction,” Ulrike M. Lüdtke and Hanna Ehlert advocate a new approach to the issue of linguistic feeling, based on an emotion integrating a concept of language in which the latter is no longer conceived as an expression of “logos,” but seen from the perspective of an “intersubjective corporeal dialogue.” The two authors begin with an extensive discussion of the epistemological foundations of their relational approach to linguistic feeling, in which they address the question of the shift from rationalism to constructivism, while highlighting that “intersubjective co-construction of reality” and “the constructivist conceptualization of reciprocity” are two prerequisites of a consistent conceptual integration of emotion in language. They then explore the question of the shift from monologue to dialogue by emphasizing the centrality of the two dimensions of “body” and “time” for a relational approach to linguistic feeling. This leads Lüdtke and Ehlert to look into the human-machine interaction: By analyzing three aspects of automated language and emotion processing, they advocate the importance of specifically human innate aspects for the concept of linguistic feeling.

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Hartung, August. 1792. Versuch einer kleinen deutschen Sprachlehre für die heranwachsende Jungend. Berlin/Stralsund: Lange. Henne, Helmut. 1982. Der Berufung wird stattgegeben. Plädoyer für die Entwicklung von Sprachgefühl. In Sprachgefühl? Vier Antworten auf eine Preisfrage: Ist Berufung auf “Sprachgefühl” berechtigt? Hans-Martin Gauger, Wulf Oesterreicher, Helmut Henne, Manfred Geier, and Wolfgang Müller, 91–137. Heidelberg: Schneider. Hildebrand, Rudolf. 1890. Zur Geschichte des Sprachgefühls bei den Deutschen und Römern. In Gesammelte Aufsätze un Vorträge zur deutschen Philologie und deutschen Unterricht, ed. Rudolf Hildebrand, 88–133. Leipzig: Teubner. Ising, Erika. 1987. Sprachgefühl und Sprachbewußtsein: Problemfindung und Begriffsentwicklung aus Denkmustern der deutschen Aufklärung. In Theoretische und praktische Fragen der Sprachkultur, ed. Bärbel Techtmeier, 268–290. Berlin: Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR. Zentralinstitut für Sprachwissenschaft. Itkonen, Esa. 2005. Analogy as structure and process: Approaches in linguistics, cognitive psychology and philosophy of science (Human Cognitive Processing 14). Amsterdam/Philadelphia John Benjamins. Julia, Catherine. 2001. Fixer le sens ? La sémantique spontanée des gloses de spécification du sens. Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle. Kainz, Friedrich. 1943–1944. Über das Sprachgefühl. Archiv für vergleichende Phonetik 7 (3–4). ———. 1956. Psychologie der Sprache. Vierter Band: Spezielle Sprachpsychologie. Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke. Klein, Wolf Peter. 2014. Das Sprachgefühl zwischen methodologischem Instrument und antisemitischem Agitationsmuster. Zu einem schillernden Begriff der Sprachwissenschaft. In Emotionalität im Text, ed. Lenka Vaňková, 19–33. Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag. Knobloch, Johann. 1980. Das Sprachgefühl, ein vernachlässigter Begriff. In Wege zur Universalienforschung: Sprachwissenschaftliche Beiträge zum 60. Geburtstag von Hansjakob Seiler, ed. Gunter Brettschneider and Christian Lehmann, 51–52. Tübingen: Narr. Knobloch, Clemens. 1988. Geschichte der psychologischen Sprachauffassung in Deutschland von 1850 bis 1920. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Langlotz, Miriam, Nils Lehnert, and Susanne Schul. 2014a. SprachGefühl – eine Einleitung. In SprachGefühl: Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf einen nur scheinbar altbekannten Begriff, ed. Miriam Langlotz, Nils Lehnert, Susanne Schul, and Matthias Weßel, 9–25. Frankfurt a. M.: Lang.

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Langlotz, Miriam, Nils Lehnert, Susanne Schul, and Matthias Weßel, eds. 2014b. SprachGefühl: Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf einen nur scheinbar altbekannten Begriff. Frankfurt a. M.: Lang. Laplantine, Chloé. 2005. Le “sentiment de la langue”. Le texte étranger 5: 153–178. Lawrenz, Maria Johanna. 1969. Sprachgefühl: Geschichte des Wortes. Doctoral dissertation, University of Texas. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms. Levelt, Willem J.M. 1983. Monitoring and self-repair in speech. Cognition 14: 41–104. ———. 1989. Speaking: From intention to articulation. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Lindroth, Hjalmar. 1937. Das Sprachgefühl. Ein vernachlässigter Begriff. Indogermanische Forschung 55: 1–16. Luka, Barbara. 2005. A cognitively plausible model of linguistic intuitions. In Polymorphous linguistics. Jim McCawley’s legacy, ed. Salikoko S. Mufwene, Elaine J. Francis, and Rebecca S. Wheeler, 479–502. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Mäkilähde, Aleksi, Ville Leppänen, and Esa Itkonen, eds. 2019. Normativity in language and linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Mangan, Bruce. 2000. What feeling is the “feeling of knowing?” Consciousness and Cognition 9: 538–544. Maynes, Jeffrey. 2012. Linguistic intuition and calibration. Linguistics and Philosophy 35 (5): 443–460. Maynes, Jeffrey, and Steven Gross. 2013. Linguistic intuitions. Philosophy Compass 8 (8): 714–730. Metcalfe, Janet, and Arthur P. Shimamura. 1994. Metacognition: Knowing about knowing. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Meylan, Anne. 2014. Epistemic emotions: A natural kind ? Philosophical Inquiries 2 (1): 173–190. Molitor, Eva. 2000. Sprachgefühl und Sprachbewußtsein am Beispiel des Subjonctif nach après que: Eine empirische Untersuchung. Göttingen: Peust & Gutschmidt. Monneret, Philippe. 2021. Sentiment linguistique et sentiment de la langue après Saussure: l’apport de Gustave Guillaume. In Le sentiment linguistique chez Saussure, ed. Gilles Siouffi, 147–168. Lyon: ENS Éditions. Mortensen, Janus, and Kamilla Kraft, eds. 2022. Norms and the study of language in social life (Language and Social Life 24). Berlin: De Gruyter.

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Neuland, Eva. 1993. Sprachgefühl, Spracheinstellung. Zur Relevanz “subjektiver Faktoren” für Sprachvariation und Sprachwandel. In Vielfalt des Deutschen. Festschrift für Werner Besch, ed. Klaus J. Mattheier, 723–748. Frankfurt a. M.: Lang. Nozari, Nazbanou, and Jared Novick. 2017. Monitoring and control in language production. Current Directions in Psychological Science 26: 403–410. Nyckees, Vincent. 2008. Une linguistique sans langue ? Contribution à une réflexion sur les conditions d’émergence d’un sens commun. Langages 170: 13–27. Nyckees, Vincent. 2021. Du sentiment linguistique saussurien à la pensée dans la langue: Penser la langue avec et contre Saussure. In Le sentiment linguistique chez Saussure, ed. Gilles Siouffi, 41–64. Lyon: ENS Éditions. Paul, Hermann. 1920. Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte. 5th ed. Halle: Niemeyer. Pickering, Martin John, and Simon Garrod. 2013. An integrated theory of language production and comprehension. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 36 (4): 329–347. Proust, Joëlle. 2013. The philosophy of metacognition: Mental agency and self-­ awareness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rath, Rainer. 1985. Sprachgefühl und Korrektur. Grazer Linguistische Studien 11: 137–162. Reicher-Béguelin, Marie-José. 1990. Conscience du sujet parlant et savoir du linguiste. In Sprachtheorie und Theorie der Sprachwissenschaft. Festschrift für Rudolf Engler, ed. Ricarda Liver, Iwar Werlen, and Peter Wunderli, 208–220. Tübingen: Narr. Rey, Georges. 2020. A defense of the voice of competence. In Linguistic intuitions. Evidence and method, ed. Schindler Samuel, Anna Droźdźovicz, and Karen Brøcker, 33–49. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Roehr-Brackin, Karen. 2018. Metalinguistic awareness and second language acquisition. New York/London: Routledge. Romand, David. 2015. Theodor Waitz’s theory of feelings and the rise of affective sciences in the mid-19th century. History of Psychology 18 (4): 385–400. ———. 2016. La théorie herbartienne de la représentation (Vorstellung): une dialectique de l’acte et du contenu. Studia Philosophica 75: 175–188. ———. 2017. Külpe’s affective psychology. The making of a science of feeling (1887-1910). Discipline Filosofiche 27 (2): 177–204. ———. 2019. More on formal feeling/form-feeling in language sciences. Heinrich Gomperz’s concept of “formal logical feeling” (logisches Formalgefühl) revisited. Histoire Épistémologie Langage 31 (1): 131–157.

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———. 2021. Psychologie affective allemande et sciences du langage au début du XXe siècle. Le concept de sentiment dans la “linguistique psychologique” de Jac. van Ginneken. Histoire Épistémologie Langage 43 (2): 57–82. ———. 2022a. La “sémasiologie” de Heinrich Gomperz. Un modèle psychoaffectif de la signification et du signe linguistiques. Histoire Épistémologie Langage 44 (1): 155–180. ———. 2022b. Review of Gilles Siouffi, Le sentiment linguistique chez Saussure. Histoire Épistémologie Langage 44 (2): 182–189. ———. in press a. Sentiments épistémiques et épistémologie affective chez Theodor Lipps. Une réévaluation critique de la première édition de Vom Fühlen, Wollen und Denken (1902). In Theodor Lipps (1851–1914). Psychologie, philosophie, esthétique / Psychology, philosophy, aesthetics, edited by David Romand and Serge Tchougounnikov, Lausanne/Genève: Sdvig Press. ———. in press b. The psychological origins of the concept of defamiliarization. Theoretical studies on familiarity, unfamiliarity, strangeness, and cognate feelings from Waitz to Lipps (1849-1909). In A hundred year of Ostranenie, ed. Alexandra Berlina and Holt Meyer. Lausanne/Genève: SDVIG Press. Sander, David, and Klaus R. Scherer. 2014. Oxford companion to emotion and the affective Sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Santana, Carlos. 2020. How we can make good use of linguistic intuitions, even if they are not good evidence? In Linguistic intuitions. In Evidence and method, ed. Schindler Samuel, Anna Droźdźovicz, and Karen Brøcker, 129–146. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Scherer, Klaus R., and Kevin Mulligan. 2012. Toward a working definition of emotion. Emotion Review 4 (4): 345–357. Schindler, Samuel, Anna Droźdźovicz, and Karen Brøcker, eds. 2020. Linguistic intuitions. Evidence and method. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schleicher, August. 1888. Die deutsche Sprache. 5th ed. Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta’sche Buchhandlung. Siouffi, Gilles. 2019. Sentiment linguistique et sens commun. In Le partage du sens. Approches linguistiques du sens commun, ed. Georgeta Cislaru and Vincent Nyckees, 97–112. London: ISTE Editions. ———, ed. 2021a. Le sentiment linguistique chez Saussure. Lyon: ENS Éditions. ———. 2021b. Que pouvait-on comprendre par sentiment de la langue à l’époque de Saussure? In Le sentiment linguistique chez Saussure, ed. Gilles Siouffi, 19–39. Lyon: ENS Éditions.

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Strässler, Jürg. 1984. Sprachgefühl: A mental faculty or stored knowledge? In Modes of interpretation: Essays presented to Ernst Leisi on the occasion of his 65th birthday, ed. Richard J. Watts and Urs Weidmann, 193–211. Tübingen: Narr. Tappolet, Christine. 2022. Philosophy of emotion. New York: Routledge. Testenoire, Pierre-Yves. 2018. Procédés et opérations des sujets parlants chez F. de Saussure. Histoire Épistémologie Langage 40 (1): 13–29. Textor, Mark. 2009. Devitt on the epistemic authority of linguistic intuitions. Erkenntnis 71 (3): 395–405. Timofeeva, Mariya K. 2015. Introspection in language and linguistics. Voprosy Jazykoznanija 6: 33–53. Trad, Ahmed Rafik. 2009. Das Sprachgefühl – als Ziel der Fremdsprachen­ beherrschung: Grundriss eines glottodidaktischen Modells. Częstochowa: Wydawnictwo Wyższej Szkoly Lingwistycznej. http://sbc.katowice.pl/ Content/18360/trad_blok_gotowy.pdf?handler=pdf. Accessed 8 May 2022. Unterberg, Frank. 2020. Sprachgefühle: wissenschaftliches und alltagsweltliches Sprechen über Sprachgefühl – zur Geschichte, Gegenwart und Vieldeutigkeit eines Begriffs. Doctoral dissertation. Universität Duisburg-Essen. https://doi. org/10.17185/duepublico/73443. van Ginneken, Jac[ques]. 1907. Principes de linguistique psychologique. Essai de synthèse. Amsterdam/Paris/Leipzig: Van der Vecht, Rivière and Harrassowitz. Wanner, Dieter. 2006. The power of analogy. An essay on historical linguistics. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Weisgerber, Leo. 1962. Grundzüge der inhaltsbezogenen Grammatik. 3rd ed. Düsseldorf: Pädagogischer Verlag Schwann.

Online Resources [Sprachgefühl]. n.d. Merriam Webster Dictionary. https://www.merriam-­webster. com/dictionary/sprachgef%C3%BChl. Accessed 24 April 2022. [Analogy]. n.d. APA Dictionary of Psychology. https://dictionary.apa.org/analogy. Accessed 24 April 2022.

Part I Cross-disciplinary Approaches to Linguistic Feeling from Herder to Wittgenstein

2 “What the Germans Call Sprachgefühl.” Sprachgefühl in Early German Linguistics. Selected Examples of Ways of Understanding Frank Unterberg

What we must account for includes what is known as the native speaker’s “intuition” about what he says and hears, what the Germans call Sprachgefühl. (Bach 1966, pp. 3–4, emphasis in original)

Is what Noam Chomsky (1969, p. 19) calls the “linguistic intuition of the native speaker” actually what Germans call Sprachgefühl? Emmon Bach’s statement, found in his Introduction to Transformational Grammars (1966), suggests such an equation. The first question to be answered, however, is what do Germans actually call Sprachgefühl—or, more precisely, what can they understand by Sprachgefühl. This question will be at the center of this chapter. In its discussion, this chapter draws on Frank Unterberg’s study Sprachgefühle: wissenschaftliches und alltagsweltliches Sprechen über Sprachgefühl—zur Geschichte, Gegenwart und Vieldeutigkeit eines Begriffs [Sprachgefühle: Scientific and Everyday Discourse on Sprachgefühl—about the History, Present, and Ambiguity of a Term]

F. Unterberg (*) Essen, Germany © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Romand, M. Le Du (eds.), Emotions, Metacognition, and the Intuition of Language Normativity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17913-6_2

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(2020). It forms a summary of relevant chapters and focuses on the early use of the term Sprachgefühl in German linguistics.1

1 History and Status of Sprachgefühl in German Linguistics Sprachgefühl is not just a German word: According to Jürg Strässler (1984, p.  195), Sprachgefühl denotes a “German concept.” But what does Sprachgefühl refer to? For more than 200 years, that is, since the emergence of the word Sprachgefühl, this question has not been answered conclusively. Even German linguistics, in which the word has been known since its existence as an academic discipline—that is, since the early nineteenth century—has not yet found a uniform answer. Sprachgefühl is “a much contested concept in linguistics” (Fiehler 2014, p. 29), and its status as a term is disputed (Trad 2009, p. 121; Klein 2014, p. 21; Langlotz et al. 2014, p. 15). Sprachgefühl is “an expression, a term […] that is used in linguistics, psychology of language and speech pathology as incessantly and unconcernedly as it is in everyday life, without, however, being fully clear about its content and scope” (Kainz 1956, p. 297). The presumed date of creation of the expression Sprachgefühl predates the establishment of linguistics as an academic discipline: Wolf Peter Klein (2014, p. 23) considers it possible that Johann Gottfried Herder invented the expression “Sprachengefühl” and first used it in 1768 (Herder 1967b [1768], p. 346)—Sprachengefühl as “the feeling for languages or the feeling one acquires when one masters more than one language” (Klein 2014, p. 24). However, the form Sprachgefühl has become widely accepted. Various authors—mostly citing Deutsches Wörterbuch (Grimm 1984b [1905], p. 2753)—suggest that Joachim Heinrich Campe may be the originator of the word Sprachgefühl (Gauger and Oesterreicher 1982, p. 13) or the originator of that source in which it can be attested for the first time in 1807 (Henne 1982, p.  125; Disselkamp and Olt 1985,  All quotations that are originally in German have been translated into English for this chapter— with the exception of the word Sprachgefühl, which is italicised in all quotations. Additional markings of this word (e.g., bold) have been taken from the respective original texts. 1

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40–41; Langlotz et  al. 2014, p.  9). In fact, however, Campe uses Sprachgefühl as early as 1795 (Campe 1795, p. 148) and 1797 (Campe 1797, pp.  8 and 89). Although earlier usage by other authors can be traced (Sandbüchler 1791, p. 483; Hartung 1792, p. III), according to Klein’s (2014, p. 23) conjecture, Sprachgefühl entered the linguistic literature of the nineteenth century from Campe’s writings.2 Campe, however, is not considered to belong to linguistics in the strict sense. In the case of Franz Bopp, this is different: his research is often regarded as the beginning of modern linguistics. Bopp uses the term Sprachgefühl, but without defining it. Other representatives of nineteenth-century German linguistics who use the term Sprachgefühl include Jacob Grimm, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Heyse, August Schleicher, August Friedrich Pott, Georg Curtius, Rudolf Hildebrand, Georg von der Gabelentz and Hermann Paul. In this list, Schleicher takes a special role: Johann Knobloch (1980, p.  51) is convinced that the scientific use of Sprachgefühl begins with him. Schleicher (1888, p. 65) formulated a definition in 1860, but such an attempt had already been made in 1799 by the theologian and philosopher Samuel Simon Witte (1799, pp. 5–6). Nevertheless, one does not arrive at an accepted definition in the nineteenth century. With the claim to formulate such a definition, Friedrich Kainz (1956, pp. 296–393) finally entered the field as a psychologist of language in 1956: “Sprachgefühl refers to a dark, subliminally effective knowledge of what is customary in language, a disposition, created by extensive familiarity with language and constantly refined, to make use of the stock of the language in question in a normative manner” (Kainz 1956, p.  325). Kainz’s definition forms a point of reference in several studies, but is also subject to criticism and questions. Several questions arise: Is Sprachgefühl directed solely at linguistic norms? Is it a conscious, preconscious, or unconscious knowledge? Is it identical with

 There are various studies on the history of the linguistic use of the expression Sprachgefühl, on which Unterberg’s work (2020, pp. 28–283) is also partly based. Lawrenz (1969), Schmidt (1986), and Ising (1987) are worth mentioning. Further overviews are provided by Klein (2014, pp. 22–30), Molitor (2000, pp. 7–18), Hohm (2005, pp. 26–30), Disselkamp and Olt (1985, pp. 40–45), and Trad (2009, pp. 53–65 and 121–159). By necessity, these studies can only ever be devoted to sections of the more than 200-year history of Sprachgefühl.

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linguistic knowledge or already a form of language awareness, that is, a meta-­linguistic knowledge? In 1976, Helmut Gipper (1976, p. 240) calls for the “rehabilitation” of Sprachgefühl as a scientific concept, and in 1980 the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung poses the prize question of whether an appeal by speakers to their Sprachgefühl is justified. In the published answers (e.g., Gauger and Oesterreicher 1982), it is primarily standard linguistic norms that come into focus—a focus that Richard Schrodt (1995, p. 84) criticizes: Is Sprachgefühl oriented exclusively toward standard language? Further discussions of the phenomenon of Sprachgefühl are provided by these authors, among others:3 Franz Eppert (1976), Manfred Geier (1982), Helmut Henne (1982), Wolfgang Müller (1982), Jürg Strässler (1984), Martin Disselkamp and Reinhard Olt (1985), Rainer Rath (1985), Eva Neuland (1993), Jürgen Pafel (2005), Ahmed Rafik Trad (2009), Reinhard Fiehler (2014) and Wolf Peter Klein (2014). But what Trad noted in 2009 still holds true today: “Judging by the number of publications on the topic of ‘Sprachgefühl,’ the scientific concepts are still in their infancy. There seems to be no consensus on the content of the definition of the term in research” (Trad 2009, p. 121).

2  Sprachgefühl Before the Nineteenth Century That Sprachgefühl denotes a “German concept” (Strässler 1984, p. 195) does not mean that the notion of a linguistic feeling is an exclusively German notion, nor that its roots are to be found solely in German linguistic and intellectual history. Elmar Siebenborn (1976) shows that Sprachgefühl already played a role in Greco-Roman linguistic theory—in ancient normative grammar (Unterberg 2020, pp. 32–34). For ancient grammarians, “natura” and “euphonia” (Siebenborn 1976, p.  56) are among various criteria used to establish and justify linguistic correctness. Natura is often part of the dichotomy natura versus ars or ratio: While ars and ratio comprise rules “of the technical textbook,” natura denotes “that  Summaries of these studies are offered in Unterberg (2020).

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which is given by nature, i.e., in the human Sprachgefühl” (Siebenborn 1976, p.  153). This natural knowledge is often sufficient to spontaneously recognize forms as grammatically incorrect. In contrast, euphonia is “the aesthetic feeling for the beauty or discordance of a linguistic utterance” (Siebenborn 1976, p.  154). The question of the basis on which linguistic correctness is to be determined is still the subject of discussion centuries later. Dirk Josten (1976) shows which arguments were put forward by German-speaking authors in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Unterberg 2020, pp.  34–38): What models should guide the creation of “a uniform and universally valid German language norm” (Josten 1976, p. 10)? Josten identifies foci of argumentation, including “language-immanent argumentation” (Josten 1976, p.  11, emphasis in original)—the conviction that language “carries the standard of its correctness within itself as ‘basic correctness’ or analogy” (Josten 1976, p. 11). Is an appeal to Sprachgefühl, then, an appeal to an inner “language nature” (Sprachnatur)?4 To this, it must be countered that behind an appeal to Sprachgefühl there is often also an appeal to a given use of language. Whom, then, does it follow? The epoch of the Enlightenment is also important for the development of the concept of Sprachgefühl. This is usually associated with a dominance of understanding (Verstand) and reason (Vernunft), while the emphasis on feeling (Gefühl) is attributed to the “culture of feeling” (Gefühlskultur) (Narr 1963, p. 132) established in the second half of the eighteenth century. However, it is by no means the case that feeling is disregarded in the Enlightenment: According to Ute Frevert (2011, p. 20), in encyclopedias and dictionaries published at that time, indications can be seen that “in the Age of Enlightenment, we also recognize the beginning of a new, intensively reflected appreciation of feelings.” Important foundations for the development of the concept of Sprachgefühl were laid, as Erika Ising (1987) shows, by Johann Christoph Adelung (1732–1806) and Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803): Both are convinced that feeling plays a central role in the origin and development of language, and describe how it also operates in the use of language and the 4  With the concept of language nature, language is said to have “a nature somehow independent of its speakers” (Gardt, 1999, p. 109, emphasis in original).

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reflection on language. Herder (1997 [1772]), for example, criticizes the “dull, late laws of the grammarians” for failing to “feel” (fühlen) the “true divine nature of language” and the “spirit” (Geist) of a language (Herder 1997 [1772], p. 94).5 What is needed is a “feeling of the peculiarity of our language” (Herder 1967a [1767], p. 377) or a “Sprachengefühl” (Herder 1967b [1768], p. 346, emphasis in original) that decides “what is German and un-German” and the “nature” of the German language (Herder 1967b [1768], p. 346; see also: Unterberg 2020, pp. 83–96). For Adelung, it is “the dark feeling” (dunkles Gefühl) (Adelung 1971b [1782], p. 702) or the “dark sensation [dunkle Empfindung], which alone guides the use of language” (Adelung 1971a [1782], p. 635).6 Speakers follow “rules of language” (Adelung 1971a [1782], p. 92), but they do so “without clear consciousness” (Adelung 1971a [1782], p. X; see also: Unterberg 2020, pp. 96–108). If Klein’s (2014, p. 23) assumption is correct that Herder invented the word Sprachengefühl and that it entered the philological-linguistic literature of the nineteenth century as Sprachgefühl from Campe’s writings, then this question arises: How was Sprachgefühl used after Herder and before Campe, that is, in the last third of the eighteenth century? Sprachgefühl can be found, for example, in the treatise Abhandlung über die zweckmässigen Mittel den hebräischen und griechischen Grundtext dem Wortsinne nach richtig zu verstehen [Treatise on the Expedient Means of Correctly Understanding the Original Hebrew and Greek Texts According to their Literal Sense], which the Catholic theologian and exegete Aloys Sandbüchler (1751–1820) published in 1791 (Unterberg 2020, pp.  43–45). Thus he holds to the “LXX” (Sandbüchler 1791, p.  482)—the Septuagint, that is, the translation of the Old Testament written in Hebrew and Aramaic into Greek—that “many ancient interpreters of Scripture, although they understood nothing Hebrew, nevertheless often found the true sense […] very happy: for these […] had acquired from the constant use of it a kind of correct Sprachgefühl, which not infrequently led them safely in the explanation” (Sandbüchler 1791,  Friedrich von Schlegel argues in a similar vein in his influential writing Ueber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (1808) (Unterberg, 2020, 124–126). 6  Adelung usually uses Gefühl and Empfindung synonymously (Schmidt, 1986, p. 17). 5

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pp.  482–483). Sprachgefühl is thus a knowledge that owes itself to the occupation with authentic texts, but not to a conscious acquisition. It “not infrequently leads safely” (Sandbüchler 1791, p. 483), but does not reliably protect against “violations” (Sandbüchler 1791, p. 483). What is needed, therefore, is an additional “sufficient knowledge of the biblical languages of the Orient” (Sandbüchler 1791, p. 483), that is, a conscious, learned knowledge that goes beyond Sprachgefühl. A similar understanding can be found in 1792  in the book Versuch einer kleinen Deutschen Sprachlehre für die heranwachsende Jugend [Attempt at a Small German Language Teaching for the Growing Youth] published by the Prussian school reformer August Hartung (1762–1839) (Unterberg 2020, pp. 45–47): “If […] the teacher wants to teach German in smaller schools, he must of course at first only try to refine the correct Sprachgefühl of his pupils. But as soon as their powers of understanding and their age permit, he may not and must not neglect the main rules of the mother tongue” (Hartung 1792, p. III). Hartung distinguishes between Sprachgefühl and the knowledge of linguistic rules: Sprachgefühl may be understood as a natural prior knowledge of rules. Pupils follow rules but have no conscious knowledge of them. As soon as their “powers of understanding” (Verstandeskräfte) permit, the task of the language teacher is to “refine” this vague knowledge into a clear awareness (Hartung 1792, p. III). These considerations are thus also grounded in the classical opposition of feeling and understanding. This opposition also forms a starting point for the reflections of the theologian and philosopher Samuel Simon Witte (1738–1802). In his treatise Ueber die Bildung der Schriftsprache und den Ursprung der keilförmigen Inschriften zu Persepolis [On the Formation of the Written Language and the Origin of the Cuneiform Inscriptions at Persepolis] (1799), he formulates a definition of Sprachgefühl that also underlies his explanation of the origin of written language (Unterberg 2020, pp. 47–50). It should be noted that he conceives of feeling as a mediator between sensation (Empfindung)—“sensual perception” (Witte 1799, p. 4)—and thinking. Feeling protects thinking from an “overweight of sensation” (Witte 1799, p. 5), and such a mediating role is also assigned to Sprachgefühl: “Precisely this feeling, subordinate to our self-activity, I would call, insofar as it can be determined by the speech tools and is, as it were, an organic feeling,

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the Sprachgefühl; but insofar as it can make itself externally audible and perceptible, that is, express itself, by processing the vocal sound, the speech ability [Sprachvermögen] […]” (Witte 1799, p.  6, emphasis in original). As a feeling, Sprachgefühl mediates, on the one hand, between sensation and understanding, and, on the other hand, between the impression gained through sensation and—via the path “of the imprint in the Sprachgefühl” (Witte 1799, p.  7)—the expression in the speech sound. Sprachgefühl precedes the ability to speak, is superior to sensation and subordinate to understanding. It is not clearly conscious, but it has a decisive effect.

3 Joachim Heinrich Campe: Sprachgefühl and “the Laws of Reasonable Expression” The fact that it is presumably Joachim Heinrich Campe (1746–1818), from whose writings Sprachgefühl entered linguistics and who helped a feeling to become known may be seen as ironic. First, Campe is often criticized by linguists, because of his efforts to purify the German language of foreign-language words. Secondly, he was considered by many of his contemporaries to be a representative of the Enlightenment, whose work is antiquated at the time of the culture of feeling (Gefühlskultur) (Schiewe 1989, p. 229). Two focal points can be identified in Campe’s work: the first is, his work as a prominent figure in pedagogy in the late eighteenth century, the second is, his occupation with language. His main works are the Wörterbuch zur Erklärung und Verdeutschung der unserer Sprache aufgedrungenen fremden Ausdrücke [Dictionary for the Explanation and Germanization of the Foreign Expressions Imposed on our Language], first published in 1801 (Campe 1970 [1813]), and the Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache [Dictionary of the German Language] published in five volumes from 1807 to 1811 (e.g., Campe 1969a [1807], 1969b [1808]). In these works are found the two uses of Sprachgefühl which are given in the literature as the earliest uses. In the preface to the first volume of the Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache Campe writes:

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In the interior of the articles and in the context of the speech, where it was no longer a question of classifying the words listed but of explaining them and discussing their meanings, the author of this dictionary believed, and I think rightly so, that he was just as entitled as any other writer to follow his own Sprachgefühl and, in accordance with this, to use such German terms as seemed to him to be sufficiently significant and, for want of better ones, to be unobjectionable. (Campe 1969a [1807], p. XVII)

Is Sprachgefühl, then, as Helmut Henne (1982, p. 126) concludes, “an instance to which those who deal—more or less—professionally with language can refer”? Campe’s preface to his Wörterbuch zur Erklärung und Verdeutschung7 suggests a different understanding: there he criticizes Kant’s “language-confusing expression” and the definition for Reflexion or Überlegung (reflection) as such a “constraint” that “the Sprachgefühl of anyone who has not yet bent his common sense under the obedience of faith in the sayings of the master is thereby outraged and repulsed” (Campe 1970 [1813], p. IX). Sprachgefühl, then, is not an exclusive faculty: like common sense, it is a faculty possessed by every human being. Thus, Campe writes of his own explanation: “That this, and not that strange fiction, is the meaning of the word Überlegung […] is felt by every unbiased person […]” (Campe 1970 [1813], p. IX, emphasis in original). But what does Campe mean by Sprachgefühl? In his dictionary, Sprachgefühl is not listed. It is helpful to take a look at his concept of man and his thinking about language (Unterberg 2020, pp. 38–82). Information about Campe’s concept of man is provided, for example, by his treatise Von der nöthigen Sorge für die Erhaltung des Gleichgewichts unter den menschlichen Kräften. Warnung vor dem Modefehler, die Empfindsamkeit zu überspannen [Of the Necessary Care for the Preservation of the Balance among Human Forces. Warning against the Fashionable Error of Overstretching Sensibility] (1979 [1785]). Campe distinguishes “higher soul forces (understanding [Verstand], reason [Vernunft], etc.) from the so-called lower soul forces (sensitivity [Empfindungskraft] […] [,] imagination [Einbildungskraft], etc.)” (Campe 1979 [1785], p. 364) and thus follows a classical line of the Enlightenment.  According to Campe himself (1970 [1813], p. XII), he wrote this preface as early as 1800.

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He understands Empfindungskraft as “the capacity to perceive through the senses and to feel pleasure or displeasure about what is perceived” (Campe 1979 [1785], p.  300). Gefühl (feeling) would thus be understood as the reaction to perception. However, in his dictionary he also describes Gefühl as the basis of sensing or perceiving (Campe 1969a [1807], p. 902), fühlen (feel), among other things, as the capacity “to get ideas, to become aware of a thing” (Campe 1969b [1808], p. 191). The object of fühlen is not only sensual perceptions: Thus, the “truth of a remark, the freedom of a thought” (Campe 1969b [1808], p. 191) can also be felt. Gefühl can thus assume the role of a cognitive power, though it does not have the capacity of understanding—the “faculty of clearly imagining something”—and of reason, which perceives “causes and effects, reasons and consequences” (Campe 1979 [1785], p. 298). It is able to move “in a higher, spiritual sphere purified by consciousness, reason, and judgment” (Frevert 2011, p. 29), but this requires that its conceptions gain “clarity” (Campe 1979 [1785], p. 371) with the help of the higher forces of the soul. What does Campe think about language? His treatise “Grundsätze, Regeln und Grenzen zur Verdeutschung” [Principles, Rules, and Limits of Germanization], which precedes his Wörterbuch zur Erklärung und Verdeutschung … (1970 [1813], pp. 1–70), provides some information. For Campe, language forms a tool with which a person expresses his “thoughts and sensations expediently [zweckmäßig]” (Campe 1970 [1813], p. 23); this is “the first and most essential purpose of a language” (Campe 1970 [1813], p.  23). The “attention of the hearer” is to be directed “to the content of our words, not to the words themselves” (Campe 1970 [1813], p. 69). Words, then, have to be more or less transparent (Schiewe 1989, p.  235). For language to be used as a tool for conveying knowledge and for “popular education” (Volksausbildung) (Campe 1970 [1813], p. 6), it depends on intelligibility and adherence to rules. Intelligibility protects against “confused or misleading ideas” (Campe 1970 [1813], p.  7). Following rules helps language achieve “greater unity, independence, or conformity to itself ” (Campe 1970 [1813], p. 8); even linguistic beauty is subordinate to correctness. Thus Campe rejects “many-sensed words” (Campe 1970 [1813], p.  29) and everything “that can attract attention through oddity or strangeness”

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(Campe 1970 [1813], p.  69). The supreme standard of language use, however, is the nature of language (Natur der Sprache) and reason (Vernunft) (Campe 1970 [1813], p. 50)—for Campe, it is “the supreme legislator” (Campe 1970 [1813], p. 50). The “laws of reasonable expression” (Gesetze eines vernünftigen Ausdrucks) apply (Campe 1970 [1813], p. IX). Campe’s conception of language thus follows a hierarchy, at the top of which is reason. What place does Sprachgefühl occupy? As a feeling, it is to be counted among the lower forces of the soul. Nevertheless, it enables one to “know” (erkennen) (Campe 1969b [1808], p. 256), to “get notions of, to become conscious of a thing” (Campe 1970 [1813], p. 191). These conceptions are at first indistinct. Sprachgefühl can make language its object and evaluate it, but as the “first phase of incipient cognition” (Kainz 1956, p.  310), it only gains clarity and certainty when understanding and reason are added. This basic understanding is evident in Campe’s uses of the term Sprachgefühl, a selection of which can only be sketched here. For example, when Campe—as quoted above—criticizes Kant’s definition of Reflexion or Überlegung, speaks of “everyone’s Sprachgefühl […] being outraged and repulsed by it,” and is convinced that everyone “feels” that his own explanation is “the meaning of the word” Überlegung, he ascribes to Sprachgefühl the ability to distinguish the meaning of a word from a “strange” interpretation (Campe 1970 [1813], p. IX). When he considers himself entitled to “follow his own Sprachgefühl, and […] also to be allowed to use such German terms as are sufficiently significant to him” (Campe 1969a [1807], p. XVII), he understands Sprachgefühl as the ability to assign an expression to content which depicts that content “sufficiently” (hinreichend)—it follows the “principle of referential exactness” (Gardt 1999, p.  194). Sprachgefühl thus anticipates cognition. In order for it to become clear cognition, reflection is necessary: “Only I must confess that my Sprachgefühl—for a long time I didn’t quite know why myself—is still a little offended by the expression Fortbildung [further development]. By repeatedly thinking about it, I believe I have found the reason for this quiet offence […]” (Campe 1795, p. 148, emphasis in original). Thinking about language thus helps to justify an initially inexplicable reaction of Sprachgefühl, for example, the rejection of an expression:

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Stutz suggested for the last [word] unverbesserig [incorrigible]. However, notwithstanding that this, according to its sound, has a resemblance to ungelehrig [unteachable] for itself, my Sprachgefühl is outraged against it, presumably because we have no affirmative adjective, verbesserig [corrigible], like gelehrig [teachable], so that we cannot derive a negative one from it either. (Campe 1970 [1813], p. 370, emphasis in original) The expression Blitzstoff [electricity] and its derivatives have my full applause; only the designation Blitzfeuerzeug [flash lighter] for Electrisirmaschine [electrification machine] resists my Sprachgefühl, presumably because we are too accustomed to think of steel, tinder, and flint when we think of Feuerzeug [lighter], and because in low speech the word Blitz [lightning], when placed before another basic word, is also often used for verwünscht [cursed] […]. (Campe 1970 [1813], p. 281, emphasis in original) Presumably the similar sound of poltron [coward] with poltern [rumble] (from which it does not derive after all) has misled the Sprachgefühl of my insightful assessors. (Campe 1970 [1813], p. 486, emphasis in original)

Sprachgefühl is based on knowledge that is not clearly conscious and is usually the result of surrounding language use. This knowledge may be inaccurate, so it is reasonable to conclude that this also applies to the judgment made by Sprachgefühl. However, it is also conceivable that Sprachgefühl guides us more surely than a conscious knowledge about language. Thus, Campe credits his competitor Adelung (Schiewe 1989, p.  233) with Sprachgefühl, but criticizes the principles that guided the latter in writing his dictionary (Campe 1797, p. 8): “Thanks be to his better Sprachgefühl, which often happily counteracted those principles!”

4  Sprachgefühl in Nineteenth-Century German Linguistics Romanticism is considered the “age of discovery and pioneering of linguistics” (Gipper and Schmitter 1979, p. 16). In this epoch, linguistics establishes itself as an independent discipline, but splits into two

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directions: historical-comparative and general linguistics. In historical-­ comparative linguistics, Helmut Gipper and Peter Schmitter (1979) see the “Boppian line” leading up to the Neogrammarians (Junggrammatiker), which they characterize as “positivistic,” and in general linguistics the “Humboldtian line,” which is “‘idealistic’ in the positive sense” (Gipper and Schmitter 1979, p. 18). What they have in common is their point of departure: the linguistic thinking of Romanticism. Although it also draws on pre-Romantic traditions, it can be characterized on the basis of several points. Thus, the “official discovery, so to speak, of Sanskrit” (Arens 1969, p. 134), presented by Sir William Jones in 1786, is the trigger for the description, reconstruction and comparison of numerous languages. One turns, guided by the romantic appreciation of the past and the inside of things, to the history and inner construction (innerer Bau) of languages (Arens 1969, p. 156). Also characteristic is the notion of an autonomous language organism (Sprachorganismus): its functioning owes itself to its component parts and follows laws intrinsic to language (Schmidt 1986, p. 93). Like all other organisms, it goes through phases of life: Languages arise, develop, age, and die.8

4.1 Franz Bopp Franz Bopp (1791–1867) is considered the founder of comparative grammar of the Indo-European languages (Gipper and Schmitter 1979, p. 52). In his writings, he uses the term Sprachgefühl on various occasions, for example, in his work Über das Conjugationssystem der Sanskritsprache in Vergleichung mit jenem der griechischen, lateinischen, persischen und germanischen Sprache [On the System of Conjugation in Sanskrit, in Comparison with those of Greek, Latin, Persian, and Germanic Languages] (1975 [1816]). Bopp provides evidence of the kinship of these languages by comparing their conjugation systems (Bopp 1975 [1816], pp. 8–9), that is, by examining a section of their language structure (Sprachbau). He is convinced that the conjugation system of Sanskrit  At this point, reference should again be made to the study presented by Lawrenz in 1969, which has, however, received little attention in German linguistics. Lawrenz shows several uses of the expression Sprachgefühl, but rarely goes into detail about the background. Cf. Lawrenz (1969). 8

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has been adopted, but modified, by the languages that are “most closely related” (Bopp 1975 [1816], p. 9) to it. In these changes, he sees a “gradual destruction of the simple organism of language” (Bopp 1975 [1816], p. 11). What is the role of Sprachgefühl? As Lawrenz (1969, pp. 17–25) notes, Bopp uses the term Sprachgefühl with various meanings. Nevertheless, basic patterns can be discerned (Unterberg 2020, pp.  126–133): Thus, Sprachgefühl appears primarily as an indistinct, diminishing knowledge of and about the forms, meanings, and procedures of older or current states of language, and as a judgment based on this knowledge. His judgments may be inaccurate—for example, when “our Sprachgefühl no longer perceives an auxiliary verb in the te of suchte [searched], but only an expression of the past” (Bopp 1842, p.  885, emphasis in original). It may also be that it no longer recognizes “sister forms” as relatives—the relative ceases to “be related” (Bopp 1976 [1836], p.  167). As the “originally very acute sense of the meaning of forms” (Bopp 1976 [1836], p. 129), it is a faculty of the speaker; Bopp speaks, among other things, about the “feeling of the speakers” (Bopp 1976 [1836], p. 25). But he likewise assigns Sprachgefühl to the language organism (Sprachorganismus) (Bopp 1976 [1836], pp. 114–115) or grammatical forms (cf. 69), and finally it is also the “spirit of language [Sprachgeist]” that “feels” (Bopp 1976 [1836], p. 115). But it too can be mistaken, for example, when it confuses grammatical forms as a “spirit of language gone mad” (Bopp 1976 [1836], p. 110). The spirit of language is the trigger of language decay, and Sprachgefühl its amplifier, when it becomes the “misguided feeling of later language periods” (Bopp 1976 [1836], p. 26, see also: Lawrenz 1969, p.  23). As an “autonomous supra-individual instance” (Schmidt 1986, p.  88), the spirit of language is superior to Sprachgefühl.

4.2 Jacob Grimm Jacob Grimm (1785–1863), the creator of historical-comparative grammar and “founder of German studies in its entire scope” (Arens 1969, 194), is also convinced that the language organism goes through predetermined developments (Grimm 1966 [1819], pp.  49–50). Moreover,

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Grimm emphasizes national aspects: The “insight of the indigenous” is “the most worthy, the most salutary, and preferable to all foreign science” (Grimm 1966 [1819], p. 27). The romantic idealization of the past also informs his reflections: “[T]he old language is corporeal, sensual, full of innocence; the new one is working towards becoming more intellectual, more abstract […]” (Grimm 1966 [1819], p. 46). Grimm (1966 [1819], p.  46) attributes “inner strength” and naturalness to the old language. This can also be found in isolated cases in the new language, but the “unspeakable pedantry” of the “linguistic teachings” works against it, especially in language teaching: According to Grimm, the child’s linguistic ability and language as an “unconscious secret” are damaged by the “rules of the linguistic masters” (Grimm 1966 [1819], p. 30). In women and girls, on the other hand, “who are less harassed at school” (Grimm 1966 [1819], p.  31), the old and natural aspects of language are preserved, as well as an “unspoiled Sprachgefühl” (Grimm 1984a [1854], p. XIII). This is able to feel (fühlen) a language—in contrast to such “linguistic artists [Sprachkünstler],” who do not “feel that there is hardly a rule that can be stiffly carried out everywhere” (Grimm 1966 [1819], p. 35). Sprachgefühl is a faculty to be opposed to the treatment of language focused on rules, for example, capitalization in German, which contradicts a “healthier” Sprachgefühl (Grimm 1840, p. 28).9 Moreover, Grimm is convinced that speakers of earlier eras possessed a more vivid Sprachgefühl (e.g., Grimm 1966 [1819], p. 58) and that this is a capacity that unites a speech community (Grimm 1871 [1846], pp. 331–332; Unterberg 2020, pp. 133–140).

4.3 Wilhelm von Humboldt The historical-comparative linguistics of the nineteenth century is often accused of neglecting the speaking person. Wilhelm von Humboldt  It is well known that Grimm rejected capitalization in German: “It is not too late, and easy enough, to renounce such an embarrassing and useless way of writing, which only Danes and Lithuanians […] have allowed themselves to be burdened with, Swedes and Englishmen soon after the first attempts […], in more correct tact and a healthier Sprachgefühl, have abandoned again, even in our midst it has never completely penetrated […]” (Grimm, 1840, p. 28). 9

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(1767–1835), who is regarded as the founder of general linguistics (Gipper and Schmitter 1979, p. 77), takes a different approach: he combines the results of intensive linguistic studies, for example, with philosophical and anthropological considerations; in his work, “the boundaries between the philosophy of language and linguistics are fluid” (Gipper and Schmitter 1979, p. 16). The complexity of Humboldt’s thinking is also followed by his understanding of Sprachgefühl (Unterberg 2020, pp.  140–152). Fundamentally, it can be conceived of as an indistinct, preconscious knowledge and skill: it can “get lost in the darkness of consciousness” (Humboldt 1968d [1827–1829], p. 462), and its decisions are not always explicable even to the linguist (Humboldt 1968b [1824–1826], p. 394). Nevertheless, it intervenes effectively in the use and shaping of language. It is first of all the ability to designate objective reality as precisely as possible, that is, to approach it linguistically. This approximation to the “source of truth” (Humboldt 1968c [1827–1829], p. 173) is, however, subjective, due to human nature (Humboldt 1968a [1820], p. 27) and languages: For Humboldt, they contain “their own views of the world [Weltansichten],” so that each language conveys a specific picture of objective reality—only the “totality” of all languages yields a complete picture (Humboldt 1968a [1820], p.  33). Thus, the more languages a person masters, the closer he comes to the unattainable ideal, that is, the picture of reality freed from all subjectivity. Sprachgefühl as the capacity to designate a section of reality—it is “the Sprachgefühl” that “chooses a means of designation” (Humboldt 1968d [1827–1829], p.  435)—thus develops “into a more general and correct Sprachgefühl, indeed even language awareness [Sprachbewusstsein]” (Humboldt 1968c [1827–1829], p.  193). This general Sprachgefühl, which owes itself to knowledge of several languages (Klein 2014, p. 24), is preceded by that Sprachgefühl which is directed at only one language—the language of a speaker (e.g., Humboldt 1968b [1824–1826], p.  399, 1968d [1827–1829], p.  433). Finally, the task of Sprachgefühl is also to “link language elements in firmness and closeness to a sound unit corresponding to the thought unit” (Humboldt 1968d [1827–1829], p. 340), that is, to translate a linking of thought contents as an “action of the mind” (Humboldt 1968d [1827–1829], p.  340) into “grammatical relations” (Humboldt 1968d [1827–1829], p. 377; see also: 1968c [1827–1829],

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p. 268, 1968d [1827–1829], pp. 438 and 459–460). In summary, then, it can be said: For Humboldt, Sprachgefühl is decisively involved in the process of semiotization. It mediates between language, thought and reality—it helps to give linguistic signs their meaning.

4.4 August Schleicher If one follows the distinction between a positivistic Boppian line and an idealistic Humboldtian line of nineteenth-century linguistics, August Schleicher’s (1821–1868) linguistic research can be assigned to the Boppian line. Schleicher, who is considered the founder of family-tree theory (Stammbaumtheorie) and who reconstructed forms of the original Indo-European language, sees linguistics as a “natural science” (Schleicher 1995 [1873], p.  7). He examines languages as independent “natural organisms that came into being without being determinable by the will of man” (Schleicher 1995 [1873], p. 67). He follows the Romantic notion of the decay of the language organism and is convinced that languages developed in prehistoric times and decayed in historical times (Schleicher 1983 [1850], p.  13). This decay is particularly evident in grammatical forms—that area which is “completely removed from the influence of the will” (Schleicher 1888, p. 3)—and has “its cause in the natural being of man” (Schleicher 1888, p. 19). For Schleicher it is certain that the once lively Sprachgefühl of the speakers (Schleicher 1888, p. 64) increasingly dwindles, “falls silent” (Schleicher 1888, p.  188), becomes a “dead” (abgestorbenes) Sprachgefühl (Schleicher 1888, p. 235) and thus promotes the decay of languages (Unterberg 2020, pp. 153–164): “We want to call the feeling for the function of the word and its parts Sprachgefühl for short. The Sprachgefühl is thus the protective spirit of the linguistic form; to the extent that it recedes and finally disappears altogether, the phonetic ruin breaks over the word” (Schleicher 1888, p. 65, emphasis in original). If, as described in this definition, Sprachgefühl dwindles, the language is exposed to “destructive elements” (Schleicher 1888, p. 63). These include the action of phonetic laws (Lautgesetze), analogy as a convenient “treatment of as many words as possible in the same way” (Schleicher 1888, p. 61), simplification, and finally the loss of the former “abundance of

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grammatical forms” (Schleicher 1888, p. 61). First, the feeling for a linguistic form fades, finally the form itself.

4.5 Hermann Paul With Hermann Paul (1846–1921), the authoritative “systematist of the ‘Neogrammarian school’” (Arens 1969, p. 346) will have his say. It should be noted in advance that although the Neogrammarians belong to the historical-comparative linguistics (Gardt 1999, pp. 278–279) and thus to Bopp’s lineage, they also distinguish themselves from their predecessors. Hermann Osthoff (1847–1909) and Karl Brugmann (1849–1919) reject various guiding ideas of their predecessors in their “creed” (Glaubensbekenntnis) (Osthoff and Brugmann 1974 [1878], p. XIX), which is regarded as the program of Neogrammarian research (Gardt 1999, p. 284; Unterberg 2020, pp. 164–168). These include the “strange view” of Sprachgefühl dwindling in history, the idea that language, as a natural organism, leads “a life for itself ” (Osthoff and Brugmann 1974 [1878], p. XV), and the idealization of older states of language (Osthoff and Brugmann 1974 [1878], p. XVI). They call for turning to the present (Osthoff and Brugmann 1974 [1878], p. VII), to spoken language (Osthoff and Brugmann 1974 [1878], p. IX) and to human beings, since “all changes in linguistic life proceed only from the speaking individuals” (Osthoff and Brugmann 1974 [1878], p. XII). The “genuine, natural, non-reflective everyday speech” (Osthoff and Brugmann 1974 [1878], pp. VII–VIII) is to be studied as a psychological and physical activity (Osthoff and Brugmann 1974 [1878], p. III); language itself owes its existence to the collective activity of the speakers. It is in this interplay of psychological, physical, and social factors that Sprachgefühl finds its place for Paul (Unterberg 2020, pp. 168–183): as a psychological instance that is developed through physically mediated interaction, that is, through the communal use of language. This instance—a “highly complicated psychic structure consisting of manifold intertwined groups of representations [Vorstellungsgruppen]” and located in the unconscious—is the basis of speech: “All expressions of speech activity flow from this dark sphere of the unconscious” (Paul 1970 [1920],

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p.  25). The groups of representations—groups of linguistic forms that come together according to a particular criterion—are “a product of all that once entered consciousness through hearing others, through one’s own speaking, and through thinking in the forms of language” (Paul 1970 [1920], p.  26). Thus, every use of language, after it has passed through the sphere of consciousness, finds its imprint in the unconscious. Paul also includes consciously learned rules, which later “operate unconsciously” (Paul 1970 [1920], p. 111). If linguistics draws “as faithful a picture as possible” (Paul 1970 [1920], p. 29) of this psychic “organism of groups of representations” (Organismus von Vorstellungsgruppen) (Paul 1970 [1920], p. 27), it shows, “let us put it more popularly, […] how the Sprachgefühl acts” (Paul 1970 [1920], p. 29).10 For Paul, then, Sprachgefühl denotes the psychic organism of groups of representations, and thus not a knowledge that fades away in the history of language, but an unconscious knowledge that forms the basis of effortless speech—so in the course of analogy, which is a central procedure of Sprachgefühl: “Once all the forms of a number of words have been memorized and have formed groups, it is taken for granted by the Sprachgefühl that the forms of other words also belong to such groups […]” (Paul 1970 [1920], p. 113). The speaker acquires this knowledge through the use of language, and this use follows usage (Usus), which is not identical with the norm. For Sprachgefühl, this means that it is formed on the “actual normal in language” (Paul 1970 [1920], p. 29), and this also puts a speaker in a position to perceive deviations without necessarily having an “awareness of the nature and cause of the deviation” (Paul 1970 [1920], p. 53). If the usage changes, then Sprachgefühl changes. This does not mean, however, that the speakers’ Sprachgefühl is identical: although a “certain average can be gained by comparing the individual language organisms [Sprachorganismen]” (Paul 1970 [1920], p. 29), these “language organisms”—the speakers’ Sprachgefühl—are “subjective in nature” (Paul 1970 [1920], p.  189). Just as usage can change Sprachgefühl, so too can Sprachgefühl change usage: This presupposes that an individual change takes hold in communal language use—individual Sprachgefühl can thus  Although Paul describes the expression Sprachgefühl as popular, he refrains from listing it in his Deutsches Wörterbuch (1908).

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be at the beginning of language-historical developments. Paul describes several examples in which Sprachgefühl operates in the way outlined. It is obvious to understand by this the linguistic knowledge of the speaker, that is, his possession of linguistic means. Beyond that, however, it can be understood in various cases as a preconscious knowledge about language, as a preform of language awareness—for example, when it guides as a “feeling of entitlement to one’s own assemblages” (Paul 1970 [1920], p. 111), its “vacillation” (Paul 1970 [1920], p. 139) between neologisms and existing forms is described, or it feels (empfindet) words as etymologically related (Paul 1970 [1920], p. 220).

5 Conclusion What do Germans call Sprachgefühl? Even if this chapter could only draw a rough sketch and had to limit itself to selected authors and aspects,11 it can be stated that even at the beginning of the linguistic use of Sprachgefühl there is no uniform understanding.12 If one nevertheless tries to combine several understandings into one general term, Sprachgefühl could be understood as the “designation of an indistinct, preconscious, and often uncertain knowledge about language and a skill based on it” (Unterberg 2020, p.  391). The perceptions of Sprachgefühl are fuzzy, for example, when speakers perceive a deviation from the expected, though cannot say what it consists in—they have no “awareness of the nature and cause of  This chapter, for example, has had to dispense with an account of the modes of understanding developed by Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Heyse (1797–1855), Rudolf Hildebrand (1824–1894), and Georg von der Gabelentz (1840–1893). With Heyse, Sprachgefühl is to be understood as a mode of language use and language perception: it acts as an “infallible, surely guiding force” and forms—as the “standpoint of the Sprachgefühl” (Heyse, 1973 [1856], p. 3, emphasis in original)—people’s immediate, natural relationship to language. Hildebrand sees “in the Sprachgefühl of the individual human being or of a time […] the only real life source of language”—it can persist in the “linguistic instinct [Sprachinstinkt],” but can also rise to “language awareness” (Hildebrand, 1890 [1870], p. 89). Gabelentz describes Sprachgefühl in his work Die Sprachwissenschaft. Ihre Aufgaben, Methoden und bisherigen Ergebnisse (1995 [1901]) many times as a preliminary form of language awareness, as an indistinct, preconscious knowledge about language. It goes beyond the mere possession of linguistic means and guides, accompanies and judges their use (e.g., Gabelentz, 1995 [1901], pp. 140, 209, 220, and 222). 12  Unterberg (2020, pp.  200–283 and 461–601) shows that this is also true for twentieth- and twenty-first-century linguistics as well as for everyday conversation about Sprachgefühl. 11

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the deviation” (Paul 1970 [1920], p.  53). If Paul is convinced that Sprachgefühl lies in the “dark sphere of the unconscious” (Paul 1970 [1920], p.  25), but describes that linguistic means enter consciousness (e.g., Paul 1970 [1920], pp. 204–205), the distinction unconscious versus conscious must be supplemented by preconscious (Gauger 1976, p.  55): while the unconscious remains unconscious, contents of the preconscious can enter consciousness. They are not currently conscious, but are fundamentally capable of becoming conscious. This is also true of Sprachgefühl, which is often uncertain in its judgments. If it is characterized as a type of knowledge about language, this means that Sprachgefühl is already a preliminary form of language awareness. It goes beyond the mere possession of linguistic means, linguistic knowledge. As a “linguistic awareness of the linguistic bearer that works intuitively but has not reached a formulable certainty” (Schmidt 1986, p. 86), it is described not exclusively, but predominantly in the German linguistics of the nineteenth century as well as in preceding epochs. In this context, many ways of understanding can be traced back to basic patterns and traditions: These include the opposition of feeling and understanding already thematized in antiquity, the distinction between an indistinct feeling and a distinct consciousness—Sprachgefühl versus language awareness—or the separation of the unconscious and the conscious. But how are the differences between understandings of Sprachgefühl to be accounted for? Every understanding of Sprachgefühl is an expression of a way of thinking about language: Those who, for example, like Campe (1970 [1813], p. 50), conceive of reason as the “supreme legislator” also see Sprachgefühl as bound to this standard. Those who study the history of languages conceive of it as a factor at work in the history of language. In the twentieth century, however, it is this and other questions that occupy linguistics: Does Sprachgefühl belong to the realm of emotion or cognition? How conscious is it? Does it follow rules and norms—or does it elude them?

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References Adelung, Johann Christoph. 1971a. Umständliches Lehrgebäude der Deutschen Sprache, zur Erläuterung der Deutschen Sprachlehre für Schulen: Erster Band. Hildesheim: Georg Olms (book first published 1782). ———. 1971b. Umständliches Lehrgebäude der Deutschen Sprache, zur Erläuterung der Deutschen Sprachlehre für Schulen: Zweyter Band. Hildesheim: Georg Olms (book first published 1782). Arens, Hans. 1969. Sprachwissenschaft: Der Gang ihrer Entwicklung von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. 2nd, revised and significantly expanded edition. Freiburg: Karl Alber. Bach, Emmon. 1966. An introduction to transformational grammars. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Bopp, Franz. 1842. Vergleichende Grammatik des Sanskrit, Zend, Griechischen, Lateinischen, Litthauischen, Altslawischen, Gothischen und Deutschen. Vierte Abtheilung. Berlin: Ferdinand Dümmler. ———. 1975. Über das Conjugationssystem der Sanskritsprache in Vergleichung mit jenem der griechischen, lateinischen, persischen und germanischen Sprache, edited and accompanied with preliminary remarks by Karl Joseph Windischmann. Hildesheim: Georg Olms (book first published 1816). ———. 1976. Vocalismus oder sprachvergleichende Kritiken über J.  Grimm’s deutsche Grammatik und Graff’s althochdeutschen Sprachschatz mit einer neuen Theorie des Ablauts. Frankfurt a. M.: Minerva (book first published 1836). Campe, Joachim Heinrich. 1795. Ueber den Titel dieses Werks. In Beiträge zur weitern Ausbildung der deutschen Sprache von einer Gesellschaft von Sprachfreunden: Drittes Stück, ed. Gesellschaft von Sprachfreunden, 136–149. Braunschweig: Schulbuchhandlung. ———. 1797. Ankündigung und Probe eines Deutschen Wörterbuchs zur Ergänzung und Berichtigung des Adelungischen. In Beiträge zur weitern Ausbildung der deutschen Sprache von einer Gesellschaft von Sprachfreunden: Neuntes Stück, ed. Gesellschaft von Sprachfreunden, 1–108. Braunschweig: Schulbuchhandlung. ———. 1969a. Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache: Erster Theil. A – bis – E, ed. Helmut Henne. Hildesheim: Georg Olms (book first published 1807). ———. 1969b. Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache: Zweiter Theil. F – bis – K, ed. Helmut Henne. Hildesheim: Georg Olms (book first published 1808). ———. 1970. Wörterbuch zur Erklärung und Verdeutschung der unserer Sprache aufgedrungenen fremden Ausdrücke: Ein Ergänzungsband zu Adelung’s und

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Bernhard Suphan, 295–363. Hildesheim: Georg Olms (reprint of the edition Berlin 1877, book first published 1768). ———. 1997. Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache, ed. Hans Dietrich Irmscher. Stuttgart: Reclam (book first published 1772). Heyse, Karl Wilhelm Ludwig. 1973. System der Sprachwissenschaft, ed. Heymann Steinthal. Hildesheim: Georg Olms (reprint of the Berlin 1856 edition, book first published 1856). Hildebrand, Rudolf. 1890. Zur Geschichte des Sprachgefühls bei den Deutschen und Römern. In Rudolf Hildebrand. Gesammelte Aufsätze und Vorträge zur deutschen Philologie und zum deutschen Unterricht, 88–113. Leipzig: Teubner (text first published 1870). Hohm, Michael. 2005. Zum Zusammenhang von Sprachbewusstheit, Lesekompetenz und Textverstehen: Historische, fachdidaktische und unterrichtspraktische Aspekte der Problematik. Doctoral dissertation, Julius-Maximilians-­ Universität Würzburg. https://opus.bibliothek.uni-­wuerzburg.de/ opus4-­w uerzburg/frontdoor/deliver/index/docId/1653/file/hohm.pdf. Accessed 5 November 2017. Humboldt, Wilhelm von. 1968a. Über das vergleichende Sprachstudium in Beziehung auf die verschiedenen Epochen der Sprachentwicklung. In Wilhelm von Humboldt. Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Königlich Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, vol. 4, 1–34. Berlin: de Gruyter (text written 1820, book first published 1905). ———. 1968b. Grundzüge des allgemeinen Sprachtypus. In Wilhelm von Humboldt. Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Königlich Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, vol. 5, 364–475. Berlin: de Gruyter (text written 1824–1826, book first published 1906). ———. 1968c. Über die Verschiedenheiten des menschlichen Sprachbaues. In Wilhelm von Humboldt. Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Königlich Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, vol. 6, first half, 111–303. Berlin: de Gruyter (text written 1827–1829, book first published 1907). ———. 1968d. Von dem grammatischen Bau der Sprachen. In Wilhelm von Humboldt. Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Königlich Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, vol. 6, second half, 337–486. Berlin: de Gruyter (text written 1827–1829, book first published 1907). Ising, Erika. 1987. Sprachgefühl und Sprachbewußtsein: Problemfindung und Begriffsentwicklung aus Denkmustern der deutschen Aufklärung. In Theoretische und praktische Fragen der Sprachkultur, ed. Bärbel Techtmeier,

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3 Assent, Sentiment and Linguistic Feeling in Jac. van Ginneken’s Psycholinguistics Lorenzo Cigana

The work of Jac. van Ginneken has recently been the object of renewed interest, with focus, for the most part, on his psycholinguistics and the affective roots of language (Elffers 1996; Foolen 1997; Cigana 2018; Romand 2021), as discussed in his work, Principes de linguistique psychologique (1907). Language, according to van Ginneken, does not simply require the rise of representational content in the consciousness of the speaker, and its transmission to the consciousness of the listener—it also requires a series of intentional dispositions or “acts” (Elffers 1996), which can be defined as the conditions for apperception, among which adherence or assent [adhésion or assentiment] and feeling [sentiment] are the most significant. These notions were introduced in order to explain the morphogenesis of linguistic forms, by identifying their corresponding mental facts and

L. Cigana (*) Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics (NorS), University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Romand, M. Le Du (eds.), Emotions, Metacognition, and the Intuition of Language Normativity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17913-6_3

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realizing a transition from a purely representational associative psychology toward a broader, empirically oriented theory that could successfully bring together comparative linguistics and experimental psychology. In order to carry out such a grand synthesis, van Ginneken tapped into the theories of Meinong, Lipps and Brentano, managing to combine, albeit loosely, the Aktpsychologie of the latter with Humboldt’s insight on language as energeia. His model also incorporates Herbart’s threshold of consciousness, as well as elements coming from the German research trend in allgemeine Sprachlehre,1 formed by scholars such as Bernhardi, Roth, and Wüllner—a trend that focused on the idea of Darstellung2 but strongly emphasized the non-rational, intuitive origin of linguistic categories. In what follows, we will examine the particular way in which van Ginneken implements the notion of linguistic feeling, on the one hand contributing to a consolidation of this notion within the quickly evolving panorama of both the psychology and linguistics of his time, while, on the other hand, blurring somewhat the conceptual distinctions required by his own apparatus. This will be regarded as a symptomatic feature of his approach. In order to carry out this investigation, it is first essential to consider how, and to what extent, van Ginneken conceptualizes the idea of “linguistic feeling,” by framing the notion of “sentiment” within the model of the psyche or consciousness put forward in his Principes.

1 Language and the Twin-Notions of “Assent” and “Feeling” Siouffi (2018, pp. 98–99) points out that the notion of “linguistic feeling” (French: sentiment linguistique; German: Sprachgefühl) lends itself to functioning as a technical term, contrasting with “sentiment de la langue,”  A recurrent title in German scholarship. It could be roughly translated with universal theory of language. 2  “Presentation,” as opposed to Vorstellung (representation). In this case, it means the externalisation of representational, internal states through (verbal) language. 1

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which had gained a broader currency in nineteenth century along with a plethora of other correlated notions, such as “sentiment de la parole,” “sentiment de la musique,” and so on, all formed from the lexeme “Gefühl” (Siouffi 2018, p. 99), which conversely began to express a specific idea in the late eighteenth-century German psychology (Romand 2021, p. 59). One might argue that van Ginneken took part in this process of terminological consolidation: he resorted extensively to the term “sentiment” in order to root the psychic functioning of language in the domain of affectivity, and he managed to establish himself as one of the most significant representatives of the psychoaffective branch of language sciences (Romand 2021). Yet, if we assume the standard definition of linguistic feeling to be either the speaker’s intuitive comprehension of linguistic normativity (Unterberg 2020) or the “intimate, not fully conscious sensitiveness that speakers have of the validity of their own linguistic acts and representations” (Cigana 2018, p. 129), our view changes somewhat, since the notion, taken in this way, occurs only rarely in van Ginneken’s Principes (1907, pp. 74, 78, 87, 97, 118, and 276). This forces us to investigate whether such an interpretation of “sentiment,” as intuitive, epilinguistic understanding, is purely accidental in his work, or whether its subordination vis-à-vis the main sense of the term— “emotion”—is symptomatic of van Ginneken’s take on the psychological nature of language. In order to frame van Ginneken’s theory, it is worthwhile recalling its basic assumptions: 1. language is the product of the whole of human consciousness, resulting from the balance between the two poles of bounded, subconscious automatic operations and of free, conscious, and expressive actions (van Ginneken 1907, p. 243). 2. because of (1), language cannot be explained solely by the associative mechanism of representations, which represents only a part of the content of consciousness and cannot account for the rise of self-­ consciousness (Cigana 2018, pp. 124–126). van Ginneken’s argument is that, in order to give rise to self-consciousness, a representation should be simultaneously (a) conscious of itself and (b) of all the

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momentary representations, in conformity with the unity of apperception, which is said to characterize self-consciousness itself. 3. since this is impossible,3 an additional non-representational, transcendental “force” or “act” is postulated that assumes representations as its own objects. Such a psychic factor is called assent and is defined as the “act of being of the sentiment of someone” (van Ginneken 1907, § 60)—thus of “agreeing with reality.” 4. stemming from such a no-longer-purely-representational frame, language is not merely a mirror of reality, bound to reflect—through concept—the subject’s empirical intake (or perception), but, first and foremost, the expression of the subject’s internal creative life, and the condition for its communication.4 It is safe enough to say that the main scope of van Ginneken’s Principes (1907) is to find a place for assent (van Ginneken 1907, p. 55), by tracking it in the quite heterogeneous linguistic material collected in the book, while simultaneously adding nuance to its scope. In fact, assent is complemented by other factors as its internal counterparts: sentiment and appreciation, on the one hand, and volition, on the other. In van Ginneken’s view, these factors (plus perception and representation) build up the complete architecture of human psyche, inspired by Theodor Lipps’s theorization as expressed in his 1902 work Vom Fühlen, Wollen und Denken (Foolen 1997, p. 5). Their interplay also permits the filling in of some gaps in the model, among others the fact that the very idea of “agreeing to reality,” implied by assent, seems to leave room for a negative counterpart: if assent is defined as a confirmation of reality,5 shouldn’t a form of psychic denial or rejection also be possible? Isn’t a negative form of assent also conceivable (Cigana 2018, pp. 128–129 and 138, n. 31)? van Ginneken seems to exclude this, since, in his view, assent

 The reader will easily spot the circularity of the argument: self-consciousness is said to be something more than representation. Thus it cannot be representation, since representation cannot be something more than itself. 4  This leads to a proto-pragmatist opening: see “Conclusions.” 5  The Dutch beaming clearly supports this religious connotation. 3

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is meant to be the constituting act of objectivity itself.6 Moreover, since assent is responsible for the inner conviction about reality or the external state of things, such conviction requires some sort of underlying stability in apperception, which is, in turn, conveyed by pure acceptance of reality, as it were. Nevertheless, the possibility of negative assent does represent an important issue that cannot simply be evaded, since it accounts for another important role traditionally ascribed to language and acknowledged by van Ginneken himself, namely the function of “distancing from the here and now”7 by which subjectivity is constituted: “We are conscious of our perceptions and representations; in this way we part with our surrounding environment, acknowledging objectivity as such: we adhere to our sensitive knowledge [cf. Lipps, Leitfaden der Psychologie]” (van Ginneken 1907, p. 55). In fact, in the Principes the issue of a negative “response” to percepts and representations is not evaded but rather implicitly addressed in two different ways. On the one hand, assent seems to at least partially fulfill the role of distancing from the here and now, and this because of its very structure: after all, as we have seen, assent constitutes in itself a form of detachment from the representational horizon8—detachment conceived as an indispensable requirement for the constitution of the psychic self. On the other hand, the possibility of a negative relation to reality is actually ascribed to sentiment, which in turn represents a cause of language in its own right (van Ginneken 1907, § 159).

 Assent is also defined as the “acte primordial de notre conscience objective” (van Ginneken 1907, p. 506, § 696). 7  Cf. for instance Cassirer (1942, Chap. 2), which recapitulates Humboldt’s claims. 8  The risk is, of course, that of regressus ad infinitum: assent is supposed to fill the qualitative gap between representations and self-consciousness, by postulating an act that comes “from above,” so to speak, but then the gap between assent and representations also has to be bridged. van Ginneken’s solution, that is, claiming that assent has representations as its own objects, partially allows him to dodge this risk. 6

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2 van Ginneken’s Model of Psyche In order to grasp the extent of van Ginneken’s notion of “sentiment,” as well as its interaction with the other psychic factors of language, it is useful to reconstruct his concept of the human mental activity. This is conceived as a layered structure in which the different factors—(1) representations, (2) assent (or adherence), (3a, b) sentiment and appreciation—are situated between the two poles of “inner self ”9 and the “non-­ self ” (the external world), while volition (volonté) (4) occupies a space on the edge. (1) Representations form the sensorial intake, or the objective matter, to which the psyche “adheres” through assent (2), becoming self-conscious. (2) Assent constitutes the spark of self-consciousness and has representations (1) as its own object. van Ginneken distinguishes six forms of assent, each corresponding to a different kind of representation: (a) real versus potential assent is connected to individual perception versus concomitant representations, established via association or memory, and functions in the same manner as Ribot’s “images génériques” or “idées générales” (e.g. Ribot 1897, p.  99 ff.) or Galton’s composited portraiture (quoted in Ribot 1889, p. 81). (b) relative versus absolute assent is connected to a perception with versus without previous assimilation via a pre-established chain of representations, thus, basically, assent to something new on the horizon of consciousness versus assent to something pre“assimilated” (van Ginneken 1907, § 86). (c) significative or intuitive versus indicative assent is connected to a sensitively enriched, thus concrete and immediate representation versus a vague representation, devoid of any sensorial detail and thus necessarily abstract and mediate.10  Which van Ginneken is prone to interpret in fideistic terms, as the “human soul.”  This kind of representation is explicitly linked to Witasek “unanschauliche Vorstellung.” Cf. Witasek (1901, p. 4) and Cigana (2018, p. 135, n. 28). 9

10

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In conformity with a research program implemented by German speculative grammars (e.g. Roth 1815), but which actually dates back to Port-­ Royal grammar, each psychic function is correlated to some linguistic phenomena, thus conceived as a manifestation of such functions.11 In this sense, the six forms of assent constitute the psychic acts behind the linguistic phenomena of declinabilia (roughly grammatical categories), which can be sorted according to the quality of the representations which constitute their “fundamental meaning” (van Ginneken 1907, p.  121, see also Cigana 2018, p.  136). So, substantives are said to derive from real assent (apperception of substantia), while adjectives derive from potential assent (apperception of accidentes); verbs derive from absolute apperception of processes, while nouns derive from relative apperception of facts. Finally, substantives and adjectives stem from significative assent, as they account for objects provided with all their sensitive qualities, while pronouns stem from indicative assent, which, according to van Ginneken, should justify their capacity to “stand for” almost any element in a given communicative context. No one of these classifications is a once-for-all assignation, but all sort of transitions12 are contemplated, which, in van Ginneken’s mind, should arguably reflect the structural fluidity and ever-changing nature of linguistic categories—for instance the participle, straddling between verb and noun, and thus between relative and absolute assent (van Ginneken 1907, § 669). van Ginneken even ventures so far as to formulate some laws to regulate these transitions.13 (3a) “Sentiment,” provisionally translated as “feeling” (but see further § 4), is closer to the inner self and free from any representational features. Defined as “fleeting qualities or experiences of the self immediately conscious of each moment” (van Ginneken 1907, p.  123; see also  This is, for instance, clearer in Georg Michael Roth’s (1815) framework, in which language is the conveyable manifestation (Darstellung) of internal, intellectual acts (Vorstellung)—a distinction which gets somewhat lost in Bühler’s notion of Darstellung. van Ginneken’s innovation was to postulate that the internal side is actually broader and that emotions and feelings prevail over the logical-intellectual aspects. 12  That is, grammaticalization processes, as Foolen (1997, p. 7) points out. 13  Cf. van Ginneken’s “sémantique dynamique” in van Ginneken (1907, §§ 661–716, p. 495 ff.). 11

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Romand 2021, p. 68), feelings do not provide any knowledge of the non-self, rather they inform us about the state of the subject (van Ginneken 1907, § 153). van Ginneken proposes a convoluted typology of feelings, which, defined as qualitative attributes of the self, are infinite innumerable.14 They are nevertheless ranked in three classes (Romand 2021, pp. 68–72):

(a) feelings of connection (van Ginneken 1907, § 165 ff.). (b) qualitative feelings (van Ginneken 1907, § 197 ff.):



(i) feelings of satisfaction or identity (ii) feelings of “disappointment” [déception] or diversity (iii) feelings of tendency (iv) feelings of resistance (v) feeling of the orientation of thought (vi) feelings of specific sensations (van Ginneken 1907, §§ 249–250), linked to the most subjective experiences (physical senses, colors, luminosity, etc.) (c) feelings of intensity (van Ginneken 1907, § 251 ff.)



Examining the linguistic counterparts of this classification is quite arduous, as any linguistic phenomenon can arguably be linked to one or more of the categories, or to none.15 According to van Ginneken (1907, p. 132; see also Foolen 1997, p. 7 ff.), the feeling of connection (a) is associated with linguistic elements such as particles, markers, conjunctions and prepositions, which convey a form of morphosyntactic link, such as agreement or concord, which is consequently “felt” rather than logically or consciously apprehended. The qualitative feelings and the feelings of intensity (b, c) are more closely linked to the semantic content of the mentioned elements—including van Ginneken’s explanation of negation, said to result from the feelings of resistance (van Ginneken 1907, § 227)—nominal and verbal adjectives (adverbs), lexemes, personal or demonstrative pronouns16 and  It is noteworthy that sentiment is used here only in the plural.  This is notably the thrust of Otto Jespersen’s criticism of van Ginneken’s interpretation of negation. Cf. Cigana (2018, pp. 137–138, n. 31). 16  See point v. above. Cf. van Ginneken (1907, pp. 241–243 ff.). 14 15

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various constructions such as “trop peu” [too little/few] or idiomatic combinations. For the sake of simplicity, feeling [sentiment] may be defined as metacognitive factors (Romand, 2019, 2021) since it is the way in which the self presents [darstellt] sensations and experience to itself in what is still an embryonic form of abstraction, that is, not yet fully logical, conceptual, or conscious. This is at least how the directional meaning enclosed in “and” or the feeling of movement in prepositions like to, from which the connective “too” is said to derive (van Ginneken 1907, p.  134; see also Foolen 1997, p.  7), is explained. However, van Ginneken’s usage of sentiment is much broader than what is usually understood by the notion of “feeling.” Our discussion of linguistic feeling, below, will touch specifically on this issue. (3b) Appreciation (van Ginneken 1907, § 260 ff.), that is both the individual (subjective) and collective (objective) appraisal, is lumped together with sentiment but are actually considered as a function in their own right (van Ginneken 1907, § 261), resulting from a combination of assent and sentiment. The linguistic counterparts of subjective appraisal are said to be adjectives, while morphological categories, such as grammatical gender, number, or case, constitute the counterpart of objective or cultural appraisal. In van Ginneken’s view, for instance, grammatical markers of agency, such as the nominative case, depict the object they apply to in positive terms, while the accusative culturally conveys a negative value of passivity or inferiority (van Ginneken 1907, § 264). Placing inflectional categories within appreciation, however, partially conflicts with the previous claim that declinabilia derive mostly from assent—the definition of appreciation as a tertium between assent and sentiment being further evidence for the same issue. (4) Lastly, volition [volonté]. As we have said, volition does not fit easily within this framework. In fact, van Ginneken’s model portrays the human mental architecture from an epistemic point of view, thus highlighting apperception in its receptive form—from sensorial data to self-consciousness (as knowledge of self ). Contrarily, volition

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involves consciousness in its active or productive form, hence the focus is on linguistic activity, caught in both the routinized, automatic aspect of phonetic and prosodic phenomena (Foolen 1997, p. 5) and in the creative and “arbitrary” aspect, immediately reflected in what van Ginneken calls “secondary linguistic units” (van Ginneken 1907, § 316), roughly translatable as immediate constituents,17 and syntax.

3 The Polysemy of Sentiment So, what does van Ginneken’s layered model of the psyche show us? The first notable feature is that, despite the allegedly neat division into four psychic functions, these functions constantly overlap. In our opinion, this is less a flaw than a symptom, only partially due to the scope of the work18 and the accordingly pervasive role of language, correlated—in all its semantic, morphosyntactic and phonetic forms—to each of the psychic acts. This overlapping depends on how the psychic acts are conceived: firstly, they need not break the degree of cohesion or unity that characterizes human consciousness (van Ginneken 1907, p. 273), hence the weak or “permeable” classification. Secondly, psychic acts are postulated behind linguistic phenomena and not vice versa: “For van Ginneken, it is the feeling of directionality, proceeding from one point to the next, that explains the logical connection and” (Foolen 1997, p. 7). On the pro side, this means the whole of subjectivity is effectively fleshed out as manifested by language. On the con side, the scholar will experience a major difficulty in explaining linguistic elements by pinpointing which, among the different psychic acts, can be correlated to each one of those:19 it can basically be everything—assent, sentiment, or a combination of the two,  Cf. van Ginneken’s telling definition of phrase as “tertiary reunion composed by secondary units” [réunion tertiaire composée d’unités secondaires]. Cf. van Ginneken (1907, p. 284). 18  For the issue concerning van Ginneken’s psycholinguistic perspective, see Elffers (1996, p. 80) and Cigana (2018, p. 117). 19  It may be useful to keep in mind that, after all, van Ginneken’s theory is not a methodology, but a theory—and expressly a synthetic one, formulated in reaction against logical or cognitively predominant models, such as that of Hoogvliet. Cf. Noordegraaf (2002). 17

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such as appreciation (less so with volition). The reason for this is that the whole model is built on the belief that psychic acts exist behind linguistic phenomena and are the real explanatory factor, while assuming a mutual permeability between them in order to justify the versatility of language. This makes the model quite blurred, as it is extremely difficult to trace the path backward, from linguistic phenomena to the act they supposedly belong to, derive from, or simply manifest. A second notable feature ensues from the “permeability” existing among the psychic functions: the polysemy of “sentiment.” This is also linked to the scope of van Ginneken’s Principes, namely to show, from multiple perspectives at once (Foolen 1997, p. 4),20 that the order of sentiment is primary in respect to the cognitive or logical roots of language (cf. Foolen 1997, p.  6; Romand 2021, p.  74). In fact, van Ginneken’s stance against representationalism and the centrality of the intellect in cognition leads him to reject an overly rationalized framework, often linked to normative approaches: By persisting in ascribing language to the exclusive manifestation of thought, one narrows down its object which is in reality much broader, making at the same time inexplicable everything in language that goes beyond this too narrow goal. A thousand particularities of its structure and its functioning are then bound to remain letter-closed or to receive high-­ fantasy explanations. (van Ginneken 1907, p. 131)

However, the very same push to assign sentiment to a primary position in language leads van Ginneken to disseminate sentiment-related factors everywhere in his model, thus—as a further consequence—expanding its very meaning. In fact, what van Ginneken calls “sentiment” arises in the model in two forms, that is, both as a single function alongside the others

 Foolen (1997, p. 1) mentions three different perspectives: (1) the origin of language, (2) the linguistic change and (3) the language structure and language use. From a purely evolutionary perspective of n. 1, sentiment is said to be a waning factor, that is, a primitive component destined to be superseded by assent in the evolution toward “civilized” and “objective” language (Romand 2021, p. 74). However, from the “panchronic” perspective of n. 3, sentiment represents the “fundamental meaning” of many linguistic phenomena and thus is destined never to quit language completely. 20

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and as a transversal factor that cuts across the very classification, so that each function entails a facet or an aspect of such a notion. Take assent, for instance. This is defined as “being of someone’s sentiment” (van Ginneken 1907, § 60) and said to coincide with the belief experienced by the speaker in the reality of his own perceptions and representations (Sobieszczanski 1990, p. 140)—belief that can be conveyed to the interlocutor through the crystallizations of individual and collective experience represented in linguistic forms. Moreover, a hybrid form of “assent of sentiment” is put forward (van Ginneken 1907, p.  125, 136), which is only a natural conclusion of assent being conceived as an act by which the momentary self adheres to its own experiences, recalling its own sensations and becoming self-conscious. However, this means, “assent of sentiment can hardly be distinguished from sentiment itself ” (van Ginneken 1907, p. 162; see also Romand 2021, p. 73), or that, at least, a “delicate sentiment of analysis” may exist (van Ginneken 1907, p. 125) both for speakers and linguists. There is, as van Ginneken (1907, p. 129) states, a “continuous exchange” between them. The same holds true for volition, which is also strictly tied to sentiment, although in a slightly different sense: the secondary linguistic units or constructions which manifest volition depend on how the connection between representations (or, rather, assents) is “felt,” resulting in either a sum of parts (s’il vous plaît) or a totality (Mesdames et messieurs).21 In the same way, in a sentence such as “Beide Parteien wählen getrennt zwei Schiedsrichter und zusammen wählen sie dann einen Obmann” [Both parties separately elect two arbitrators and together they then elect a referee] the stress put on “sie” [they] or on “dann” [then] depends on which representation is felt to be predominant, resulting in two different realizations of the anaphoric link and thus in different readings (“both parties elect two arbitrators and they then elect a referee” versus “both parties elect two arbitrators who then will elect a referee,” see van Ginneken 1907, pp. 317–318). Finally, sentiment is polysemic in itself, and this remains the case in spite of its relatively circumscribed place within van Ginneken’s model. Actually, such polysemy was explicitly addressed by van Ginneken, as  See van Ginneken (1907, p. 316).

21

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Foolen has rightly pointed out: “van Ginneken concedes that many readers might consider ‘le mot sentiment mal choisi pour les faits psychologiques décrits ici’ […], but, according to the author, they should not blame him, but the word ‘sentiment’ itself, which has “significations nombreuses et divergentes […]” (Foolen 1997, p. 7). At least three conflicting meanings can be identified: A. sentiment or affective state in the common sense (i.e. conscious states of pleasure and displeasure) B. sentiment as denoting an epistemic feeling C. sentiment as denoting subjectively colored nuances or stylistic secondary meanings (“connotations”). It is clear that linguistic feeling can only be (B), an internal sense or intuitive knowledge targeting linguistically realized utterances and conveying a weak metalinguistic or vaguely evaluative moment. In other terms, a speaker might be able to say whether a construction is correct or incorrect but not why; he might be aware of some nuances supported by grammatical forms but not of all possible usages of those forms; he might be capable of using a linguistic element synchronically but not of tracing it back to its diachronic roots. This specification forces us to differentiate between informative function (B1) versus evaluative metalinguistic utilization (B2): it is clear that when van Ginneken speaks about the “feeling of connection” behind syntactic constructions he is not directly referring to linguistic feeling in its evaluative moment, but to an internal state that carries information concerning the momentary state of the subject which can potentially be shared. The feeling of directionality at the basis of the linguistic conjunction and is clearly not conceived as an emotion (Foolen 1997, p. 7) but

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an active sensation of movement,22 but it is felt as such and is abstract enough to be communicable and recreated in the mind of the interlocutor. Then again, emotions—which cover van Ginneken’s notions of “pleasure and displeasure” (“joie et douleur,” both called sentiments in French, see van Ginneken 1907, pp. 249–250)—are also not so different from epistemic feeling: despite being mostly connected to the content of given lexemes,23 they, too, are not purely “felt” but carry non-propositional24 information about the state of the subject, thus having an undeniably cognitive function crystallized in language. Overall, van Ginneken’s linguistic feeling is primarily a feeling in language rather than a feeling about language—or, better said, a “feeling of language” in the subjective genitive rather than the objective genitive.25 Yet it would be wrong to claim that a reference to proper Sprachgefühl is utterly absent in Principes. van Ginneken does resort to this specific meaning when he seeks to announce the conformity between the linguistic descriptions provided by him or by other linguists and the general understanding of linguistic forms which speakers have:  About the difference between sensation and sentiment (feeling), cf. the following passages: “I am speaking here to the sentiment of watching, listening, palping, flairing and degusting in opposition to the sensation of seeing, of hearing, of touching, of smelling and of tasting” (van Ginneken 1907, p. 215); “I am thirsty. This is an objective psychic fact. The thirst for vengeance, this is a subjective sentiment. Yet they are both called thirst, since to the physical fact of the prickling in the parched throat is always added a desire for quenching which differs only accidentally from the feeling aroused by the desire for revenge” (van Ginneken 1907, p.  129). Note that this only works in French, since the same word soif is used in both occurrences: in English the word in the first sentence occurs as a derivative. It is noteworthy that van Ginneken does not specifically differentiate between mental (abstract) or physical (concrete) states. This aspect reverberates in other domains of linguistics and can, for instance, be appreciated in Wundt’s localistic stance in the semantics of grammatical case (Wundt 1904, I, 2, ch. 6, § III ff., “Sechstes Kapitel: Die Wortformen”/“Kasus formen des Nomens”; see for instance Marty 1910; Ribot 1897, pp. 95–96). We cannot delve into this aspect here (on this, see Fortis 2020). Suffice to say that, according to the localistic hypothesis endorsed by Wundt and taken up by Hjelmslev, the fundamental meaning of grammatical case is said to be both topical (spatial, thus concrete, “anschauliche”) movement and abstract (thus conceptual or “begriffliche”) directedness. van Ginneken is quite relevant in this connection too, since he occupies a specific place in the linguistic research for fundamental meanings [Grundbedeutungen]. 23  Called emotional words (“mots de sentiment,” e.g. van Ginneken (1907, §§ 180, 188, 268) as opposed to ideational words (“mots d’idée”). 24  That is, not subjected to truth-values. 25  See the interesting distinction by Langlotz et al. (2014) between “Gefühl für Sprache,” “Gefühl in Sprache,” and “Gefühl durch Sprache.” According to the authors, the “real” linguistic feeling can only be the “Gefühl für Sprache.” I thank David Romand for the remark. 22

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• the analyses provided by Notker the Stammerer26 and Leumann27 are said to be particularly solid because of the finesse of their sentiment linguistique exerted on a language. • van Ginneken also speaks of William James’s self-experiment, in which the sentences used as the sample are said to hardly convey a general meaning due to the strong expressive individuality that each word still has for the “esprit américain.”28 • clearer references to the linguistic feeling appear in van Ginneken’s claim that evidence for his concept of assent are “provided by morphology and linguistic feeling”29—a striking combination which reflects exactly the current conception of linguistic feeling as linked to morphology—or by “our actual feeling of language.”30 • in the same spirit, the explanation for the ambiguous readings in the sentence given above (van Ginneken 1907, § 363), which again depend on how the anaphoric link is “felt” and realized, are allegedly endorsed “by linguistic feeling itself.”31 • van Ginneken even seems to qualify linguistic feeling in Leibnizian terms of “clear and confused knowledge,” when he claims that the intrinsically illogical nature of sentiment often blurs the distinction between causal and concessive conjunctions, which tend to conflate.32 This is due to the fact that the representations of concession and cause are “felt” as similar and thus confused.  “Notker the Stammerer, who has exerted his linguistic feeling on Old Irish […] has shown us with indisputable clarity the origins and the age of consonant mutations in Germanic” (van Ginneken 1907, p. 491). 27  “Leumann has analysed our group-distinction with great accuracy and a very fine linguistic feeling” (van Ginneken 1907, p. 328). 28  “James examined himself before writing down or launching his little winged phrases [ses petites phrases ailées], which, though sometimes coming together in a higher unity, continue to be expressive in themselves, thanks to the strong individuality of their American spirit [esprit américain]” (van Ginneken 1907, pp. 283 and 327). 29  “Preuves de la morphologie et du sentiment de la langue” (van Ginneken 1907, pp. 74, 85). 30  “However, our actual linguistic feeling can also bear witness” (van Ginneken 1907, p. 77). 31  “This is what linguistic feeling too compels us to conclude” (van Ginneken, 1907, p. 318). 32  “The illogical nature of sentiment shows itself even more strongly when it carelessly confuses the conjunctions of cause with the conjunctions of concession. Yet, the latter is the logical opposite of the former, since a concession provides the reason of the opposite contained in the main sentence” (van Ginneken 1907, p. 140). 26

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All those usages are more discursive than conceptual: linguistic feeling is brought up or referred to but not discussed as such. Nevertheless, this proves that van Ginneken did have a knowledge of it and arguably intended to incorporate it within his framework, at least to some degree, capitalizing on its very polysemy. As we have seen, such polysemy is the hallmark of van Ginneken’s stance: conceived less as a flaw than as an intrinsic characteristic, the multifarious usages of the notion of “sentiment” reflect its very structure. It is no surprise then that Sapir, in referring to van Ginneken as the “brilliant Dutch writer” who, like other scholars in the “psychology of language,” put emotion at the foreground of linguistic matters (Sapir 1921, p. 15, n. 9), mistakenly reduced the reach of van Ginneken’s sentiment to connotative nuances or secondary lexical meanings: What there is of truth in their contentions may be summed up, it seems to me, by saying that most words, like practically all elements of consciousness, have an associated feeling-tone, a mild, yet none the less real and at times insidiously powerful, derivative of pleasure or pain. This feeling-tone, however, is not as a rule an inherent value in the word itself; it is rather a sentimental growth on the word’s true body, on its conceptual kernel. […] We all grant, for instance, that storm, tempest, and hurricane, quite aside from their slight differences of actual meaning, have distinct feeling-tones, tones that are felt by all sensitive speakers and readers of English in a roughly equivalent fashion. Storm, we feel, is a more general and a decidedly less “magnificent” word than the other two; tempest is not only associated with the sea but is likely, in the minds of many, to have obtained a softened glamour from a specific association with Shakespeare’s great play; hurricane has a greater forthrightness, a directer ruthlessness than its ­synonyms. Yet the individual’s feeling-tones for these words are likely to vary enormously. (Sapir 1921, p. 15)

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Now, the meaning of sentiment as “connotative nuance” or figurative sense,33 while not completely excluded by van Ginneken,34 is not deemed of primary importance in his model, if only because connotative nuances are attached to lexical elements or words, while van Ginneken is more focused on grammar and its parts (declinabilia and indeclinabilia). As should be clear by now, van Ginneken was endeavoring something quite different, and possibly closer to Sapir’s own concept of form-feeling (Fortis 2018, this volume; Romand 2019; Laplantine, this volume): his stance in Principes, as opposed to Sapir’s in Language, is to show that sentiment is not “parasitic” in respect to the linguistic conceptual core, rather the (diachronically) original and (panchronically) fundamental psychic act behind language as a whole. Consequently, secondary or affective nuances aren’t regarded as a surprising feature of language: they are always there precisely because feeling lies at the very core of language.

4 Conclusions In our eyes, van Ginneken’s use of “sentiment” wasn’t merely “a way of speaking, forced by the tripartite system (cognition, emotion, volition)35 he adopted for structuring the analytical framework of his book” (Foolen 1997, p.  7): it was rather  a deliberate terminological  choice  made to reflect the pervasiveness and heterogeneity of the denoted phenomenon, whose manifestations were all conceived as equally important in respect to language and subjectivity. We have tried to show that the polysemy of “sentiment” in Principes is not completely opaque, but can be broken down into three different categories: emotion, feeling (linguistic and metalinguistic), and affective connotations.  See above, point C.  Cf. the following passage: “But then wasn’t the naming of the philologists quite correct, when they designated the words used for objective facts as proper locutions and the expressions of sentiment as a figurative way of speaking? One might well ask: do not both have the same right to be called proper? […] And although here and now the answer to this question might perhaps be negative—because our scholastic education almost forces us to learn the language of our environment mostly to name objective facts, I see in general plenty of reason to answer frankly and squarely ‘yes’ to that question” (van Ginneken 1907, pp. 130–131). 35  We have shown however that the van Ginneken’s system is actually quadripartite (cf. supra). 33 34

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Moreover, this polysemy has been tied to the double role “sentiment” plays in van Ginneken’s model, occurring simultaneously as a “part” of the psyche, alongside the other functions (be them independent functions, as volition and assent, or dependent parts, like appreciation), and as a “totality,” since the whole psyche (hence all its parts) is said to be rooted in feeling as its original and most representative act. This particular part-and-whole relation—or fallacy—is not just typical of “sentiment” but also significantly affects another notion traditionally conceived as the counterpart of “sentiment,” namely thought or cognition (“pensée”): this term too can denote (a) the functioning of the psyche as such or (b) the logical and intellectual processes of the psyche, as opposed to the affective, “illogical” ones. However, the polysemy of “sentiment” is also to be linked to another aspect. van Ginneken’s concept of feeling—actually, his whole model— exists in the space between two opposing stances, namely a still representationalist framework, whose importance can be seen, for instance, in the fact that assent is categorized according to the different kind of representations, and an anti-representationalist, proto-pragmatic stance: on the one hand, “sentiment” is tied to what the subject feels here and now, but, on the other hand, it can be conveyed to or (re)created in the interlocutor’s mind so that he feels the same sensation, even if the speaker either does not, or no longer does. Once again, we see the need for a hybrid notion such as “assent of feeling” (see above). Hence the stress on the liberating role of language, meant to create communicative scenarios and generate new shareable experiences, rather than merely depicting already existing ones.

References Cassirer, Ernst. 1942. Zur Logik der Kulturwissenschaften. Fünf Studien. Göteborgs Högskolas Årsskrift. Cigana, Lorenzo. 2018. At the crossroad between psychology, phenomenology and linguistics: van Ginneken’s notion of “assent.” Acta Structuralica 1: 115–149.

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Elffers, Els. 1996. van Ginneken als psychosyntheticus. In De taal is kennis van de ziel. Opstellen over Jac. van Ginneken (1877–1945) [Language is knowledge of the soul. Essays on Jac. van Ginneken (1877–1945)], ed Ad Foolen and Jan Noordegraaf, 51–80. Münster: Nodus. Foolen, Ad. 1997. Language and emotions: The case of Jac. van Ginneken’s Principes de linguistique psychologique (1907). Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Linguists, Paper No. 0030. Oxford: Pergamon. Fortis, Jean-Michel. 2018. Sapir et le sentiment de la forme. Histoire Épistémologie Langage 37 (2): 153–174. ———. 2020. From localism to neolocalism. In Historical journey in a linguistic archipelago: Descriptive concepts and case studies, ed. Émilie Aussant and Jean-­ Michel Fortis, 15–50. Berlin: Language Science Press. Langlotz, Miriam, Nils Lehnert, Matthias Weßel, and Susanne Schul. 2014. SprachGefühl. Interdiziplinäre Perspektiven auf einen nur scheinbar altbekannten Begriff. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Marty, Anton. 1910. Zur Sprachphilosophie. Die “logische”, “lokalistische” und andere Kasustheorien. Halle: Max Niemeyer. Noordegraaf, Jan. 2002. Hoogvliet versus van Ginneken: Dutch linguistics around the turn of the century. In The history of linguistics in the low countries, ed. Jan Noordegraaf, Kees Versteegh, and E.F.K.  Koerner, 273–304. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ribot, Théodule. 1889. Psychologie de l’attention. Paris: Alcan. ———. 1897. L’évolution des idées générales. Paris: Alcan. Romand, David. 2019. More on formal Feeling/form-feeling in language sciences: Heinrich Gomperz’s concept of “formal logical feeling” (logisches Formalgefühl) revisited. Histoire Épistémologie Langage 41 (1): 131–157. ———. 2021. Psychologie affective allemande et sciences du langage au début du XXe siècle. Le concept de sentiment dans la “linguistique psychologique” de Jac. van Ginneken. Histoire Epistémologie Langage 43 (2): 57–82. Roth, Georg Michael. 1815. Grundriss der reinen allgemeinen Sprachlehre. Frankfurt am Main: Andreä. Sapir, Edward. 1921. Language. An introduction to the study of speech. New York: Harcourt-Brace. Siouffi, Gilles. 2018. La notion de sentiment linguistique et la philologie au tournant des XIXe et XXe siècles. Romanica Cracoviensia 2: 97–104. Sobieszczanski, Marcin. 1990. Contribution du R. P. Jacq. van Ginneken S. J. à la linguistique moderne. Histoire Épistémologie Langage 12 (1): 133–151.

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Unterberg, Frank. 2020. Sprachgefühle: wissenschaftliches und alltagsweltliches Sprechen über‚ “Sprachgefühl”. Zur Geschichte, Gegenwart und Vieldeutigkeit eines Begriffs. Doctoral dissertation, University of Duisburg-Essen. doi: https://doi.org/10.17185/duepublico/73443 van Ginneken, Jac. 1907. Principes de linguistique psychologique: Essai de synthèse. Amsterdam-Paris-Leipzig: Van der Vecht, Rivière and Harrassowitz. Witasek, Stephan. 1901. Zur psychologischen Analyse der ästhetischen Einfühlung. Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane 25: 1–49. Wundt, Wilhelm. 1904. Völkerpsychologie. Einer Untersuchung der Entwicklungsgesetze von Sprache, Mythus und Sitte. Erster Band: Die Sprache umgearbeitete Auflage. Zweiter Teil (2nd ed.). Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann.

4 On the Normative Side of Saussure’s “Linguistic Feeling” Emanuele Fadda

There is a sense in which you could say […] that nothing can be abstract in the language; you could justify this terminology by saying in the language everything is concrete that is present to the consciousness of the speakers. Ferdinand de Saussure (1993, pp. 84a–85a).

Both the notion of “linguistic feeling”1 in Saussure and that of linguistic feeling in general have received renewed and growing interest from

 The French language does not have a pair of terms analogous to the English pair “feeling” versus “sentiment.” The choice of uniformly translating sentiment linguistique or sentiment de la langue by “linguistic feeling” is recommended for reasons of practicality and fidelity to established terminological traditions, but it must also be pointed out that many of the occurrences of these expressions could be better translated into English by “sentiment.” Actually, linguistic feeling refers to (or, to some extent, is) stable, shared knowledge. But the word “feeling” is appropriate when we focus on the punctual aspect of its showing itself to the speaking subject. 1

E. Fadda (*) Department of Humanities, University of Calabria, Arcavacata, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Romand, M. Le Du (eds.), Emotions, Metacognition, and the Intuition of Language Normativity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17913-6_4

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scholars in recent years.2 The progressive disconnect between the theoretical study of Saussurean thought and the structuralist vulgate, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the lesser influence exerted in recent years by Chomskyan nativism, have finally brought to the forefront the epilinguistic consciousness and activity of the speaker,3 and opened a debate on its nature and its way of functioning. In this chapter, I would like to address the topic of linguistic feeling (i.e., consciousness) in Saussure via three separate paths. The first path deepens the link between the notion of “linguistic feeling” and the definition of the units of morphology (by the speaker, and consequently, by the linguist) and will lead us to compare the passages of some writings specifically devoted to morphology; the second one, focused on the normative dimension of linguistic feeling, links the Genevan introductory lectures to the courses of general linguistics, and will involve a brief reflection on the notions of “history” and “institution” in a Saussurean fashion; the third path revisits “geographical linguistics” (so renamed by the editors of the Course in General Linguistics) to find some hints about the onto- and phylogenetic dimension of linguistic consciousness.4 First of all, however, it is appropriate to show how linguistic feeling is something that can be seen from a double perspective (because this is how it is for the speaking subject). On the one hand, it is a cognitive tool, which allows for the classification and use of linguistic entities; on the other, it is a normative element, such that the speaker feels compelled to use certain forms within a community.

 Among the scholars who have explicitly addressed the Saussurean notion of sentiment de la langue, we can mention Laplantine (2005), Chidichimo (2009), Depecker (2009), Courbon (2012), and Testenoire (2018). Finally, a collective work specifically dedicated to the subject has recently been published (Siouffi 2021), whose introduction outlines the current state of play in this field. 3  The term “epilinguistic” was popularized in linguistics by Antoine Culioli (see David Romand’s remarks on epilinguistic activity in the introductory chapter). Here I use it in a broad sense, to denote all linguistic knowledge and consciousness of the speaker that do not reach explicitness and self-awareness. 4  The first and second pathways have already been developed (at least to a certain extent) in Fadda (2013) and Fadda (2017a, 2021), respectively. The third pathway is a new one that I hope to develop further in the future. An early attempt at a comprehensive treatment of the topic was Fadda (2017b). 2

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1 Language as the Product of Intelligence and Will The lecture with which the young Saussure presents himself to the Geneva audience, in November 1891, opened with a claim to the status of historical science for linguistics. The definition of history to which the new professor refers is interesting to recall, “What then is the second condition that the term historical science implies? It is that the object that makes up the stuff of history—for example art, religion, costume, etc.— stands, in any of its senses, for human actions, dependent on human intelligence and will—and, moreover, necessarily interests not only the individual but the community” (Saussure 2006, p. 99 = 2002, p. 150 = 1968/74, 3283.18).5 In this passage we find enunciated some of the main features of linguistics as Saussure understands it: the connection with praxis and collectivity, the connection with other human cultural phenomena (or other institutions—as he would say, following Whitney), and finally the connection with time. But the aspect that interests me most is that implied by the couple intelligence/will.6 Through a simple and ordinary psychological lexicon, Saussure clearly expresses the necessary duality (on this aspect, as on many others) of every linguistic phenomenon. On the one hand, to speak is to know a series of classes, or identities (linguistic and otherwise); on the other hand, to speak is to consent to a series of conventions established in a social body, which are imperative and assign to each speaking subject the duty to respect them and the right to make them be respected.

 In this chapter, I will always cite Saussure translated into English, providing the references to the French sources (including philological editions) where present, and translating into English myself when there is no available translation. Existing English translations, however, are highly inconsistent, and sometimes may lead to ambiguity, or do not let the relationship between the terms used by Saussure shine through (e.g., “to be aware of ” for “avoir conscience de,” or “thought” for “réflexion,” or “sanction” for “consécration,” whereas Saussure systematically contrasts sanction and consécration); in these cases, I will also insert into square brackets the original French expressions. 6  I will leave aside the issue of the strong similarity between this passage and the preface of Bréal’s Essai de sémantique (1897, p. 7, my translation): “[…] the only real cause […] is human intelligence and will.” 5

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In the inaugural lectures of 1891,7 the notion of linguistic feeling cannot find a place, because Saussure (as is evident from the use of “matter” and “object” in some ways reversed from that of the Course) does not yet place the epistemological primacy of point of view over object identification. But the distinction between a cognitive side and a normative side is instead very clear. In later stages of Saussurean thinking, the two terms are no longer as explicitly in the foreground as in the inaugural lectures, but they do not disappear: “intelligence” is still to be found8 but the adjective “psychological”—already present in the inaugural lectures, as opposed to “mechanical,” which applies to phonetic facts—is much more frequent. As to the term “will,” it remains and is used each time the role of languages as institutions is at issue: the so-called Notes on Whitney9 (Saussure 2006, p. 156 ff. = 2002, p. 203 ff.), the introduction to the second course of general linguistics (Saussure 1957), the so-called reprise10 (Saussure 1993, p. 91ff. = 2005, p. 236 ff.), and so on. More generally, the inaugural lectures have particular features that make them the obligatory starting point for our discussion. On the one hand, we can find in them many of the topics that will return throughout the flow of Saussure’s reflection; on the other, they are an important bridge between an earlier and a later phase (which begins immediately afterwards11 and bore its first fruit in the so-called Double Essence), in which the notion of linguistic sentiment can find a place. This is why I will occasionally use other passages from the inaugural lectures to feature

 The lecture I quoted from earlier belongs to a group of three texts, conceived—as everything suggests—for a publication. I am not concerned here with the actual manner in which these lectures were delivered: what is of concern is the role they play. 8  See “collective intelligence” [intelligence collective] in Saussure (2005, p. 236); unfortunately it is not included by the editors of the Course. 9  The general designation of “Notes on Whitney” is used to denote a set of theoretical texts (only some of which were actually conceived as part of an obituary for the American Sanskritist), contained in a notebook where non-scientific texts are also found. Reproductions of the sheets of this notebook are contained in volume 60 of Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure. 10  By the term “reprise” (resumption) many Saussure scholars refer to an originally unplanned section of the third general linguistics course that the professor added in May–June 1911, asking students to insert it into their notebook at an earlier point. From this section is derived a large portion of the “General Principles” part in the Course in General Linguistics. 11  See note 18 below. 7

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some aspects of the cognitive side as well as the normative side of linguistic feeling.

2 Linguistic Feeling as the Basis of Morphology The cognitive aspect of linguistic feeling in Saussure is shown through the role it plays in morphology. We must not make the mistake of equating what the Genevan linguist calls “morphology” with what current linguistics calls by that name (i.e., a level of the linguistic hierarchy, as opposed to phonology, lexicon, syntax, etc.): for Saussure, “morphology” is in general the synchronic articulation of a language (and as such is opposed to “phonetics”). This means that the texts specifically devoted to morphology are also those in which the notion of linguistic feeling is most present and most focused upon. Two, in particular, are the key texts in which the link between linguistic feeling and morphology is made explicit in the clearest way: the “Note on Morphology”12 and the initial part of the (half ) course on Greek-Latin Morphology given by Saussure in 1910 (still unpublished).13 The latter course begins with a working definition of morphology, which I quote according to the three witnesses (Riedlinger, Constantin, and Patois)14 available at the manuscripts department of Geneva Library (BGE). Riedlinger writes in his notebook:

 See Godel (1957, pp. 40–41) and Saussure (2002, p. 180ff.). Godel also prepared a first edition of the text (Saussure 1969, pp.  26–38), which I also checked for my Italian translation (Fadda 2017b, pp. 99–110). The date of the text is uncertain, and several have been proposed (often corresponding to some of the Greek-Latin morphology courses), but I am inclined to give it a date of no earlier than 1891, for the reasons I show below in note 13. 13  A selection of passages from the part of the same course devoted to phonetics has been published by Marie-José Béguelin (Saussure 1981). 14  Riedlinger’s version is detailed but not complete, Patois’ version complete but not detailed. Constantin’s version is the only one that is both complete and detailed. Godel chooses to cite Riedlinger in his Sources manuscrites (using the abbreviation Morph R), but we know that he was unaware of the existence of Constantin’s papers (Émile Constantin decided to make them available to scholars only after the publication of Godel’s work, and because of that). 12

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We want to focus our attention only on an operation that is done in morphology, which is to analyze the word, to break it down into several parts. […] But we must ask ourselves in which case this analysis is legitimate, right or wrong. Well, there is no other measure than this: if it coincides with the feeling of the speaking subjects. To the extent that (I do not say consciously, instinctively) the speaking subjects will feel units of the language, we will have a reason to establish them. (Riedlinger, Ms. 1986/15 BGE; see Godel 1957, p. 210; my translation)

In Constantin’s version, we can read, “I will limit myself to one point, to an operation that is done in morphology. We study the morphological analysis of words from the point of view of principle. […] We must ask ourselves in which cases this division is legitimate. We will recognize it by whether or not it coincides with the feeling of the speaking subjects themselves. Insofar as one can assert not consciously but instinctively in the other facts of language, to the same extent one will have a justification” (Ms. Fr. 3972, 2 BGE; my translation). Finally, in Patois’ notes, we find, “To analyze the word in several parts is a purpose of morphology. […] But from whence will it be known whether an analysis is right or wrong? By whether or not it coincides with the feeling of the speaking subjects. Insofar as we can affirm that at least instinctively they will feel different ideas” (Ms 3972, C1 BGE; my translation). As can be seen, the three versions are remarkably similar, and this allows us to think that this is a fundamental passage, and that the phrasing is precisely that uttered by Saussure. Let me rephrase the point, one last time. For a linguist, to do morphology is to break words into parts. The only guarantee of validity of this cropping of words into subunits is the fact that the speakers who actually spoke that language in ancient times did exactly the same. What drives the speaking subjects in this cropping is precisely their linguistic feeling, which resembles (or functions as) a kind of instinct. In the note on morphology, the same principle is expressed with reference to the category of reality. This category, which also reappears in the courses in general linguistics as a definition of the synchronic unit (together with identity and value), links the point of view of the linguist and that of the speaking subject. Unlike the text I quoted above, this note

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is in Saussure’s hand, but we have two drafts15: the first is the one presumably chosen by the author, the second a preliminary, sketched version. The fundamental definition is remarkably similar in the two drafts. In the final one, we read, “Criterion: What is real is what speaking subjects have a certain awareness [conscience] of, however small; all that they are aware of and nothing but what they can be aware of ” (Saussure 2006, p. 125 = 2002, p. 183 = 1969, p. 30 = 1968/74, 3293.3). But already in the first one, this passage was emphasized, and drawn up in the same words. “Key principle: What is real in a given state of language is what the speaking subjects are aware of [ont conscience], everything they are aware of and only what they can be aware of ” (Saussure 2006, p. 132 = 2002, p. 192 = 1968–1974, 3293.6). The closing remark, which remains exactly the same in the two drafts, reiterates the fact that there is no other possible point of view. In the final version, compared to the first, there are two differences: the use of the term criterium (which refers, once again, to the actual practice of the linguist)16 and the reference to a plurality of possible degrees of consciousness. This reference is already present in the inaugural lectures, when Saussure (referring to the perspective he would later call diachronic) identifies two types of change: an analogical and a phonetical one. And he remarks: These two key factors in linguistic renewal may be opposed under several viewpoints: we may say for instance that the first represents the physiological and physical side of speech while the second reflects the physiological and mental side of the same act, or that the first is unconscious, while the second is conscious, always bearing in mind that the notion of consciousness is highly relative, so that we in fact have two degrees of consciousness, the higher of which remains pure unconsciousness compared to the degree of thought [réflexion] which accompanies more of our acts […] it can further be held that one of them represents purely mechanical operations,  Godel had recognized the presence of the two drafts, and he decided to include in his edition (Saussure 1969) only the most developed one, whereas in Saussure (2002) the two versions are presented as one text. 16  On the other hand, if it is a criterion from the operational point of view, it is also a principle from the theoretical point of view, because “its consequences are numberless” (Saussure 1959, p. 68 = 1922, p. 100). 15

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which involve no perceptible aim and intention, and the other intelligent operations, in which it is possible to make out an aim and a meaning. (Saussure 2006, p. 106 = 2002, pp. 159–160 = 1968–1974, 3284)

Analogy,17 here, is a synecdoche for the cognitive relationship of the speaking subject to language. Saussure has not yet developed the idea of linguistic feeling as responsible for the construction of a synchronic state of language, but he already recognizes that certain changes presuppose a form of consciousness, albeit a feeble one. The clear contrast between morphology and phonetics—anticipating that between synchrony and diachrony—appears only after the work of writing the inaugural lectures, and precisely as a result of them.18

3 The Paradoxical Status of Will in Language From what we have seen so far, and from most of the writings on this topic, it would seem that the main or perhaps only role of linguistic feeling is as a cognitive tool for language (as well as of constant recreation of language). But the very social nature of language implies that, alongside this cognitive role, there must be a normative one too. In the pair of notions defining history in the inaugural lecture, this normative side was represented by will. Just below the presentation of the intelligence-will pair, Saussure defines the role of the latter through a paradox:

 The notion of analogy has great relevance in late nineteenth century linguistics. Hermann Paul closely links it to Sprachgefühl. On the role of analogy in Saussure and Paul, see the contributions of Frank Unterberg and Gilles Siouffi in this book. 18  Saussure points it out clearly in a letter to Gaston Paris dated December 30, 1891. Cf. Saussure (1994, pp. 78–81, my translation): “the topic of these conferences led me to a completely new work […] I believe that there is no historical morphology (or grammar), and that reciprocally there is no momentary phonetics. […] There would be a primordial opposition, and incompatibility, between the phonetic view of the language, which presupposes ‘succession’ and ‘total abstraction of the meaning’—and the morphological (grammatical) view which presupposes ‘unity of time’ and ‘consideration of the meaning, value, use’ […].” 17

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Can linguistic facts be said to be the result of an act of will? That is the question. The current science of language gives a positive answer. However, one should add immediately after that there are many degrees of conscious and unconscious will; furthermore, of all the acts which can be compared, the linguistic act, if I may call it that, is characterized as being the least reflected on, the least premeditated, as well as the most impersonal of all. That constitutes a difference of degree, which is so far-reaching as to have long appeared a fundamental difference, even though it is but a difference of degree. (Saussure 2006, p. 99 = 2002, p. 150 = 1968–1974, 3283)

The topic of a plurality of degrees of consciousness19 which will be taken up later in the second inaugural lecture, from which I quoted earlier— thus begins in the first, in relation to will. How can we interpret this Saussurean definition? A first way is by appealing to the fundamental distinction proposed by Tugendhat (1979), which contrasts self-­ determination (Selbstbestimmung) with self-consciousness (Selbstbewusstein). Where the traditional concept of will tends to squash the two components over each other, it is clear that in many cases (including this one) it is useful, or necessary, to distinguish between them. What Saussure is talking about is a Selbstbestimmung without a Selbstbewusstein (or at least with a minimal Selbstbewusstein, since it cannot be absent altogether from what is defined as will). One of the ways in which Saussure expresses this character, when in later years he happens to define linguistic feeling, is—we have seen it above—by reference to the notion of instinct. In order to frame the role of this notion in Saussure, we need to set aside the way instinct is discussed in the cognitivist and post-Chomskyan literature. Saussure’s use of “instinct” does not presuppose a nativist stance, and it does not only pertain to a cognitive sphere.20 A quick glance at the Course and the Writings to look for occurrences of “instinct” shows how two polarities can be identified: on the one hand,  The expression (and the very idea of ) “degree of consciousness” and the related concept had been, after Herbart, widely discussed in German-speaking psychology and, later, in the language sciences. It is likely that Saussure absorbed something of this debate during his years of study in Leipzig (and perhaps later). 20  I have developed the comparison between the Saussurean and Chomskyan notions of instinct in more detail in Fadda (2022). 19

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instinct is the faculty of language (and then one occasionally finds it associated with a derivative of “nature”); and on the other hand, the reference is to the semi-conscious operations performed by the speaker in producing or understanding utterances (and then one finds the adverb “instinctively”). Among the examples clearly relatable to the first type we can cite (Saussure 1959, pp. 9–10 = 1922, p. 25), among those of the second type (Saussure 1959, p. 160 = 1922, p. 220). Yet, there are examples in which the two aspects seem to be present in an indivisible way. In the first one (drawn, again, from the first inaugural lecture), Saussure claims that “the study of […] existing languages would be condemned to neat sterility, or at least to a lack both of method and of all guiding principles, if it did not tend constantly to provide illustrations of the general problems of language, and if it did not seek to extract from each particular observation the meaning and the net advantage to be had from our knowledge of the working of human instinct applied to language” (Saussure 2006, p. 96 = 2002, p. 146 = 1968–1974, 3283; my italics). Twenty years later, when discussing “geographical linguistics” (as it became known afterwards, as I have already mentioned above), he describes the behavior of speaking subjects in the same way: “Having noticed that two idioms differ, one instinctively looks for similarities. This is a natural tendency of speakers” (Saussure 1959: 192 = 1922: 192). In other cases, he does not limit himself to the use of the adverb, but mentions ‘linguistic instinct’ as such. “It is marvelous to watch the way that linguistic instinct, however diachronic events may upset things, always manages to make the most of the situation to […]”21 (Saussure 2006, p.  191 = 2002, p.  266 = 1968–1974, 3343.1; my italics). The first and second are drawn by introductory sections, in which Saussure lays out his general conception of language before getting to more technical remarks. In both cases, the lexical cues that refer to the two meanings we had discerned overlap, and the two meanings themselves can be said to coexist. But it is the third quote that is the most interesting. Firstly, because of the explanatory metaphor that immediately follows: Saussure compares the diachronic fact that creates an  The interruption in the middle of the sentence is by Saussure. This is quite common in the notes he wrote for himself. 21

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imbalance in the synchronic system, but then is incorporated into a new order, to a stick that is planted in the anthill, but in the long run becomes part of it. The work of the ants, proverbially industrious but unconscious, is thus compared to that of the speaking community, which “rearrange” the system without an explicit teleology. Who (or what) then, is the subject of this rearrangement? It is not the ants as individuals, nor the ants as a whole—it is the instinct itself. Something similar happens in the case of linguistic feeling. If we take as an example the already mentioned N7—perhaps the Saussurean text in which the word sentiment occurs most often—we realize that in some uses it refers explicitly to the speaking subjects, but in other cases it is equivocal (i.e., it seems that la langue22 is the subject of the genitive). In still other cases, Saussure definitely ascribes the sentiment/conscience to the langue as such. For instance, “Language is only aware of sounds as signs [n’a conscience du son que comme signe]” (Saussure 2006, p. 123 = 2002, p. 182 = 1968–1974, 3293.3). In some cases, this is so obvious that the translator prefers to use langue in French: “It’s only there that langue can seek them” (Saussure 2006, p. 131 = 2002, p. 192 = 1968/74, 3293.3). In this light, we could read the succession of the three courses of general linguistics as a progressive, and dialectical definition of the subjective-­ objective nature of language: the first course is devoted to individual language, the second to social language, and the third finds its completion when, at the very beginning of the above-mentioned “reprise” (Saussure 1993, p. 91 = 2005, p. 236; see also Saussure 1959, p. 19 = 1922, p. 38), Saussure presents the equivalence between the sum of individual languages and collective language. But it would be a mistake to reduce that equivalence to an ontologization of social language: in fact, the nature of language is expressed precisely by the sign of equivalence. Actually, the activity of language is just like the activity of the anthill: it displays a posteriori a will—a modus operandi—that cannot be related to the consciousness, or free will, of a concrete subject (neither an  For those less well acquainted with Saussure’s terms, let me remind readers that with “langage” Saussure mainly means the natural faculty that allows us to speak, with “langue” he means one of the idioms present in the world (conceived as an abstract system mastered by the speaker), and with ‘‘parole” he means the individual and always contextual acts of speaking.

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individual, nor a social, conscious one). Still, it is there, as the only way to rationalize what is happening.

4 Language as an Institution Defining linguistic feeling as an instinct certainly involves the normative dimension, but in a way that leaves it inextricable from the cognitive one. To show the normativity of linguistic feeling in its autonomy, we must turn to the notion of institution. We know that this category acquires a great importance for Saussure at least from the time of the above-­ mentioned “Notes on Whitney,” when he begins to work on his own notion of institution starting from the comparison with the one elaborated by the American Sanskritist. Not surprisingly, it is precisely in relation to the notion of institution that we find a second formulation of the paradox of will: when signs are studied from a social viewpoint, only the traits that attach language to the other social institutions—those that are more or less voluntary—are emphasized; as a result, the goal is by-passed and the specific characteristics of semiological systems in general and of language in particular are completely ignored. For the distinguishing characteristic of the sign—but the one that is least apparent at first sight—is that in some way it always eludes the individual or social will. (Saussure 1959, p.  17 = 1922, p. 34)

This is a second definition of the object of semiology—an “institutional” definition, so to speak—which immediately follows the first, muchquoted definition (which I will call, to differentiate it, the “epistemological” definition: semiology is a science that studies the life of signs within the framework of social life). One of the ways in which Saussure expresses this strongly paradoxical character is through the contrast between contract and imposition: language is both contract and imposition, because it requires a form of acceptance even where there is no choice.

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The signifier, though to all appearances freely chosen with respect to the idea that it represents, is fixed, not free, with respect to the linguistic community that uses it. The masses have no voice in the matter, and the signifier chosen by language could be replaced by no other. This fact, which seems to embody a contradiction, might be called colloquially “the stacked deck.” We say to language: “Choose!” but we add: “It must be this sign and no other.” No individual, even if he willed it, could modify in any way at all the choice that has been made; and what is more, the community itself cannot control so much as a single word; it is bound to the existing language. No longer can language be identified with a contract pure and simple, and it is precisely from this viewpoint that the linguistic sign is a particularly interesting object of study; for language furnishes the best proof that a law accepted by a community is a thing that is tolerated and not a rule to which all freely consent. (Saussure 1959, p. 71 = 1922, p. 89; see Saussure 1993, p. 94 = 2005, pp. 238–239)

In both of these texts there emerges, implicit but visible, the idea that language stands at the center of a set of phenomena that imply a suppression (or at least an avoidance) of will, and an attitude toward the law that is limited to submission. The reference to will in the second text tells us of a double defeat: not only would the will for conscious subjective (or collective) action be insufficient, but it is also lacking at all. The normative dimension of the institution-language, as it is felt by the speaking subjects (but in fact has no other form of existence) is such that the roles of lord and servant coincide, and neither is really conscious. How does Saussure describe it? How could we do so? In general, it appears that, when Saussure addresses issues pertaining to the institutional nature of language, he tends to use a lexicon of Latin origin. More specifically, he uses it with some systematicity—but the absolute and constant consistency of such uses must be verified in detail, of course—two pairs of terms. First of all, we can compare and contrast tradition and transmission. “Tradition” is used to denote the passive reception of a ready-made social product, whereas transmission denotes the process of continuing the tradition. It is not possible here to chart all the uses of the two terms. I will restrict myself to a few examples, taken from the Course, which I hope will be illustrative. Let me start with “tradition.”

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When discussing this topic, Saussure stresses the link of mutual dependence between it and arbitrariness: “Because the sign is arbitrary, it follows no law other than that of tradition, and because it is based on tradition, it is arbitrary” (Saussure 1959, p. 74 = 1922, p. 108). Tradition, however, is the side of arbitrariness by which it imposes itself on the speaker, whose work of linguistic change is actually driven and constrained by what already exists: “These idiomatic twists cannot be improvised; they are furnished by tradition” (Saussure 1959, p. 125 = 1922, p. 172). Let me now turn to “transmission.” The term has a limited number of occurrences in the Course, but it occurs often in other writings. On some occasions, it is used to denote the physiological phenomenon of acoustic transmission; but in several cases, it is used as a quasi-synonym (or forerunner) of “diachrony.” In all these instances, a nuance of activity is always implied. There is one passage in particular, however, where transmission and tradition are both present (and contrasted) in a context where explicit reference is made to institutions and to the (lack of ) freedom of the speaking subject: We must first determine the greater or lesser amounts of freedom that the other institutions enjoy; in each instance it will be seen that a different proportion exists between fixed tradition and the free action of society. The next step is to discover why in a given category, the forces of the first type carry more weight or less weight than those of the second. Finally, coming back to language, we must ask why the historical factor of transmission dominates it entirely and prohibits any sudden widespread change. (Saussure 1959, p. 72 = 1922, pp. 105–106)

Once again, reference is made to a classification of institutions according to the degree of freedom they allow. Tradition is defined as “imposed,” and explicitly opposed to the “free action of society” (it is felt as such). When it comes to defining the specifics of language, however, he refers to transmission, which, however, is neither defined as free nor forced, but simply as a “historical factor.” Transmission is carried forward by the speaking community, but this community does not work as a subject (once again, it is the anthill, not the ants).

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There is, however, another pair of terms used (at least in the Course) with even greater consistency than transmission versus tradition: it is consecration versus sanction. We know, at least from Benveniste (1969), how the pair sacer-sanctus distributes the semantic values related to the religious sphere (in a broad sense) according to a clear distinction: if the sanctus pertains to the connection between man and a higher sphere (to the establishment or maintenance of such a link) the sacer is somehow independent from human action—it can be evoked but not controlled (it also possesses a savage side), and must be kept at a distance from the human society. The Saussurean use of consecration and sanction seems mindful of this distinction: the first word is employed to denote the entry of a unit into langue, which occurs on a one-time basis and it cannot be traced back in any way to individual or collective responsibility. When the new element enters the langue, it is effectively sacer: it belongs to everyone and no one. Speaking subjects, however, attest to this consecration with their use, and with behavior aimed at enforcing the norm and imposing it on those who do not respect it23—this is precisely the sanction, which instead engages the community (and the individual)24 as such. Staying within the framework of Latin vocabulary for institutions, we could then call into question a more general contrast between ius and mos, where language is clearly on the side of the mos (the traditional and transmitted, but unbreakable and sacred custom), so that the “classical” social ontology à la Searle (1995, 2010) is unable to account for it, because there is no declarative at the root of the langue (which is, instead, what makes declaratives possible). But this means that linguistic normativity only rests on linguistic feeling: a unit, or a rule, has a mandatory validity when it is felt to be valid, and for as long as it is felt to be so. 23  In social ontology, this kind of praxis has been called by Passerini Glazel (2015) nomotrophic behavior (“behavior that feeds the norms”). Passerini Glazel mainly insists on the negative side of it (“a reaction to the (actual or possible) infringement of that norm”), but we could enlarge the notion so as to also include the positive side (the enforcement of the norm by the simple fact of systematically conforming to them). 24  John Joseph, who systematically distinguishes, when translating into English, consecration and sanction, remarks (Joseph 2012, p. 506) that, in the particular context of the first Course, where— as I pointed out above—the individual language is in the foreground, the use of “consecration” denotes the fact that the individual enduringly internalizes a sign. This does not contradict my assumption: it is anyway a one-off passage from parole to langue.

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5 Linguistic Diversity and the Ontogeny of Linguistic Feeling We have seen so far that linguistic feeling has a cognitive side and a normative side, the way the two are intertwined, and what its autonomous aspects are. In order to understand the ontogeny of this, we can turn to what the editors of the Course in General Linguistics (CGL), distorting its meaning to some extent, have called “geographical linguistics,” and which was instead, in Saussure’s third course, the introduction to the part on langue. The starting point, for the speaking subject, is the ascertainment of linguistic diversity—but this is, actually, the ascertainment of the existence of different customs and habits, and therefore calls into question, first of all, the normative side of linguistic feeling (or consciousness). The most striking thing about the study of languages is their diversity— linguistic differences that appear when we pass from one country to another or even from one region to another. Divergences in time often escape the observer, but divergences in space immediately force themselves upon him; even savages grasp them, thanks to their contacts with other tribes that speak a different language. Indeed, these comparisons are what makes a nation aware of its idiom. We note in passing that this feeling makes primitive people look upon language as a habit or custom like dress or weapons. (Saussure 1959, p. 191 = 1922, p. 261)

And he goes on to explain the value of the word idiom: “The term idiom rightly designates language as reflecting the traits peculiar to a community (Greek idioma had already acquired the meaning ‘special custom’). […] It is also worth noting that each nation believes in the superiority of its own idiom and is quick to regard the man who uses a different language as incapable of speaking […]” (Saussure 1959, p. 191 = 1922, p. 261). Not surprisingly, the same term appears in the pages on the mutability and immutability of the linguistic sign, when Saussure wants to explain the attachment of speakers to their language: “reflection does not enter into the active use of an idiom—speakers are largely unconscious of the laws of language; and if they are unaware of them,

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how could they modify them? Even if they were aware of these laws, we may be sure that their awareness would seldom lead to criticism, for people are generally satisfied with the language they have received” (Saussure 1959, p. 72 = 1922, p. 106).25 As we can see, the experience of linguistic feeling as a cognitive tool is instead absolute, and leads us to regard those who speak differently as non-speakers, whereas the experience of the normative side allows us to relativize, at least conceptually, the relationship with languages. But such a relativization goes no further than admitting that not everyone speaks the same language (and, first and foremost, not everyone speaks mine). This, however, does not put all languages on the same level: as a speaking subject, I remain tied above all to my own, I see it as a treasure to be defended, and I regard it as a value to be preserved, and as a norm which I do not want to transgress. Also, my relationship with my language has an emotional component, and—like any great love—it escapes the control of common sense.26 In short, the emergence of the feeling of language needs comparison with other languages but it is only to give worth to its own. Nevertheless, we cannot consider the establishment of a relationship with one’s own language as the sole basis and purpose of the language faculty. The curiosity, and even the love, of so many for other languages show that monolingualism is not a condemnation, and that there is something that defines the human being before the belonging to this or that language. If we want to use the lexicon of (so-called) geographical linguistics, we will say that this fact is expressed by Saussure with the attestation of the primacy of the force d’intercourse over the esprit de  If we take a look at the notes for this part of the course, we see that the two points followed each other. In this case, we also have Saussure’s preparatory notes, in addition to the students’ notes: “this is, so to speak, the primary evidence, […] that which is immediately available to all. […] I say that this geographical diversity is the first fact that strikes either the linguist or anyone in general. Actually, while, for example, the variation of language in time necessarily escapes the observer at first, it is impossible for the variation in space to escape him. […] it is only the second one, I repeat, which is immediately given. […] And it is in that way, one can say, that any people, even if humble, become aware of the language. […] Now it must be added that regularly and of course each people gives superiority to its own idiom: […])” (Saussure 2005, pp. 94–95; my translation). 26  As Saussure points out: “(Here, as a general feature, even the most civilized people nourish on every phenomenon in ordinary language a conception that is the most contrary to the common sense)” (Saussure 2005, p. 95). 25

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clocher (Saussure 1959, p. 208 = 1922, pp. 284–285): conservation factors are nothing but the negative face of innovation, just as the conservative role of analogy is nothing but the counterpart of its innovative role. The term “intercourse” is borrowed from English and, when Saussure adopted it, it did not yet have the submeaning of “(sexual) intercourse.” But we might invoke this submeaning to emphasize an almost physical urgency of communication between human beings—the same force that Saussure recognizes as the absolute principle of semiology in the introduction to the second course: “ one alone would be of no use Finally, it is only through social life that the language receives its sanction [consecration]” (Saussure 1997, p. 3 = 1957, p. 8). This is not just an ante litteram Wittgensteinian remark against private language (Wittgenstein 1953, I, § 201), but something stronger: the ontogenetic effort of the infant learning a language, and the effort of speakers to learn other languages, repeat the phylogeny of language, which, from a Saussurean perspective, cannot be seen as a situated event (Saussure 1959, pp. 9, 71–72 = 1922, pp. 24, 105), but is instead, in some way, an immanent force.

6 Concluding Remarks: On the Philosophical Significance of the Linguist’s Illusio This sentiment is rigidly demanded by logic. Charles Sanders Peirce (1931–58, 5.357) But isn’t this, basically, the point of separation between minds which only conceive another mind through themselves, and who make the eternal and quiet majority, and those who vainly, but ardently, strive to know the world through something other than themselves? Ferdinand de Saussure (unedited fragment)

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Those who do not know foreign languages know nothing of their own. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1907, p. 18)

These latter remarks lead us to a final reassessment of the role and figure of the linguist. The focus on linguistic feeling has a technical background, in the work of scholars of morphology, and stems from the need to avoid anachronic reconstructions (“abstract abstractions,” instead of the “concrete abstractions” that are the true linguistic realities). If linguistic feeling is the only key to linguistic realities, they will have to reach the feeling of the speaking subject in order not to postulate realities that do not exist. When one has to construct an image of the collective language, belonging to a community that is no longer achievable, the experience of one’s own language is always the starting point. The linguist must assume the semi-conscious and immediate experience of the speaking subject, and make it self-conscious and mediate. Actually, the scholars who set out to reconstruct a state of language that is displaced in time and/or space do not have a first-person guide: they do not share the consciousness of the speaking subjects of that time. But they do have their own experience as speaking subjects, and the reflection that accompanies it when they act as linguists. In fact, they could not be linguists if they did not manage to have a double experience of linguistic feeling, unconscious and reflective. This double look at the common experience is precisely what gives this study its philosophical property. The normative dimension of linguistic feeling also doubles up, so that the linguists feel the obligation to be faithful—so to speak—to language on two levels. On the epistemological level, they are subject to a kind of meta-normative dimension: to be true to science, they must conform to the normativity perceived (and lived, and accepted) by the speaking subjects. In the work of the linguist, normativity cannot be restricted to following rules, or to tracing the rules followed by speaking subjects: there is a hidden normativity, never questioned and for this very reason all the more powerful—what Pierre Bourdieu would call illusio:

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Illusio understood as immediate adherence to the necessity of a field is all the less likely to appear to consciousness because it is in a sense removed from discussion: as the fundamental belief in the value of the stakes of the dispute and in the presuppositions inscribed in the very fact of disputing, it is the unexamined condition of the dispute. […] Illusio does not belong to the order of explicit principles, theses that are put forward and defended, but of action, routine, things that are done, and that are done because they are things that one does and that have always been done that way. (Bourdieu 2000 [1997], p. 102)

One could say that illusio is the basis of all scientific work, and more generally of every profession and every stance in a field. Yet, the illusio of the linguist is not simple immediate adherence to the rules of a field, but has deeper roots. Saussure’s idea that the birth of language is repeated in each act of speech is particularly true for linguists, who must always recreate in themselves the conditions of the emergence of humanity through language. The attitude of the linguist is driven by the same desire to communicate with the other, to be the other, which Saussure suggests as the driving force behind the birth and development of language. Just like linguistic feeling, this stance is not fully conscious and cannot be learned—it must be felt. Ferdinand de Saussure actually felt it, as shown by a text included in the file of Harvard manuscripts at Houghton Library: I would give very little to know “the feelings of Octavian after the battle of Actium” […], but everything, to have been for three minutes Octavian himself, either after or even a long time before this battle, and even to have been for a moment my cook, and to have glimpsed the world through his eyes, without losing, for instance, the faculty of comparing what I see with the singular images I would bring back from this excursion. (Houghton Library, bMS Fr 266(6), 75–75v.; my translation; see D’Ottavi 2012)

The text follows on with the words I have placed as an epigraph to these conclusions. Saussure clearly counts himself among those who “aspire to know the world through something other than themselves,” not belonging “to the eternal and quiet majority.” But this could also be a good definition of (good) linguists, generally. Their (challenging) duty

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is just that: to be in other people’s shoes without forgetting themselves, but, more importantly, without neglecting to put themselves in the shoes of others.27

References Benveniste, Émile. 1969. Le vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes. 2 vols. Paris: Minuit. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1997. Méditations pascaliennes. Paris: Seuil. English edition: Bourdieu, P. 2000. Pascalian Meditations (trans. Nice, R.). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bréal, Michel. 1897. Essai de sémantique. Science des significations. Paris: Hachette. Chidichimo, Alessandro. 2009. Saussure e o sentimento. A forma do sentimento lingüistico. RUA 15: 108–123. Courbon, Bruno. 2012. Quelle place accorder au sujet dans la langue et dans son histoire ? Points de vue de deux linguistes du début du xxe siècle. Diachroniques, 2 (Sentiment de la langue et diachronie): 27–58. D’Ottavi, Giuseppe. 2012. Genèse d’un écrit saussurien: de la “théosophie” à une approche de la subjectivité. Genesis 35: 129–140. Depecker, Loïc. 2009. Comprendre Saussure. Paris: Armand Colin. Fadda, Emanuele. 2013. Sentiment entre mot et terme. Sur le travail et la langue de Ferdinand de Saussure. Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure 63: 49–65. ———. 2017a. Saussure and the will. Semiotica 217: 229–242. ———. 2017b. Sentimento della lingua. Per un’antropologia linguistica saussuriana. Alessandria: Dell’Orso. ———. 2021. Le sentiment linguistique chez Saussure, entre intelligence et volonté. In Le sentiment linguistique chez Saussure, ed. Gilles Siouffi, 99–112. Lyon: ENS Editions. ———. 2022. Saussure on individual linguistic knowledge: A non-nativist notion of instinct? In Saussure and Chomsky. Converging and diverging, ed. Giuseppe Cosenza, Claire Forel, Genoveva Puskas, and Thomas Robert, 59–69. Bern: Peter Lang.

 It is really difficult—especially for those who are not historians of philosophy—to understand how much this Saussurean stance is indebted to the Diltheyan air du temps of those years, and how much it derives from a personal reflection related to the actual work (even the most technical one) of the linguist. For my part, I would be inclined to assign more relevance to this latter factor. 27

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Godel, Robert. 1957. Les sources manuscrites du Cours de linguistique générale. Genève, Droz. Joseph, John. 2012. Saussure. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Laplantine, Chloé. 2005. Le “sentiment de la langue”. Le Texte étranger 5: 153–178. Passerini Glazel, Lorenzo. 2015. Shared norms and nomotrophic behavior. Phenomenology and Mind 9: 148–159. Peirce, Charles S. 1931–1958. Collected papers, ed. Charles. Hartshorne, Paul Weiss, and Arthur W. Burks. 8 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1922. Cours de linguistique générale, ed. Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, in collaboration with Albert Riedlinger, 2nd ed. ParisLausanne: Payot (book first published 1916). English edition: Saussure, F. de 1959. Course in General Linguistics (trans. W.  Baskin). New  York: Philosophical Library. ———. 1957. Introduction au deuxième cours de linguistique générale, ed. Robert Godel. Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure, 15: 3–103. ———. 1968–1974. Cours de linguistique générale. Critical edition by Rudolf Engler. 4 vols. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ———. 1969. Morphologie. In A Geneva school reader in linguistics, ed. Robert Godel, 26–38. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 1981. “Le consonantisme grec et latin selon sure: le cours de phonétique professé en1909-1910”, ed. by M.-J.  Béguelin. Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure 32: 17–97. ———. 1993. Troisième cours de linguistique générale. D’après les notes d’É. Constantin. Third course in general linguistics. From the Notebooks of É. Constantin, ed. Eisuke Komatsu, trans. Roy Harris. Oxford-New York: Pergamon. ———. 1994. Saussure à Paris [Letters 1888-1908], ed. Marc Décimo. Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure, 48: 75–90. ———. 1997. Deuxième cours de linguistique générale. D’après les notes d’A.  Riedlinger et Ch. Patois/Second course in general linguistics. From the notebooks of A.  Riedlinger and Ch. Patois, ed. Eisuke Komatsu, trans. George Wolf. Oxford-New York: Pergamon. ———. 2002. Écrits de linguistique générale, ed. Simon Bouquet and Rudolf Engler. Paris: Gallimard. English edition: Saussure, F. de. 2006. Writings in general linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2005. Troisième cours de linguistique générale. Notes d’É. Constantin, ed. Claudia Mejía. Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure 58: 83–289.

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Searle, John R. 1995. The construction of social reality. New York: Free Press. ———. 2010. Making the social world. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Siouffi, Gilles, ed. 2021. Le Sentiment linguistique chez Saussure. Lyon: ENS Editions. Testenoire, Pierre-Yves. 2018. Procédés et opérations des sujets parlants chez F. de Saussure. Histoire Épistémologie Langage 40 (1): 13–29. Tugendhat, Ernst. 1979. Selbstbewusstein und Selbstbestimmung. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. 1907. Maximen und Reflexionen. Weimar: Goethe-Gesellschaft (text published 1821). Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1953. Philosophical investigations. Trans. G. E. Anscombe. New York: Macmillan.

5 Sapir’s Form-Feeling and its Historical Context Jean-Michel Fortis

The work of Edward Sapir (1884–1939) is a vast continent, of which we shall explore one province: his views about the patterning of linguistic units and the process by which patterns are formed and apprehended; in short, his idiosyncratic version of the linguistic feeling. This linguistic apprehension, while often referred to as a “feeling,” is also designated as “intuition.” Western gnoseology has long recognized a special kind of apprehension thanks to which the mind judges an object to be so-and-so although the objective and subjective grounds for this judgment are not accessible to consciousness. This apprehension, variously called confused knowledge, taste, feeling (or sentiment in French and Gefühl in German), intuition has been described as a mode of cognizance which delivers some form of knowledge of an object, or underlies an assessment of its value. For example, in his classification of cognitiones, obviously intended as a refinement of Cartesian notions, Leibniz (1989 [1684]) singles out a special mode

J.-M. Fortis (*) Laboratoire d’Histoire des Théories Linguistiques, CNRS and Université Paris Cité, Paris, France © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Romand, M. Le Du (eds.), Emotions, Metacognition, and the Intuition of Language Normativity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17913-6_5

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which he describes as clear, that is, affording the recognition of an object’s identity yet confused insofar as this cognitio does not rest on an analysis of this object into its characteristic marks. This mode of cognizance is the one of sensory apprehension, and significantly, it is also the one underlying a judgment on the aesthetic value of an artwork. On Sapir’s view, this special form of aesthetic cognitio applies to language as an unconscious system. For Sapir, an essential property of linguistic units, and for that matter of any cultural behavior, is their belonging to patterns, the nature of which evades the conscious thinking of the speaker. Remarkably, the grasp of unconscious patterns is described as a kind of feeling or intuition that is at play in apprehending the relations between the elements of an artwork. This notion of an aesthetic form-feeling for linguistic patterns is not an incidental theme nor a way of passing judgment on the aesthetic qualities of particular languages. Rather, it is associated with a fundamental view of Sapir, according to which language does not obey functional motivations in all its parts, but is governed as well by an aesthetic drive. In what follows, our first task will be to introduce the Sapirian notions of pattern and form-feeling. The rest of the discussion will be devoted to the possible sources of the form-feeling and to the intellectual environment which forms the backdrop to Sapir’s aesthetic view of language qua system of relations.

1 Patterns and the Form-Feeling The notion of pattern owes much to Gestaltist ideas. We know that Sapir read Koffka’s The Growth of the Mind (1924) and held it in high regard,1 but Sapir’s acquaintance with Gestaltism antedates Koffka’s book. The notion that a phonetic system is transposable, that is, remains essentially the same if the relational structure is preserved while the sounds are changed, might be an echo of Stumpf ’s Die Anfänge der Musik (1911). In this study, reviewed by Sapir in 1912, Stumpf cited the transposability of  Sapir had borrowed Koffka’s book from Margaret Mead (Darnell 1990, p. 185). In this English version, configuration, not pattern, is the word used to translate Gestalt/Struktur. 1

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melodies as “systems of relations” as a universal of human musical cultures. Anthropology must have played a role too. In American anthropology, what we may term the holistic view cannot fail to appear consonant with his conception of patterns. According to this view, cultural traits are not to be conflated with their material substance; rather the significance of traits materially identical may vary according to the whole they belong to, and conversely, traits materially different may assume the same significance. This view was characteristic of Boasian anthropology, and some American scholars were keen to call “pattern” a recurring way of socially sanctioning a significant trait, for example the acquisition of a supernatural power (Wissler 1917, p. 344).2 Likewise, Goldenweiser insisted that totemism was not to be defined by a substantive trait nor analyzed as having originated from such or such trait (be it a guardian spirit, exogamy, taboo, the use of totemic names, etc.). Rather, what mattered was the totemic pattern spreading over a group: […] the building up of a totemic complex consists of a series of totemic features which appear one by one (or possibly in small groups), spread from clan to clan, become socialized in the clans and absorbed in the complex. Each new feature, on its appearance in a clan, becomes a pattern presently followed by other clans until the wave of diffusion has swept over them all. The theory may thus be fitly called the pattern theory of the origin of totemism (Goldenweiser, 1912, p. 606).

With respect to other anthropologists, a hallmark of Sapir resides in his relentless attack on external factors supposed to condition the appearance of traits. Not only are these factors (such as geography, climate, economic needs) of dubious validity in explaining traits, they are methodologically flawed: a synchronic study of culture should eschew the genetic or historical point of view, and leaves out of consideration even the diffusion of traits (yet an asset of Boasian anthropology; Sapir 2002). In Sapir, this seems to converge with the views that form reigns over function, or that an individual’s compliance with cultural patterns is primarily a question  Wissler is discussed, and criticized, in Sapir (2002).

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of harmonically fitting in a culture, not a function of needs or utility (e.g. Sapir 1951e). We shall see that the notion of an aesthetic form-feeling is a way of capturing this potency of the form per se.

2 Patterns and Unconscious Groups An example of a linguistic pattern is the phonetic system of a language, which Sapir views as a set of units defined by their relative distance from each other (Sapir 1951d [1925], p. 35). This distance is determined not only by what we now call “distinctive features” but through all sorts of associative links between units. For example, in English, the distance from /f/ to /v/ is shorter than the one separating /p/ from /b/ for the reason that an associative link unites /f/ and /v/, namely, the paradigm of wife/wives. This paradigm, in turn, can be considered as forming a larger pattern, that of voicing contrasts, with pairs like sheath/to  sheathe and mouse/to mouse (Sapir 1951d [1933], p. 42 ). In Language (1921), yet other kinds of associative links are mentioned. When accounting for the increasing marginalization of whom in English, Sapir invokes its deviant character in the various associative groups it belongs to: as a member of non-subject forms, whom is both functionally divergent (as compared to me/us/him, etc.) and more weakly associated with the post-verbal position; as a member of the group of interrogative forms, whom is atypical too, since these forms are generally invariable in English. Thus, associative links involved in the placement of elements in a pattern may be phonetic, lexical, morphological, functional, and positional. On this point, Sapir’s view is in line with the way Hermann Paul (1920 [1880]) analyzes the functioning of unconscious associative groups, which Paul describes with an associationist psychology of Herbartian origin.3 In Paul’s theory, the internal cohesion of groups is the  Through the intermediation of Steinthal, in particular see Steinthal (1871). In Paul’s parlance the pattern (wife/wives, sheath/sheathe, mouse/mouses, etc.) would be defined as a stofflich-lautliche Proportionengruppe, that is, a “material-phonic proportional group” in which elements of a pair share a “material” (i.e. lexical) base and are in the same relation (i.e. are in the same “proportion”) as the members of other pairs. Here this relation is of a “phonic” nature (Paul 1920, p. 108). 3

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“psychological” force driving analogical leveling, that is, the regularizing process which counters disturbances brought about by “physical” phonetic change. Paul’s conception of groups is modeled after the Herbartian theory of psychological processes, a statics and a mechanics which, though being non-materialistic, pave the way for a naturalization of the mind. This is where Sapir notably departs from Paul. His discussion of the marginalization of whom does not rest on a Herbartian “mechanics” but invokes an aesthetic parameter: in the case of whom as a member of non-subject forms, he says, “there is something unesthetic about the word. It suggests a form pattern [i.e. a pattern of associations] which is not filled out by its fellows [i.e. the other non-subject forms]” (Sapir 1921, p. 158). What is grasped is the fact of the disharmony of whom with the groups it enters. This grasp Sapir describes as a “feeling,” for example in the following excerpt on the membership of whom in the group of interrogatives: “it is safe to infer that there is a rather strong feeling in English that the interrogative pronoun or adverb, typically an emphatic element in the sentence, should be invariable” (Sapir 1921, p. 159; my italics). In a number of texts, the term intuition appears to be used by Sapir with a meaning equivalent to that of form-feeling. In Language, however, intuition is employed foremost in reference to Croce and confined to the expression of the conformation that human experience takes in an individual.4 The content of this intuitive conformation is communicable without loss. In the case of literature, this level of expression is contrasted with the “linguistic garb,” that is, with those properties of a language which achieve effects specific of this particular medium (on these levels, Laplantine 2019). Intuition is also the name Jung gives to one of his functional types (next to thinking, feeling, and sensation). Infatuated as he was with Jung’s Types (Jung 1921) and his classification of personalities, Sapir could not fail to comment on Jung’s characterization of intuition. This Jungian intuition he reinterpreted as a kind of apprehension cutting across Jung’s functional types and, he says, most characteristic of “an historical mind, aware of all the relations that are locked up in the given  Whether Croce is the source of Sapir’s aesthetic conception of language is a question that will be dealt with in the next section. 4

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configuration” (Sapir 1999, p.  574). Great mathematicians, he adds, combine abstract thinking with intuition. Mathematics is in other passages described as the “purest” acme of the form-feeling and, in a Pythagorean fashion, it is placed next to music and “plastic design.” This seems to invite the conclusion that intuition also serves to define personalities whose aesthetic sense is especially developed: the mathematician, the artist dealing with proportions (to say it roughly), and, who knows, the structural linguist in the person of Sapir himself.5

3 On the Origins of the Form-Feeling We could cite many more instances of similar uses of feeling (e.g. Fortis 2015, 2019; see also Handler 1986). Remarkably, they often co-occur, as in the case of whom, with allusions to aesthetic apprehension. In the paper on “sound patterns” (Sapir 1951d [1925]), exercising the intuitive capacity to “place” a phoneme within patterns is termed an “art,” by contrast with nonlinguistic sounds, which are not units identified by the relations they sustain to other units in a finite system. What is the possible inspiration behind this aesthetic form-feeling? The laudatory words with which Sapir commends Croce’s conception of language as art (in the incipit of Language, 1921, p. iii) has sometimes led to the conclusion that Croce was the main inspiration behind the aesthetic form-feeling. However, the fact is that Croce, in his Aesthetic, never uses sentimento in a sense close to what feeling conveys in Language. Croce’s intuizione would appear to be a better contestant: when opposing sentimento and intuizione, Croce intends to emphasize that artistic activity is the exercise of an intuitive knowledge of one’s expressive means, and is supremely conscious, whereas feelings [sentimenti] are unformed affects  “The projection in social behavior of an innate sense of form is an intuitive process and is merely a special phase of that mental functioning that finds its clearest voice in mathematics and its most nearly pure aesthetic embodiment in plastic and musical design” (Sapir 1951d [1927], p. 344). Compare with this more personal note: “I find that what I most care for is beauty of form, whether in substance or, perhaps even more keenly, in spirit. A perfect style, a well-balanced system of philosophy, a perfect bit of music, the beauty of mathematical relations – these are some of the things that, in the sphere of the immaterial, have most deeply stirred me.” Sapir, letter to Lowie, 29 September 1916 (in Silverstein 1986, p. 79). 5

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and as such opposed to art: “art is knowledge, form; it does not belong to the world of feeling or to psychic matter” (Croce 1922 [1912], p. 17). Now, according to Sapir, the linguistic activity of the naïve speaker is a mode of cognizance that is artistic and non-conceptual, since it does not rest on the kind of abstractions marshaled by the linguist (Sapir 1921, p. 35). Such a position parallels Croce’s anti-intellectualist stance on language as art and of art as a kind of knowledge. However, although the Sapirian form-feeling is a mode of cognizance, it is of the order of an instinctive and innate drive to the formal organization of unconscious and largely collective and conventional patterns, and this a far cry from the supremely conscious and individual intuizione, which is always an ἐνέργεια, expression-in-act. Clearly, Sapir’s flirtation with Croce was not a wholesale adoption of the latter’s views of language, and to Sapir’s eyes the appeal of the Aesthetic lay first and foremost, as he himself says, in the general “insight” that language has a “close relation” to “the problem of art” (Sapir 1921, p. iii).6 That Croce cannot be the originator of the form-feeling is further confirmed by a passage in which Sapir regards this notion as a common good circulating in art theory: Probably most linguists are convinced that the language-learning process, particularly the acquisition of a feeling for the formal set of the language, is very largely unconscious and involves mechanisms that are quite distinct in character from either sensation or reflection. There is doubtless something deeper about our feeling for form than even the majority of art theorists have divined, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that, as psychological analysis becomes more refined, one of the greatest values of linguistic study will be in the unexpected light it may throw on the psychology of intuition, this “intuition” being perhaps nothing more nor less than the “feeling” for relations. (Sapir 1951b [1924], 156, my italics)

It has been suggested elsewhere (Fortis 2015, 2019) that the expression “form-feeling” is a calque of the German Formgefühl, an expression widely  Cf. the discussion of all these points by Handler (1987), who also cites critical comments made by Sapir, especially on the overly individualistic view of language as creative expression in the Aesthetic. 6

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used in aesthetics and in the psychology of affects (to which we shall return in the next section). Wundt, for example, uses the term for a feeling that correlates with the perception of structures, in contradistinction with feelings of (dis)harmony between impressions and, on the other hand, with “intellectual” contents (e.g. Wundt 1902, Chap. 16, part 2). In the work of the Hegelian F.T. Vischer (Ästhetik, 1846–1857), Formgefühl refers to the psychological basis of a style. For example, Vischer regards Renaissance Italian painting (par excellence Florentine) as dominated by a plastic Formgefühl, characterized by its well-delineated and calm figures. The plastic [plastisch] has in the painterly [malerisch] its opposite, but in a bona fide Hegelian way, the opposition of the styles historically undergoes a reconciliation in which one opposite comes to dominate without excluding the other. Venetian painting, for example, relays in a painterly, more “agitated” way, the dominantly plastic style of the Renaissance.7 In F.  T. Vischer’s brand of Hegelianism, painterly and plastic also stand, respectively, as the subjective and objective poles of the fine arts. The Hegelian reconciliation of these poles is carried in another direction by Vischer’s son, Robert, who views the subjective dimension as the content infused in forms by the soul’s feelings (Vischer 1873, pp. iii–iv). The key-notion is that of Einfühlung, or “empathy”: forms empathetically perceived are infused with a “spiritual value” which is projected onto the object (Vischer 1873, pp.  18–19). Such is the case when an imposing rock seems to take on a defiant attitude and is thus imbued with this human “spiritual value.” From this projection, Vischer proceeds to deduce the stages which lead in mankind to a sort of panpsychism, or pantheism which transmutes all natural forces into spiritual entities. It is this enlivened nature and the communicative drive of men which are the impulse of artistic creation. This last point betrays the relation of the Gefühl motif  Vischer, 1854, vol. 3, part 2.3 of his Ästhetik 1846–1857, §721, p. 705 and §725, p. 718. In presenting the dichotomy of the painterly and the plastic (or, as he prefers to say, using Riegl’s term, the “haptic”) Wiesing (2016, p. 42) illustrates it by contrasting the firm linear rendering of a ship in a drawing by Hergé (taken from a Tintin comic book) and a painting of the same subject by Turner, in which the shape of the ship is suggested by non-clearly delineated transitions with the background. The plastic-painterly opposition is one of the pairwise contrasts which Wölfflin regards as fundamental and has elaborated into a systematic theory of styles and of their evolution (Wölfflin 1915). 7

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to the Romantic era: suffice it to remind our reader of the Spinozist vogue of the late eighteenth century, and the formative role, for German idealism, of the pantheism controversy which sprang out of Spinoza’s revival (e.g. Beiser 2002, p. 379ff.). Whatever the path chosen, Vischer and son both aimed at overcoming the opposition of form- and content-oriented aesthetic, much decried by Croce. In Robert Vischer’s theory, empathy reflected this interpenetration of form and content. An especially prominent supporter of a version of the empathetic theory is Wölfflin, who insists on the role of bodily feelings in aesthetic perception. His first study, on architecture, betrays in this the influence of R. Vischer and of Wölfflin’s own teacher, Volkelt. In his Renaissance und Barock (1964 [1888]), formal analyses are framed in synaesthetic and metaphorical terms for which the empathy view offers a theoretical underpinning. And they are subordinated to an appeal to bodily dispositions, sometimes described in a physiological jargon and synthesized in a somewhat nebulous “vital feeling” [Lebensgefühl] which Wölfflin regards as the psychological ground of style.8 Lastly, and in spite of stylistic change, the art of a people may exhibit a kind of permanence in which Wölfflin sees the effect of a national Formgefühl, a theme that figures prominently in his comparative study of Italian and German artistic “physiognomies” (his term; Wölfflin 1931, p. 7). Lipps’s aesthetics evinces the same concern for a theory which reconciles formal considerations with content, which is once again nourished by empathetic perception. On one hand Lipps (1907) defines the Formgefühl as resulting from a formal principle: the way parts are connected to the whole, says Lipps, is aesthetically pleasing when the parts are perceived as resulting from the differentiation of the whole. This might be accomplished by a rhythmic pattern materialized, for instance, in the alignment of columns in a Greek temple. To this differentiation, Lipps adds a principle of “monarchical subordination,” which amounts  As an example of metaphors and synaesthesias (otherwise ubiquitous in art theory), cf. Wölfflin’s opposition between Renaissance and Baroque coats-of-arms: “The Renaissance work looks fragile, its brittle stuff terminates in sharp edges and hard angles, while the baroque forms are full, opulent, and curled over in round and generous whorls” (Wölfflin 1964 [1888], p. 47). A formulation of this general “vital feeling” [Lebensgefühl], to which Wölfflin attributes the transition to Baroque, is “a general numbing of the nerves,” that is, a “loss of refined perceptiveness caused by a degree of perceptual indulgence” (Wölfflin 1964 [1888], p. 75). 8

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to a hierarchical structuring of the parts. This principle is illustrated in the Gothic cathedral by the embedding of shapes of increasing delicacy within its general silhouette. On the other hand, formal principles do not suffice to characterize the aesthetic object, for content concurs with form in causing the satisfaction of the beholder. As in R. Vischer’s account, this is where empathy (Einfühlung) enters the scene. Lipps distinguishes different forms of empathy, from that which imparts motion and force to spatial figures up to the projection of self-experienced feelings into a fellow human being, but ultimately all are resolved into a feeling of affirmation of the ego, a Lebensbejahung, says Lipps. Interestingly, the first kind of empathy invites Lipps to a comparison with what occurs in exercising the capacity for language. In his Raumästhetik (1897), the Formgefühl associated with this first kind of empathy is the conscious event emanating from the dynamic enrichment of spatial figures, in compliance with the implicitly cognized laws of naïve physics abstracted from common experience. These implicitly cognized laws suggest a parallel with those rules that govern speech, and as a consequence, the conscious event associated with the exercise of the former (the Formgefühl) is akin to that associated with the latter, for which Lipps uses the designation of Sprachgefühl (“linguistic feeling”), a term in common parlance at the time (Lipps 1897, Chap. 8).9 By contrast, with the Formgefühl of psychological aesthetics, the Sapirian form-feeling has no empathetic component. However, both notions are meant to capture the idea that structures are amenable to a sort of intuitive grasp which assesses their consistency. The consistency of a linguistic pattern is not unlike the unity of style which is perceptible in Baroque architecture and which derives from this arch-feeling Wölfflin describes under the term of Lebensgefühl. Sapir himself sometimes ventures some bold generalizations on the genius of an entire culture, speaking as if it were possessed of a unitary style in its various institutions, socially sanctioned behaviors, artistic productions, and so on. In a different guise, more centered on dominant personality traits, these occasional attempts at a collective portrait will be echoed by the famous case studies  Cf. the papers collected Siouffi (2021) on the French counterpart of the Sprachgefühl, or “sentiment de la langue,” especially in Saussure’s texts. 9

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of Benedict in her Patterns of Culture (1935).10 Lastly, like Lipps’s Formgefühl, the Sapirian form-feeling, in addition to reflecting the grasp of structures, emanates from unconscious rules which are applied in the multifarious forms that practical experience offers.

4 The Psychoaffective Strand A venerable trichotomy, which harks back to Plato, categorizes mental states and processes into cognitive, affective and conative (or desiderative).11 Kant, for example in his Critique of Judgment, asserts that “all of the soul’s powers or capacities can be reduced to three that cannot be derived further from a common basis: the cognitive power [Erkenntnisvermögen], the feeling of pleasure and displeasure [Gefühl der Lust und Unlust] and the power of desire [Begehrungsvermögen]” (Kant 1987 [1793], p. 16). Now, the Sapirian form-feeling confronts us with three peculiarities: it is not a matter of pleasure and displeasure, which are the modalities of feeling [Gefühl] in many studies of the period (e.g. in Wundt’s Grundzüge); Sapir’s understanding of the notion of feeling cuts across the cognitive and affective dimensions, for his form-feeling is both a non-discursive insight and the reflex of relations between “representations” (i.e. along the associative links mentioned above); finally, the form-feeling qua aesthetic intuition is more of the nature of an assessment of the conformity of a form with a certain style (i.e. the type of a language and the kind of  Cf. for example Sapir (1951c [1924], pp. 312–313): “No one who has even superficially concerned himself with French culture can have failed to be impressed by the qualities of clarity, lucid systematization, balance, care in choice of means, and good taste, that permeate so many aspects of the national civilization. These qualities have their weaker side. We are familiar with the overmechanization, the emotional timidity or shallowness (quite a different thing from emotional restraint), the exaggeration of manner at the expense of content, that are revealed in some of the manifestations of the French spirit. […] From this standpoint we can evaluate culturally such traits in French civilization as the formalism of the French classical drama, the insistence in French education of the study of the mother-tongue and of its classics, the prevalence of epigram in French life and letters, the intellectualist cast so often given to aesthetic movements in France, the lack of turgidity in modern French music, the relative absence of the ecstatic note in religion, the strong tendency to bureaucracy in French administration.” 11  For the modern period (after Leibniz) and with an emphasis on English-speaking studies, see Hilgard (1980). 10

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patterns it employs) than of an evaluation passing judgment on the beauty of this form. These three features of the Sapirian form-feeling and the very use of the term feeling are more understandable if one takes stock of the evolution of the notion of feeling within its area of maximal elaboration, that is, the German-speaking sphere. In a series of papers, Romand (2015, 2018, 2019, 2021) has documented the importance of a “psychoaffective” strand in German philosophy and psychology, beyond aesthetic theory proper.12 It is tempting to relate this nineteenth century theme to the Sturm und Drang and for example to Herder’s emphasis on the sentient self as a substitute for the Cartesian cogito (Mellmann 2002). On a more theoretical side, the formation of this strand brings us to reactions to Kant, especially to his way of separating a priori deduction and psychological processes, as well as to his partitioning of the soul’s powers. For Fries, for example, the deduction which delivers foundational principles has to be tackled in psychological terms, not in a transcendental analytic. This deduction rests on a mode of obscure intuitive knowledge he calls truth-feeling [Wahrheitsgefühl]. The truth-feeling may correspond to the immediate grasp of a reasoning whose validity is assessed without any decomposition into judgments. It also manifests itself in “reflective” judgments (in the Kantian sense), which subsume aesthetic ones (Fries 1967 [1828], pp. 405–409).13 This post-Kantian reconsideration of empirical psychology is also characteristic of Herbart and his disciples. In the Herbartian school, feelings are an important object of psychological inquiry, and in conformity with the anti-faculty and representational stance of Herbart, they are regarded as resulting from the reciprocal activation or inhibition of representations. In Nahlowsky (1907 [1862], pp. 46–47), for example, a feeling [Gefühl] is such that an activation or inhibition introduces a disturbance in the regular course of mental events and thereby reaches consciousness, thus rising above a state of indifference which Nahlowsky calls a “global vital feeling” [allgemeines Lebensgefühl]. A conception of  We shall not examine here the neighboring concepts of Gefühl in the corpus of German philosophy and psychology. On the respective ranges of Gefühl, Affekt and Empfindung, see the substantial footnote of Romand (2019, p. 133). 13  On the Wahrheitsgefühl. Cf. Bonnet (2013, pp. 129–136). 12

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the kind is conducive to the idea that feelings, insofar as they supervene on cognitive processes, provide an access to them and thus are a sui generis form of knowledge. Another Herbartian and predecessor of Nahlowsky, Waitz, appears to embrace this view. As Romand (2015, p. 389) puts it, “in the psychological model of affectivity advocated by Waitz, feelings basically appear as the carriers of particular forms of knowledge.” This holds especially of a special class of feelings, the “intellectual” ones, among which Waitz counts for instance a feeling of (un)correctness [Gefühl der (Un)richtigkeit], involved in determining the acceptability of a linguistic expression or the authenticity of a character in a performance. However, aesthetic feelings are classically described as manifesting a (dis) satisfaction with an object whose beauty is being assessed. In other words, aesthetics is still circumscribed by the beautiful and its affective correlate. And although beauty is said to reside in the apprehension of formal relations, not of elementary sensations, Nahlowsky finds it necessary to make room for the idea expressed by the work of art, in a non-formalist and non fully Herbartian spirit (1907 [1862], pp. 141–142). Allusions to a Sprachgefühl or to a “feeling of correctness” do not exhaust what German scholars had to say about the affective aspect of linguistic processes, regarded here independently of aesthetic considerations. Following Romand (2019), we find that one philosopher stands out for the place he assigns to feelings in the semantics of language: this is Heinrich Gomperz in his Semasiologie. It seems rather uncontroversial that Gomperz owes much to the notion of “formales Gefühl” developed in the Herbartian circle and by Horwicz (1878). By “formal feeling” was understood the conscious event correlated with the relation holding between representations, and independent of their content. In good Herbartian fashion, Nahlowsky regarded as basic types of formal feelings those corresponding respectively to the blocking of a representation by an antagonist, and to its opposite, the facilitation which brings it to consciousness (Nahlowsky 1907 [1862], pp.  73–80). Both feelings supervene on general cognitive process and do not discriminate a particular content. Likewise, the feeling of expectancy may manifest itself in all kinds of circumstances, the imminence of the curtain rising, the arrival of a train, the child’s waiting for her gifts and so on, and rests on the relation to an activated mass of representations, whatever the content. It should

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be noted that for the period that is under consideration here, the concept of relation appears to be crucial in many areas of knowledge, and the idea of relational and transitive mental states, or of the affective and cognitive importance of relations, is but an aspect of this significance (Höffding 1922). Now, and to simplify somewhat, we may say that Gomperz (1908) singles out a class of “logical” relational feelings which he views as the correlates of syncategorematic forms. To put it differently, Gomperz conceives of formal feeling as the correlates of the formal (i.e. non-lexical) elements of statements. Feelings of the kinds are relative to language, or in the idiolect of Gomperz, to the linguistic conformation of what is the “statement basis,” that is, the factual state of affairs. Yet, they have a nonlinguistic origin “in that they ‘derive’ from affective processes devoid of logical valence that find their specifically logical function through their involvement in language processes” (Romand 2019, p.  150). Similar ideas, it should be noted, crop up in van Ginneken (1907; Romand 2021) and William James (1890, p.  245). In Gomperz, an example is furnished by the accusative construction. In “the dog sees the bone,” the experiencing is construed in such a way that the bone is felt as passive, or, says Gomperz, is associated with a “feeling of passivity” (Gomperz 1908, p. 236). When Sapir deals with a similar example, the emphasis is laid on the potency of an analogically extended pattern, whose inadequacy, in the case it is applied to experiencers, would appear to neutralize any actual “feeling of passivity:” Consider, for example, verbs that are not entirely active [in their meaning but are treated as active in the linguistic structure:] in English the subject “I” is logically implied to be the active will in “I sleep” as well as “I run.” [A sentence like] “I am hungry” might, [in terms of its content, be logically] better expressed with “hunger” as the active doer, as in [the German] mich hungert [or even the French] j’ai faim. In some languages, however, such as Sioux, a rigid distinction is made between truly active and static verbs. […] [It seems, then, that] when we get a pattern of behavior, we follow that [pattern] in spite of [being led, sometimes, into] illogical ideas or a feeling of inadequacy. We become used to it. We are comfortable in a groove of

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behavior. [Indeed], it seems that no matter what [the] psychological origin may be, or complex of psychological origins, or a particular type of patterned conduct, the pattern itself will linger on by sheer inertia. (Sapir 2002, pp. 109–110)

There is no implication that feelings must be associated with the participants of the linguistically construed state of affairs. More generally, as we shall see below, it is clear that for Sapir we should not expect a form to be systematically associated with an experiential correlate having to do with the motivation of that form, its original content, and function. There is simply no systematic causal relation between the existence of a form-­ feeling for a given pattern and whatever motivates this pattern. To sum up, Sapir’s form-feeling is to be placed within a psychoaffective strand in which was legitimated the idea that feelings are not mere variations of pleasure and displeasure and can be viewed as emanating from representations and relations between representations. This extensive view of the notion “feeling” concurs with Sapir’s practice of applying the term to a mental event which provides access to cognitive structures, such as linguistic patterns. The originality of Sapir lies in viewing the feeling for linguistic forms not as a reflection of their content and function, but as an apprehension of a set of relations, or pattern.

5 Language as an Aesthetic Object Language as a set of patterns internalized by a speaker is a peculiar aesthetic object. It is the linguist’s task to bring these patterns to light, but such an objectivation goes hand in hand with an aloofness that seems to be incompatible with the spontaneity of the form-feeling (e.g. Sapir 2002, p. 42 on objectivity and “aloofness”). While the form-feeling intuits patterns resulting from an inner drive to form (as we shall see), this drive to form is not of the nature of a conscious will to expression, in Croce’s manner. Rather, cultural patterns, including linguistic ones, tend to impose themselves on us unconsciously: “we act all the more securely for our unawareness of the patterns that control us” (Sapir 1951f [1927], p. 549). This is especially true of language, since “linguistic features are

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necessarily less capable of rising into consciousness of speakers than traits of culture” (Sapir 1994 [1912], p.  100). Indeed, unlike other cultural traits, linguistic features are less susceptible of post hoc rationalizations which may reshape them according to the will of subjects (Sapir 1951a [1916], pp. 432–433).14 It should be recalled that linguistic patterns exert their constraint not as a result of a “mechanics” of representations, as in Hermann Paul’s Herbartian account, but as a consequence of an obligation akin to our compliance with stylistic standards. A further characteristic of language qua object of the form-feeling is its being an internal art form. Surely, that art should not be confined to external realizations is not an idea that is Sapir’s exclusive property and there is a long tradition which attributes to ideal forms in the artist’s mind a superior degree of perfection. As Panofsky (1968 [1924]) points out, this reevaluation of art uses a Platonic notion to an un-Platonic end: the perfection of the inner model serves the purpose of reevaluating those arts which Plato, in a derogatory way, characterized as “mimetic.” Closer to Sapir, inner art forms go by the name of “arts of the inner sense” in Bolzano (1849), who divides all arts into internal, furnishing the prototypes to be realized, and external, whose concern is the materialization of the representations produced by the internal arts. However, for Bolzano, the collective patterns of language are not an art form in themselves; this status accrues only to the artist’s individual creation.15 It has been argued elsewhere (Fortis 2015, 2019) that such an aesthetic view of the language system is in line with a Romantic Humboldtian strand that finds an echo in some passages of G. von der Gabelentz’s Sprachwissenschaft.16 There, Gabelentz speaks of a Formungstrieb, a drive to formal elaboration, which would account for this formal lavishness of structures which raises “above bare utility” (McElvenny 2016, p. 35). This Formungstrieb accounts for men’s delight in formal play, says Gabelentz, who describes this human urge with Schiller’s word: Spieltrieb, that is, the play-drive which grounds  The latter view is Boasian (Boas 1911, p. 63).  Zimmermann took over this aspect of Bolzano’s classification when he devoted a chapter of his “systematic aesthetics” to the “ideal artworks of representations” [Die idealen Kunstwerken des Vorstellen]. The “aesthetic head,” he says, “is an artwork in itself, a mind [Geist] aesthetically formed” (Zimmermann 1865, §368, p. 185). 16  Cf. McElvenny (2016) on this Humboldtian filiation. 14 15

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the aesthetic attitude (Gabelentz 2016 [1891–1901], p.  381). In the same way, in a passage which probably targets behaviorist accounts, Sapir urges, “they fail to do justice to a certain innate striving for formal elaboration and expression and to an unconscious patterning of sets of related elements of experience” (Sapir 1951b [1924], p. 156). Not unlike Sapir, Vossler insisted on the role of aesthetic taste in preserving what he called “ornamental” features of language, for example archaisms or the mute e in French. And not unlike Sapir after him, he regarded practical needs and functions as fundamentally insufficient to account for all aspects of language (Vossler 1923). He was also particularly disparaging for mechanistic accounts à la Hermann Paul, implicitly downplayed by Sapir as we saw above. However, in his critiques he was certainly much closer than Sapir was to the individualistic and expressive conception of Croce, to whom he was much indebted. Lastly, Vossler’s idealism, that is, his proclivity to see correlations between linguistic forms and ideas prevalent in a culture, runs counter the Boasian-Sapirian disconnection of language and culture (and race). In aesthetic theory, we may find counterparts of the drive to formal elaboration in studies on the origin of art in ornamentation, for example in Riegl’s claim that ornamental forms are born from “the original existence of an immanent human capability to produce certain elementary decorative forms that already existed before their application to specific materials so that they were available to man’s creative spirit at the moment in which he began to apply his need for ornamentation to a given object” (Riegl 1890, p. 86, cited in Olin 1992, p. 69). Here, Riegl had in his sights Semper’s theory of ornamentation (Semper 1878 [1860–1863]), who assumed that decorative forms originated in technically motivated patterns (e.g. in textile-making). Both, however, imputed ornamentation to the action of an artistic drive. Wölfflin insistence on decorative arts in the birth of a new form-feeling reflects these debates (Payne 2012). As testified by his introduction to Primitive Art (1922) Boas was very well aware of the aesthetic literature on the origins of decorative arts, on the relevance of functional and technical considerations and so on (see Laplantine, this volume). Reading Boas would have been enough for Sapir to get acquainted with this literature.

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6 Sapir and Formalism Aesthetic formalism is the view that artistic productions may be studied for their form alone, independently of any subordination to judgments regarding subjects and genres, the adequacy of form with function, the intention of the artist or the moral significance of the work. The rise of formalism in aesthetic theory17 shared with the interest for ornamentation a concern for formal play, which naturally entails the problem of distinguishing ornamentation from non-decorative pieces (Wiesing 2016, p. 118ff). We shall not enter into this debate here but confine ourselves to a parallelism with Sapir. Some theorists have long insisted on the relational quality of the material elements that make up an artwork. Diderot (1951 [1752]), for example, makes the point that a sentence extracted from a play is by itself aesthetically indifferent if it is not placed in the relational context that make up the content of the play. Theorists of a formalist bent are not inclined to emphasize the semantic context, as Diderot did. But they are likewise keen on emphasizing the relational nature of elements that are aesthetically apprehended, even to the point of bracketing their materiality: “It is the same basic idea,” says Zimmermann (1858, p. 768), “that takes both our theoretical and our aesthetic awareness back to simple unison, to objective forms, and leaves aside the objective something that can be found in the palpable parts of the unison as theoretically unrecognizable or aesthetically irrelevant. Herbartian aesthetics can only be purely formal; the objects of judgments of taste can only be relationships, forms.”18 One more step is accomplished when aesthetic theory no longer regards the definition of beauty nor of aesthetic pleasure as its goal, but sets itself the purely descriptive task of characterizing styles. At this point, descriptive formal notions of art theory, such as the painterly and the haptic, may exploit their full potential with little interference from evaluative, historical, and teleological considerations, and may even distance

 Especially in the Austrian sphere. Cf. Maigné (2017).  Cited and translated in Wiesing (2016, p. 31).

17 18

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themselves from psychological aesthetics.19 This brings us closer to the descriptive stance of Sapir on linguistic “formalities.” In art theory, if we follow Wiesing, Riegl is the first author who assumes a purely descriptive stance, unconcerned with a definition of beauty, while maintaining, “Herbartianism’s basic insight, that what is aesthetically critical in a form is its immanent relations” (Wiesing 2016, p. 40). The question may be asked if we can describe Sapir’s views on language as paralleling aesthetic formalism. Languages certainly cannot be equated with an artwork insofar as some of their elements at least are functional, that is, they have the purpose of channeling the transmission of a determined content. They can do so, however, with a variety of means which reflect their feeling for definite formal ways when these means are analogically extended beyond their precinct (cf. above the example of the active construction in English). Further, languages are not functional in all their parts. In Language (1921, pp. 98–99), a discussion is devoted to the implements languages must use in communication, the “essential concepts,” that is, the stock of referential ones and the designations of basic syntactic relations, as opposed to the “dispensable concepts” that do not contribute to the expression of “fundamental syntactic relations” or are somehow superfluous. To this latter category belong formal devices which fulfill no universally expressed function or which are redundantly used. Gender cumulates both characteristics: many languages make no distinction of gender, or do not generalize it to all nouns, and gender is multiply expressed in languages in which agreement applies to determiners and adjectives. Likewise, there is no functional logic to the way plurality is patterned in English: If the plural were to be understood functionally alone, we should find it difficult to explain why we use plural forms with numerals and other words that in themselves imply plurality. “Five man” or “several house” would be just as adequate as “five men” or “several houses.” Clearly, what has  See for example Wölfflin’s Grundbegriffe (1915), where the analysis of forms into opposite features takes pride of place, and where the Formgefühl plays a less conspicuous part than in Renaissance und Barock (1964 [1888]). 19

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­ appened is that English, like all of the other Indo-European languages, h has developed a feeling for the classification of all expressions which have a nominal form into singulars and plurals. (Sapir 1951f [1927], p. 550)

Languages, therefore, exhibit two levels on which aesthetic patterning is, as it were, unrestrained by an original functional motivation; some forms are analogically extended to serve functional purposes, but they are thereby divested of their original meaning and some forms simply are superfluous. The form-feeling operates by preserving or systematizing those formal devices used on both levels and in a Sapirian spirit it would not be out of place to compare this linguistic configuring with the style of an artwork.

7 Conclusion Recollecting what has been said so far will hopefully help us situate Sapir in his own time and appreciate his originality. First, in Sapir’s notion of pattern, linguistic units form groups which owe their (un)stability to an intuition of their consistency. This intuition does not reflect a mechanics of unconscious representations couched in Herbartian terms. Rather, it is described as an aesthetic feeling, a feeling for forms and relations. The notion of form-feeling probably borrows its name from the German Formgefühl. With respect to the various interpretations of the Formgefühl in aesthetics, Sapir’s conception has notable characteristics: it is not a matter of investing patterns with impressions involving an expansion or restriction of the self, as in empathy-based theories. Further, the Sapirian form-feeling echoes the formalist aesthetics of the period, insofar as it has lost the affective load with which the general notion of feeling has long been imbued, and which has linked the notion of beauty to that of pleasure. In his emphasis on linguistic types and pattern consistency, Sapir is rather close to this modernist trend of aesthetics. Finally, Sapir’s form-­ feeling extends to all cultural patterns, thus is not confined to linguistic ones. Sapir’s version of the linguistic feeling is both an aesthetic intuition and a particular case of the grasp of socially sanctioned behavioral patterns.

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The Sapirian form-feeling is not the affective correlate of a content, including the relational content of a syncategorematic term, as in Gomperz, van Ginneken, and James. It is rather the mental event which is caused by the grasp of a relation between forms. Under this guise, the Sapirian form-feeling does not only resonate with aesthetic theory but echoes the contemporary concern for the notion of relational structure, which one may find in psychology, especially in Gestalttheorie, which Sapir was well-acquainted with, and in philosophy and logic (one may think for instance of Russell on relations and of the integration of relations into logical calculi). But however strongly Sapir’s aesthetic conception links up with all the strands we have summarily reviewed here, his own synthesis finds no comparison within linguistics. Acknowledgments  I am very grateful to David Romand for helpful feedback on this chapter and, beyond the confines of the present study, for having enlightened me on the psychoaffective strand.

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———. 2019. More on formal feeling/form-feeling in language sciences. Heinrich Gomperz’s concept of “formal logical feeling” (logisches Formalgefühl) revisited. Histoire Épistémologie Langage 41 (1): 131–157. ———. 2021. Psychologie affective allemande et sciences du langage au début du XXe siècle. Le concept de sentiment dans la “linguistique psychologique” de Jac. van Ginneken. Histoire É pistémologie Langage 43 (2): 57–82. Sapir, Edward. 1921. Language. An introduction to the study of speech. San Diego/ New York /London: Harcourt Brace & Company. ———. 1951a. Time perspective in aboriginal American culture: A study in method. In Selected writings of Edward Sapir in language, culture and personality, ed. David G. Mandelbaum, 389–462. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press (text first published 1916). ———. 1951b. The grammarian and his language. In Selected writings of Edward Sapir in language, culture and personality, ed. David G. Mandelbaum, 150–159. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press (text first published 1924). ———. 1951c. Culture, genuine and spurious. In Selected writings of Edward Sapir in language, culture and personality, ed. David G.  Mandelbaum, 307–331. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press (text first published 1924). ———. 1951d. Sound patterns in language. In Selected writings of Edward Sapir in language, culture and personality, ed. David G.  Mandelbaum, 33–60. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press (text first published 1925). ———. 1951e. Anthropology and sociology. In Selected writings of Edward Sapir in language, culture and personality, ed. David G.  Mandelbaum, 332–345. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press (text first published 1927). ———. 1951f. The unconscious patterning of behavior in society. In Selected writings of Edward Sapir in language, culture and personality, ed. David G. Mandelbaum, 544–559. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press (text first published 1927). ———. 1994. Review of Carl Stumpf, die Anfänge der Musik. In The collected works of Edward Sapir, vol. 4: Ethnology, ed. Regna Darnell and Judith Irvine, 139–146. Berlin: Mouton de Guyter (text first published 1994). ———. 1999. The collected works of Edward Sapir, vol. In III: Culture, ed. Regna Darnell, Judith T.  Irvine, and Richard Handler. Berlin/New York: Mouton De Gruyter. ———. 2002. In The psychology of culture. A course of lectures, ed. Judith T. Irvine. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

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Semper, Gottfried. 1878. Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Künsten oder Praktische Ästhetik. Munich: Friedrich Bruckmann (book first published 1860–1863). Silverstein, Michael. 1986. The diachrony of Sapir’s synchronic description. In New perspectives in language, culture and personality. Proceedings of the Edward Sapir centenary conference (Ottawa, 1–3 Oct. 1984), ed. William Cowan, Michael K. Foster, and Konrad Koerner, 67–110. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Siouffi, Gilles, ed. 2021. Le sentiment linguistique chez Saussure. Lyon: ENS Editions. Steinthal, Heymann. 1871. Einleitung in die Psychologie und Sprachwissenschaft. Berlin: Dümmler. Stumpf, Carl. 1911. Die Anfänge der Musik. Leipzig: Barth. van Ginneken, Jac[ques]. 1907. Principes de linguistique psychologique. Essai de synthèse. Amsterdam/Paris/Leipzig: Van der Vecht, Rivière, Harrassowitz. Vischer, Friedrich Theodor. 1846–1857. Ästhetik oder Wissenschaft des Schönen, 3 vol. Reutlingen/Leipzig/Stuttgart: Mäcken. Vischer, Robert. 1873. Ueber das optische Formgefühl. Ein Beitrag zur Aesthetik. Leipzig: Hermann Credner. Vossler, Karl. 1923. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Sprachphilosophie. Munich: Max Hueber. Wiesing, Lambert. 2016. The visibility of the image. History and perspectives of visual aesthetics. Trans. N. A. Roth. Bloomsbury. Wissler, Clark. 1917. The American Indian. New York: Douglas C. McMurtrie. Wölfflin, Heinrich. 1915. Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Das problem der Stilentwickelung in der neueren Kunst. Munich: Bruckmann. ———. 1931. Italien und das deutsche Formgefühl. Munich: Bruckmann. ———. 1964. Renaissance and Baroque. Trans. K. Simon. The Fontana Library (text first published 1888). Wundt, Wilhelm. 1902. Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie, Zweiter Band. 5th ed. Leipzig: Engelmann. Zimmermann, Robert. 1858. Geschichte der Ästhetik als philosophischer Wissenschaft. Wien: Braumüller. ———. 1865. Ästhetik. Zweiter, systematischer Theil. Wien: Braumüller.

6 Edward Sapir: Form-Feeling in Language, Culture, and Poetry Chloé Laplantine

Over the last 20 years, much research has been done on the history of the notions of linguistic feeling, sentiment de la langue, and Sprachgefühl as used by linguists, philosophers, and psychologists working at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. An entire work was recently devoted to Saussure’s concept of sentiment de la langue (Siouffi 2021, this volume); other recent studies have looked at Sapir’s concept of form-feeling (Fortis 2014, 2015, 2019, this volume) and Gomperz’s concept of Sprachgefühl (Romand 2019), thus making it possible to identify a network of texts where these and similar notions have been developed and to follow their circulation and adaptation, as where they passed from psychology to linguistics. It is not easy to determine what motivates historical investigations around these notions. We might well think that the return to Saussure, Gomperz, or Sapir is not animated solely by the desire to contribute to an intellectual or disciplinary history,

C. Laplantine (*) Laboratoire d’Histoire des Théories Linguistiques, CNRS and Université Paris Cité, Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Romand, M. Le Du (eds.), Emotions, Metacognition, and the Intuition of Language Normativity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17913-6_6

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but may also involve a recognition that these intellectual intuitions continue to be meaningful. This renewed interest in works which make the experience of linguistic subjects, their sense for the language, or their feeling for form an object of scientific investigation in the social sciences is very likely motivated by present-day research problems and intellectual debates. In this chapter we will try to place the notion of form-feeling at the heart of Sapir’s reflections on languages, culture, and poetry. In a first part, we attempt to show that Sapir’s research must be understood in the context of North American anthropology, which draws of course on German sources. We focus on the transformation of anthropology which Boas effected by introducing the concepts of point of view, apperception, and feeling, seeking thus to approach what subjects experience or perceive through their language or their artworks. A second part considers Sapir’s conception of form-feeling as applied to language, culture, and poetry, fields in which Sapir emphasizes the experience of subjects and their form-inventing activity. Finally, we will focus on Sapir’s reflections on poetry. In the context of discussions on free verse, Sapir defends an idea of poetry as a search for authentic and specific form (striving for form), in opposition to an externally imposed formalism.

1 Form-Feeling in Boasian Anthropology One of the most important contributions, if not the most important, made by Boas is his conception of point of view or apperception, which makes the linguist-ethnographer’s act of observation a work of inter-­ subjectivation, by means of which the researcher becomes aware of his own unconscious bias while trying at the same time to approach the vision of the speakers whose language and culture he is attempting to describe. In his article “On Alternating Sounds” (1889), Boas shows how the supposed imprecision of North American languages results in fact from the variety of interpretations of their phonetic systems made by investigators influenced by their own native languages. In his Handbook of American Indian Languages Boas aimed to assemble a set of “analytical” grammars, grammars which would strive as far as possible to avoid

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projecting the traditional categories of European grammar (“to keep out the point of view of Indo-European languages as thoroughly as possible1”) and to adopt the Indian point of view (Boas, 1911, p.  59; see Berman 1996), which corresponds to the psychological reality of the language. In his “Introduction” to the Handbook (1911), Boas lays the foundations of this new approach to language which not only aims at discovering the originality of each language but approaches it as the lived experience of a subject, an experience to be brought to light by the analysis: “the grammar has been treated as though an intelligent Indian was going to develop the forms of his own thoughts by analysis of his own form of speech” (Boas, 1911, p. 81). As early as 1884, in his essay “The Study of Geography,” Boas made a distinction between two types of approach, aesthetic and affective, each guided by a different impulse (Bunzl 1996, pp. 17–78; Stocking 1996, p. 5). The aesthetic impulse is exemplified by the abstractive approach of the physicist or naturalist, who compares facts and seeks laws; the affective impulse corresponds to the subjective approach of the cosmographer, interested in each fact for its own sake. Boas defends the idea that geography is a cosmographic science, in Alexander Humboldt’s sense, a science whose interest resides in the study of the “physiognomy of the earth.” As he explains: But there is another branch of geography besides this, equal to it in value, − the physiognomy of the earth. It cannot afford a satisfactory object of study to the physicist, as its unity is a merely subjective one; and the geographer, in treating these subjects, approaches the domain of art, as the results of his study principally affect the feeling, and therefore must be described in an artistic way in order to satisfy the feeling in which it originated. (Boas 1887, pp. 140–141)

This portrait of the cosmographer, a physiognomist of the earth, as an artist affected by the object his study is worthy of attention. As we have noted, Boas’s project is to adopt the indigenous point of view by transforming the ethnographer’s gaze. At the same time, the comparison of the  Boas, Letter to W. Thalbitzer. February 15, 1905, in Stocking (1982 [1974], p. 178). See also Boas (1917, p. 6). 1

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geographer’s work with artistic experience leads us to ask what is meant by this “artistic” dimension. Boas associates geography with art insofar as “the results of his study principally affect the feeling,” foregrounding what is subjectively experienced in scientific apprehension. Summarily stated, the American anthropological tradition developed by Boas and his students and perhaps anticipated by Daniel Brinton (see Darnell 1988, pp. 96–105), which takes its inspiration from German thought, foregrounds, even in its writing style (Laplantine 2013, pp. 179–180; 2018, p. 36), this activity of subjectivation which means that the people encountered are not the objects but also the subjects or inter-subjects of observation. Perhaps the association of geography and artistic experience, defined as a subjective and affective experience (feeling), sheds light on the interweaving of ethnographic and artistic reflection in the work of Boas and his students, Sapir, Mead, Benedict. In Boas, this interweaving is shown by the treatment of art as an essential part of his anthropology, which is a linguistic anthropology. The question of texts and music is essential, for example, in the “Introductory” statement for the International Journal of American Linguistics founded by Boas in 1917 (Boas 1917). The collection of texts is urgent and indispensable for the understanding of indigenous languages and consequently of indigenous people (see Stocking, 1982 [1974], p. 123). Boas does not develop a reflection on poetics strictly speaking, but by envisaging a field of study devoted to the poetics of indigenous texts and the discovery of an indigenous poetic sense (in particular as concerns rhythm), he makes such investigations possible. He develops a more fully elaborated reflection on art in his book Primitive Art (1955 [1926]), which is above all an impressive collection of illustrations of art objects accompanied by descriptions and analyses. In the “Introduction” to this work, Boas seeks to develop a theory of art from an ethnological point of view,2 with the aim of demonstrating the universality of artistic experience,3 and this  The introduction of this work closes with detailed remarks concerning the divers aesthetic theories of the period envisaged from an ethnological perspective, which testifies to Boas’s familiarity with aesthetic theory. Boas gives a critical survey of the works of G. T. Fechner, W. Wundt, M. Verworn, R. Thurnwald, Y. Hirn, E. Grosse, E. Stephan, A. Haddon, W. Holmes, G. Semper, A. Riegl, and A, Vierkandt. 3  This experience is distinct for Boas from the aesthetic experience induced by natural phenomena. 2

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must be understood in relation to his active opposition as a scientist to the racist conceptions of his time (he criticized, for example, the writings of Madison Grant4). At the same time, he is interested in art objects for their own sake and in showing what an ethnological perspective can say about them. Thus, he seeks to hold together form and meaning (Boas 1955 [1926], p. 13), a form being in his view inseparable from the significations associated with it. Boas also develops the idea that the invention of artistic form depends on the intimate association of technical mastery and the feeling for beauty: “Since a perfect standard of form can be attained only in a highly developed and perfectly controlled technique there must be an intimate relation between technique and a feeling for beauty” (Boas 1955 [1926], p. 11). A little further on in this text, Boas makes the association of feeling for form and technical mastery the distinguishing characteristic of the artist, thus representing artistic activity in psycho-physical terms. He refers to the “striving” of the artist, to “aesthetic impulse,” and to “intuitive feeling for form”: “undoubtedly many individuals strive for expression of an esthetic impulse without being able to realize it. What they are striving for presupposes the existence of an ideal form which the unskilled muscles are unable to express adequately. The intuitive feeling for form must be present. So far as our knowledge of the works of art of primitive people extends the feeling for form is inextricably bound up with technical experience” (ibid., p. 13). We will see below that this representation of a psycho-physical striving for linguistic, artistic, and cultural forms can also be found in Sapir. Beauty is attained when the form is fixed and becomes a standard. As in his thinking about language or social practices, art is conceived from a historical perspective, that is to say as an invention of meaningful form. The notion of “intuitive feeling for form” refers us back to his reflection in the introduction to the Handbook (1911) on the unconscious character of linguistic phenomena, for which he gives the example of the classification of objects according to gender, to form, as animate/inanimate, and so on. Thus, he concludes: “The behavior of primitive man makes it perfectly clear that all these concepts, although they are in constant use, have never risen into consciousness, and that consequently their origin  See Boas (1917b) and King (2019, pp. 79–94).

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must be sought, not in rational, but in entirely unconscious, we may perhaps say instinctive, processes of the mind” (Boas, 1911, p. 67). The notion of “feeling for form” does not appear in Boas when he speaks of language or social practices. In the Introduction to the Handbook (1911), he speaks of “groupings of sense-impressions and of concepts” (1911, p. 67) or of “psychological groupings” (1911, p. 81) in seeking to explain the classifications presented in the grammars: “No attempt has been made to compare the forms of the Indian grammars with the grammars of English, Latin, or even among themselves; but in each case the psychological groupings which are given depend entirely upon the inner form of each language” (1911, p. 81). The notion of inner form, which appears here in Boas, and which also appears in Sapir (1949a [1921], pp. 109, 125–126), is to be linked with the Humboldtian tradition, which is transmitted in particular by Heymann Steinthal’s re-reading of Humboldt. It corresponds first of all to a critique of the ethnocentric and universalist point of view which would seek to compare languages on the basis of a model applicable to all; the notion of inner form recognizes for each language a specific organization, to be discovered anew in each case.

2 Form-Feeling in Sapir’s Theory of Language In order to discuss the notion of form-feeling in Sapir’s work, it seems important to situate his thinking in the continuity of Boas’s preoccupations and in the context of American anthropology, more precisely in relation to the concrete set of problems arising out of research on North American languages and cultures, inseparable, as we have seen, from an intellectual and political engagement. The influence of German psychology and linguistics is perfectly evident in the work of these two authors, and it is important to bring to light the circulation of notions and discourses among certain authors and texts as a way of gaining a wider historical view. But, in complementary fashion, one must also look at the more immediate cultural and historical context to grasp the originality of a way of thinking. The notion of form-feeling in Sapir’s work ties together

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the various fields of investigation he worked in; it is a key notion in a general theory aiming to think language, art, and culture inseparably. Sapir, like Boas, does not reduce his study to one domain of human activity but observes this activity as a whole, in its cultural, linguistic, psychological, artistic aspects, thus developing a genuinely anthropological project. In this anthropology, history is conceived as the collective and unconscious invention of forms by the human mind: “It is not otherwise with language, with religion, with the forms of social organization. Wherever the human mind has worked collectively and unconsciously, it has striven for and often attained unique form” (Sapir 1999f [1921], p. 956). This idea may be found in the aphoristic formulations framing the chapter “Language and Literature” which concludes Language (1949a), where aside from describing the activity of the human mind as collective and unconscious, Sapir attempts to identify language and art: Language is the most massive and inclusive art we know, a mountainous and anonymous work of unconscious generations. (Sapir 1949a [1921], p. 220) Language is itself the collective art of expression, a summary of thousands upon thousands of individual intuitions. (Sapir 1949a [1921], p. 231)

Language (1949a [1921]) begins with a reference to Benedetto Croce, “one of the very few who have gained an understanding of the fundamental significance of language. He has pointed out its close relation to the problem of art” (Sapir 1949a [1921], p. v). Sapir’s reference to Croce at the beginning of a general work on language may perhaps remind us of Boas associating geography and art. If Sapir sees a “close relation” between language and the problem of art, this is because he apprehends language in terms of feeling. From another point of view, this approach can be related to Sapir’s own interests in this period (Handler 1983, 1986, 1999 a, c, d, e, f, h, 2007; Dowthwaite 2018; Laplantine 2019), to his own personal undertakings as poet, theorist, and critic of art (mainly of poetry) and which give an “aesthetic” focus to his research on language. Fortis (2014, 2015, 2019, and in this volume) has shown that Sapir’s conceptions of language and behavior as “felt,” “intuited,” or “patterned” derive

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from sources in German aesthetics. In complementary fashion, one may wonder whether the ubiquity of the notion of “feeling” (“felt”) in Language (1949a [1921]), or the recurrence of “form-feeling” and “feeling for relations” or even of “pattern,” “patterning” in “The Grammarian and His Language” (1949c [1924]) or “The Unconscious Patterning of Behavior in Society” (1949b [1927]) may be understood in relation with Sapir’s reflection on poetry. Not that his theory of language would derive from his artistic experience, but that the problems of art, language, and culture are approached from an identical point of view which is the feeling for form. In Language (1949a [1921], p. 56), Sapir writes that “both the phonetic and conceptual structures show the instinctive feeling of language for form.” Form-feeling corresponds to the speaker’s feeling for the functioning of language at divers yet inseparably related levels. It implies, as stated above, the notion of pattern and of the “feeling for patterning” at these different levels. “We saw in the preceding chapter that every language has an inner phonetic system of definite pattern. We now learn that it has also a definite feeling for patterning on the level of grammatical formation” (Sapir 1949a [1921], p. 61). In his article “The Unconscious Patterning of Behavior in Society” (1949b [1927], p. 550), Sapir gives the example of the expression of plurality in English: A very simple example of the justice of these remarks is afforded by the English plural. To most of us who speak English the tangible expression of the plural idea in the noun seems to be a self-evident necessity. Careful observation of English usage, however, leads to the conviction that this self-evident necessity of expression is more of an illusion than a reality. If the plural were to be understood functionally alone, we should find it difficult to explain why we use plural forms with numerals and other words that in themselves imply plurality. “Five man” or “several house” would be just as adequate as “five men” or “several houses.” Clearly, what has happened is that English, like all of the other Indo-European languages, has developed a feeling for the classification of all expressions which have a nominal form into singulars and plurals.

The conception of a form-feeling is constitutive of Sapir’s research into North American languages and cultures, his main object of study. English

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appears as strange as a North American language when it is envisaged from the point of view of form-feeling. It is one of the strong points of Language (1949a [1921]), and already earlier in Boas’s “Introduction” to the Handbook (1911), that it presents examples of indigenous languages and Indo-European languages one after the other and places them in the same light. The same goes for social practices, as with Boas’s discussion of table manners, or Sapir’s example of an uninformed observer who must give an account of a ritual without possessing the keys to its interpretation (Sapir 1949b [1927], pp.  546–547). A central point underlying Boas’s project of analytical grammars is the unconscious character of linguistic phenomena. Likewise, Sapir shows the powerful effect of making the implicit explicit in ethnographic and linguistic studies. At the same time, the unveiling of the implicit must not take the place of experience. A language is above all lived or felt as an experience, and analysis cannot take its place: “In great works of the imagination form is significant only in so far as we feel ourselves to be in its grip” (Sapir 1949b [1927], p.  559). Given Sapir’s conception of the way the meaningful forms of language and society are invented, and his conception of history as drift, it would not seem likely that he could entertain hopes of fully unveiling the unconscious organization of language and culture. This unveiling is conceived by Sapir as necessarily incomplete, the subtlety of the felt experience being such that it is impossible to render it totally explicit: A healthy unconsciousness of the forms of socialized behavior to which we are subject is as necessary to society as is the mind’s ignorance, or better unawareness, of the workings of the viscera to the health of the body. In great works of the imagination form is significant only in so far as we feel ourselves to be in its grip. It is unimpressive when divulged in the explicit terms of this or that simple or complex arrangement of known elements. So, too, in social behavior, it is not the overt forms that rise readily to the surface of attention that are most worth our while. We must learn to take joy in the larger freedom of loyalty to thousands of subtle patterns of behavior that we can never hope to understand in explicit terms. Complete analysis and the conscious control that comes with a complete analysis are at best but the medicine of society, not its food. We must never allow ourselves to substitute the starveling calories of knowledge for the meat and bread of historical experience. This historic experience may be theoretically

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knowable, but it dare never be fully known in the conduct of daily life. (Sapir 1949b [1927], pp. 558–559)

The notion of form-feeling appears not only in Sapir’s theoretical texts but in his descriptive works.5 An example taken from a study of the phonetic system of Haida shows that this notion is not limited to the traditional dimensions of linguistic analysis like grammatical forms or the phonological system, but puts them into question by recognizing, for example, phono-psychological units which correspond to the way speakers feel the functioning of the language: “Before taking up the vowels, it will be convenient to define the Haida syllable. There is no doubt that the language, like Athabaskan, has a strong and well-defined feeling for the syllable as an integral phonetic and psychological unit of speech. It therefore becomes important to understand its structure” (Sapir 1991b [1923], p. 160). We are reminded of the “psychological groupings” hypothesized by Boas, or Sapir’s conclusions in his article “Sound Patterns in Language” (Sapir 1925, p. 51).

3 “Form (an Inner Striving) and Formalism (an Outer Obstacle)” Sapir, as we have noted, developed a theoretical reflection on poetry, wrote reviews of poetry, and himself wrote poems. At the end of the 1910s, he took part in lively discussions around the problem of free verse, which was criticized by its detractors as “formless,” “without technic,” “lazy verse” (Handler 2007, p.  24 ff.), and which, lacking form, was thought to be destined to disappear. This discussion was the occasion for Sapir to reflect on what can be considered as form in poetry: It would be no paradox to say that it is the blind acceptance of a form imposed from without that is, in the deepest sense, “lazy,” for such acceptance dodges the true formal problem of the artist – the arrival, in travail and groping, at that mode of expression that is best suited to the unique  See, for example, Sapir (1991a [1923], p. 147).

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conception of the artist. The “best” may, of course, be many; it is necessarily conditioned by temperament. Mr. Eastman’s error, then, would seem to be the rather elementary confusion of form (an inner striving) and formalism (an outer obstacle). (Sapir 1999a [1917], p. 889)

Sapir opposes here two ways of conceiving poetic form: form as “inner striving” and form as “imposed from without” defined as a formalism. This reflection on imposed form runs through Sapir’s articles and can be found notably in the chapter on language and literature in Language (1949a [1921], pp. 221–231). We have already pointed out (Laplantine 2019) a semantics of impediment in Sapir, the recurrence of terms such as “hampered/unhampered,” “hindered,” “fetter,” “obstacle,” or “burden.” Here we may note the expression “blind acceptance of a form imposed,” which can be compared to the concluding words of the article “The Grammarian and His Language” (1949c [1924], p. 159): “It is the appreciation of the relativity of the form of thought which results from linguistic study that is perhaps the most liberalizing thing about it. What fetters the mind and benumbs the spirit is ever the dogged acceptance of absolutes.” There is a theoretical continuity between the idea that a formalist conception represents a limitation of poetic experience and the idea that a monolingualism ignorant of itself and taking itself for an absolute represents a limitation for the experience of thought. For Sapir the discovery of the diversity of forms of thinking through the study of languages is liberating, and likewise the conception of poetic experience as a striving for personal form, for authentic form based on lived experience, rather than the application of a model. In Language Sapir defines style from a technical point of view—“a technical matter of the building and placing of words” (Sapir 1949a [1921], p. 226). Style is dependent on the characteristics of the language; but in Sapir’s view the artist is not constrained by the characteristics of the language, and even makes use of them in developing a style: a great style “not only incorporates [the basic form patterns of the language], it builds on them” (Sapir 1949a [1921], p. 227). And he adds just afterward that style is not an absolute, something superimposed on the language but “the language itself, running in its natural grooves, and with enough

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of an individual accent to allow the artist’s personality to be felt as a presence, not as an acrobat” (Sapir 1949a [1921], p. 227). The poetic question, posed thus in the context of a work on language, becomes a linguistic problem. It might be said that Sapir displaces the point of view on language (or even creates it), just as Boas did in Primitive Art (1955 [1926]) when he showed the interest of an ethnological point of view on art. The study of languages in their diversity sheds new light on poetic expression, and the critic of poetry or theorist of literature has something to learn from the study of languages so as not to reason in absolute terms, just as the philosopher in “The Grammarian and His Language” is led to discover that his reasoning is dependent on the language in which he expresses himself (Sapir 1949c [1924], p. 157). But with Sapir the subjective dimension becomes central, and especially when it is a question of art. The poet works and discovers in the potentialities of his language the expression of his individuality and his personal experience. In Sapir’s reviews, the absence of authenticity or of individual expression is a recurring motif. For example, in 1920 Sapir participated in the organization of a poetry competition for The Canadian Magazine. Rather than showing enthusiasm for all the poems received, as one might have expected, his review of the submissions instead expresses a sharply critical judgment: “Poem after poem, especially in the class of patriotic efforts, voiced the most distressingly conventional, personally unfelt and unexperienced, sentiments.” To this mass of unfelt, unlived productions, Sapir opposes the poems showing “a genuinely felt sentiment” (Sapir 1999c [1920], p. 926). This discussion of authenticity connects with Sapir’s reflection on American culture, which he considers “spurious,” in particular when it claims to emancipate itself from all tradition, to be a creation ex-nihilo: An automatic perpetuation of standardized values, not subject to the constant remodeling of individuals willing to put some part of themselves into the forms they receive from their predecessors, leads to the dominance of impersonal formulas. The individual is left out in the cold; the culture becomes a manner rather than a way of life, it ceases to be genuine. It is just as true, however, that the individual is helpless without a cultural heritage to work on. He cannot, out of his unaided spiritual powers, weave a strong

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cultural fabric instinct with the flush of his own personality. Creation is a bending of form to one’s will, not a manufacture of form ex nihilo. If the passive perpetuator of a cultural tradition gives us merely a manner, the shell of a life that once was, the creator from out of a cultural waste gives us hardly more than a gesture or a yawn, the strident promise of a vision raised by our desires. (Sapir 1999g [1924], p. 61)

In this critique of American culture, authenticity involves a re-working of existing forms. This position may well be a reference6 to T.  S. Eliot’s reflection on the notion of “tradition” in his well-known essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1999 [1919]). Eliot affirms the necessary presence of the past in the present7 and the impossibility of according a value to a work absent a knowledge of this present-past.8 He develops a conception of the artist’s impersonality: “Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality” (Eliot 1999 [1919], p.  21). This conception of the artist does not seem to be taken up by Sapir. At the same time, “personality” does not necessarily have the same meaning in Eliot and in Sapir. Both in Sapir’s writings on art and his writings on culture, the individual must struggle continually so as not to disappear into the collective. In Language (1949a [1921], p.  231) the individual creator participates in the collective work of giving form to culture: “The individual goes lost in the collective creation, but his personal expression has left some trace in a certain give and flexibility that are inherent in all collective works of the human spirit” (Sapir 1949a [1921]). In “Culture, Genuine and Spurious” (Sapir 1999g [1924], p. 63), the annihilation of personality is placed in opposition with the development of culture: “Both types of self-ignoring or self-submerging habit are signs of a  The article “Culture, Genuine and Spurious” brings together several texts written from 1918 onward and published in various journals. For the origins and reception of this article see Darnell and Irvine (1999, pp. 43–46). The quoted paragraph was added to the assembled texts in 1924. 7  “The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence” (Eliot 1999 [1919], p. 14). 8  “No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. I mean this as a principle of aesthetic, not merely historical, criticism” (Eliot, 1999 [1919], p. 15). 6

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debilitated personality; both are antithetical to the formation of culture.” There can be no cultural development without making a place for personality. An intellectual quarrel opposed Sapir to his colleague and friend Alfred Kroeber9 concerning the place accorded to the individual in studies of culture: for Sapir, the role of the individual is indispensable. In 1917, Kroeber published a long essay in American Anthropologist under the title “The Superorganic,” the aim of which was to define the role of anthropology by distinguishing its approach and its methods from those of the natural sciences (Kroeber 1917). Sapir responded to this essay in the same journal10 with the text “Do We Need a ‘Superorganic?,’” which criticizes the absence of any role attributed to the individual in Kroeber’s conception of culture: “it is always the individual that really thinks and acts and dreams and revolts” (Sapir 1999b [1917], p. 34). Sapir devoted a significant number of his writings to the question of the relation between personality and culture.11 He gave the title “The Psychology of Culture” to an important book project based on his courses at Yale (Sapir, 1994 [1928–1937]; see Irvine 1999, pp. 389–411), and in his text “The Emergence of the Concept of Personality in a Study of Cultures” (1934) he defines as a “convenient fiction of thought” the “objectification” of culture which the anthropologist’s work leads to, referring even to the “complete, impersonalized ‘culture’ of the anthropologist” (Sapir 1999i [1934], p. 309). Along with the possible references to T. S. Eliot and to the debate with Kroeber in “Culture, Genuine and Spurious,” another point which must be underlined is the place accorded to indigenous cultures in Sapir’s argument: they provide a point of view for defining the notion of authentic culture, and serve as a counterpoint for criticizing American culture:

 With whom, it may be added, Sapir had exchanges about poetry, even asking for Kroeber’s opinion about his poems. Kroeber was often highly critical, even cruel with Sapir. Cf. Golla (1984, pp. 281–282, 289–290, 322–323). 10  In the same number, A. A. Goldenweiser published an article, “The Autonomy of the Social,” in response to Kroeber, notably concerning the notion of “civilization.” 11  For Darnell and Irvine (1999, pp. 45–46), the place accorded to the individual in Sapir’s thought, particularly in the text “Culture, Genuine and Spurious,” went counter to the dominant thinking in the cultural sciences of the time and was more likely to be appreciated by a literary readership. 9

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The genuine culture is not of necessity either high or low; it is merely inherently harmonious, balanced, self-satisfactory. It is the expression of a richly varied and yet somehow unified and consistent attitude toward life, an attitude which sees the significance of any one element of civilization in its relation to all others. It is, ideally speaking, a culture in which nothing is spiritually meaningless, in which no important part of the general functioning brings with it a sense of frustration, of misdirected or unsympathetic effort. It is not a spiritual hybrid of contradictory patches, of water-tight compartments of consciousness that avoid participation in a harmonious synthesis. (Sapir 1999g [1924], p. 54)

For Sapir, the “culture” of a society fosters, or does not foster, the development of personality,12 and creation takes place on the basis of a cultural heritage. Sapir thinks in terms of continuity rather than rupture. Creation cannot arise out of nothing; as with Eliot, it has need of the past in order to acquire a value: “Creation is a bending of form to one’s will, not a manufacture of form ex nihilo” (Sapir 1999g [1924], p. 61). Even so, form by itself cannot not make art. A traditional, inherited form becomes an empty form (“the shell of a life that once was”), a mannerism, if it is not reworked (“remodeling,” “bending”) in a personal effort of expression. Here we come back to the distinction which Sapir attempts to make between an inherited formalism and the inner striving for lived form. In “The Twilight of Rhyme,” rhymed metrical verse, which at one time was a condition for poetic expression, is no longer felt as such, and becomes a hindrance preventing personal expression: “Just as soon as an external and purely formal aesthetic device ceases to be felt as inherently essential to sincerity of expression, it ceases to remain merely a condition of the battling for self-expression and becomes a tyrannous burden, a perfectly useless fetter” (Sapir 1999a [1917a], p. 888). In a review of a collection of poems by Emily Dickinson, he notes of contemporary poetry that “very few poets seem willing, or able, to take their true selves seriously” (Sapir 1999h [1925], p. 1002). In the same  “If no literary artist appears, it is not essentially because the language is too weak an instrument, it is because the culture of the people is not favorable to the growth of such personality as seeks a truly individual verbal expression” (Sapir 1949a [1921], p. 231). This is the closing sentence of Language and can be seen as another critique of American culture, if read in relation with “Culture, Genuine and Spurious.” 12

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passage ideal poetry is defined as giving “the ecstasy that is the language of unhampered intuitive living.”13 The authentic artist, here Emily Dickinson, does not allow herself to be subjected to “forms imposed from without:” “Emily Dickinson’s poetry leads straight to the conception of an intuitively felt spirit which can be subordinated neither to any of its experienced forms nor to any kind of absolute standing without” (Sapir 1999h [1925], pp.  1004–1005). Sapir defines Emily Dickinson as a “primitive,” living and writing in “healthy ignorances” (Sapir 1999h [1925], p. 1002), unaffected by the literary culture and the materialism of her time. Thus the impression of freshness her work produces: “clairvoyant freshness” (Sapir 1999h [1925], p.  1002), “freshness of sight” (Sapir 1999h [1925], p.  1003), “primitive freshness” (Sapir 1999h [1925], p. 1005), as well as its intuitive character. Here again he defines the object of poetry as lived form, as “the intuitive hunger of the soul for the beautiful moulding of experience actually felt, not fiddled with or stared at” (Sapir 1999h [1925], p.  1002). Sapir’s review of Dickinson discusses poetry in terms of physical sensation and closes with her famous definition of poetry in physiological terms, recorded by Thomas W. Higginson: “If I read a book, and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?”14 Among other poets, Sapir accorded particular importance to the work of Gerard Manley Hopkins, a contemporary of Emily Dickinson whose work, like her own, though only belatedly made public, became one of the sources of modern poetry. As with Dickinson, Sapir’s attraction to the poetry of Hopkins comes from its uniqueness and “authenticity”15: “one of the half dozen most individual voices in the whole course of English nineteenth-century poetry” (Sapir 1999e [1921], p.  950). It is the  This is perhaps an echo of words attributed to Dickinson by Thomas W.  Higginson: “I find ecstasy in living – the mere sense of living is joy enough” (Johnson 1958, p. 474). 14  Letter from Thomas W. Higginson to his wife, August 16, 1870, in Johnson (1958, pp. 472–474, letter 342); quoted by Sapir (1999h [1925], p. 1006). 15  Sapir writes that one cannot deny Hopkins “that overwhelming authenticity, that almost terrible immediacy of utterance, that distinguishes the genius from the man of talent” (Sapir 1999e [1921], p. 951). 13

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rhythmic invention in Hopkins’s poetry which especially holds Sapir’s attention, and the way the body is inscribed in language. Hopkins’s language is meant to be heard, which sometimes means neglecting the visual forms on the page: “Read with the ear, never with the eye, his verse flows with an entirely new vigor and lightness, while the stanzaic form gives it a powerful compactness and drive. It is doubtful if the freest verse of our day is more sensitive in its rhythmic pulsations than the ‘sprung’ verse of Hopkins” (Sapir 1999e [1921], p. 951). This way of working with the sensible qualities of the poem’s rhythm is accompanied by a maximal experience of language, whether this is due to the foregrounding of its materiality (the “phonetic passion of Hopkins”16), or to a language individualized by the invention of compound words, by syntax. Hopkins’s poems “have an obsessive, turbulent quality about them – these repeated words, the poignantly or rapturously interrupting oh’s and ah’s, the headlong omission of articles and relatives, the sometimes violent word order, the strange yet how often so lovely compounds, the plays on words and, most of all, his wild joy in the sheer sound of words” (Sapir 1999e [1921], p. 951). This physicality of language is dealt with extensively by Sapir in his article “The Musical Foundations of Verse” (1999d [1921]). This article develops the series of questions raised by Amy Lowell, a poet and defender of free verse, in her text “The Rhythms of Free Verse” (Lowell,  1918). Sapir is particularly interested in one of the questions posed by Lowell, that of the unit of free verse, as it involves the attempt to propose another model for thinking about rhythm in verse besides the accentual-metrical. Amy Lowell argues that this unit is another measure of time which does not correspond to the metrical measure. Her demonstration aims at being “scientific,” seeking to base itself on objective measures recorded by machines. As for Sapir, he begins by working with the analogy of measured time in music. This model allows him to include an important aspect of language which the metrical model is deaf to—silence. Sapir shows through successive examples that the metrical, accentual, and temporal approaches do not mutually exclude each other but create tensions  “This phonetic passion of Hopkins rushes him into a perfect maze of rhymes, half-rhymes, assonances, alliterations” (Sapir 1999e [1921], p. 951). 16

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of meaning. One of the important points discussed by Sapir is that of segmentation or “sectioning,” where he seeks to shed light on the subjective perception of rhythm in language: “Verse, to put the whole matter in a nutshell, is rhythmically self-conscious speech or discourse” (Sapir 1999d [1921], p. 940). A little further on in this text, Sapir writes of a “feeling for sectioning” (Sapir 1999d [1921], p. 939), putting into question objective methods for grasping the rhythm of language. He concludes by noting “the necessary limitation of machine methods in the investigation of prosodic problems” (Sapir 1999d [1921], p. 940), just as in “Sound Patterns in Language” (1925), he will note the limits of the objective analysis of linguistic sounds, so as to affirm the psychological reality which brings into consideration the dimension of meaning in the phonetic organization of a language: The whole aim and spirit of this paper has been to show that phonetic phenomena are not physical phenomena per se, however necessary in the preliminary stages of inductive linguistic research it may be to get at the phonetic facts by way of their physical embodiment. The present discussion is really a special illustration of the necessity of getting behind the sense data of any type of expression in order to grasp the intuitively felt and communicated forms which alone give significance to such expression. (Sapir 1925, p. 51)

This passage makes it possible to show clearly the coherence of Sapir’s research on languages and poetry. Here the forms of the language are not only felt but also communicated, that is to say envisaged from the point of view of inter-subjectivation and the production of meaning. Sapir’s article concerns the phoneme, that is to say a linguistic element of small extent, which objective analysis would assign to a level inferior to that of meaning. Sapir shows here that this is not the case, that the subject develops an intuition into the meaningful organization of his language even at this subtle level. Reading this passage, one thinks of the “thousands of subtle patterns of behavior that we can never hope to understand in explicit terms” (Sapir 1949b [1927], p. 559), which might well be transposed here to language.

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4 Conclusion In this chapter, we have seen that the conception of a form-feeling runs throughout Sapir’s works, and is found equally in his theory of language, his descriptions of North American languages, his reflections on cultural practices and even in his reflections on poetry. We have shown that this reflection, though influenced by German philosophy and psychology, is also to be understood in the context of American linguistic anthropology and the change in perspective introduced by Boas. With Boas and after him, it is no longer possible to adopt an exterior, objectifying gaze on the languages and cultures one is observing: the linguist or ethnologist must strive to approach subjects’ lived experience. “Form” in Sapir is perhaps a rather broad and indistinct notion, since it can be applied to elements of various orders and dimensions (rhythm, cultural practices, the syllable, the sense of a language’s grammatical or phonological functioning); but at the same time, it opens up the possibility of conceiving the infinite wealth and subtlety of a relation to meaning which subjects are constantly developing. The dimension of meaning is indeed central to the Boasian tradition. But surprisingly, the dominant theoretical developments in linguistics and anthropology which have come after Boas have turned their back on the subject and on meaning to produce descriptions of languages and cultures claiming to be neutral and objective. It might well be interesting then to reread the works of Boas and Sapir, and the whole network of texts and authors seeking to approach the experience of subjects in terms of their linguistic feeling or their feeling for form, in relation with present-day discussions on the recognition of communal or individual points of view in the context of the search for social justice and the fight against discriminations. Decolonizing practices, critical race theory, and the many statements seeking to establish a reglementary framework for the expression of diversity, or the positions taken on the illegitimate appropriation of others’ experience (“lived experience”), are attempts to sound and to protect the voices and experiences of minorities. The texts of Boas and Sapir provide a historical and critical framework for these debates.

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References Berman, Judith. 1996. “The culture as it appears to the Indian himself ”: Boas, George hunt, and the methods of ethnography. In Volksgeist as method and ethic. Essay on Boasian ethnography and the German anthropological tradition, ed. George W. Stocking Jr., 215–256. Madison: Wisconsin University Press. Boas, Franz. 1887. The study of geography. Science 9 (210): 137–141. ———. 1889. On alternating sounds. American Anthropologist 2 (1): 47–54. ———. 1911. Introduction. In Handbook of American Indian languages, ed. Franz Boas, 1–83. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 40. Washington: Government Printing Office. ———. 1917a. Introductory. International Journal of American Linguistics 1 (1): 1–8. ———. 1917b. Inventing a great race. The New Republic 9: 305–307. ———. 1955. Primitive Art. New York: Dover (book first published 1926). Bunzl, Mati. 1996. Franz Boas and the Humboldtian tradition: From Volksgeist and Nationalcharakter to an anthropological concept of culture. In Volksgeist as method and ethic: Essays on Boasian ethnography and the German anthropological tradition, ed. George W.  Stocking Jr., 17–78. Madison: Wisconsin University Press. Darnell, Regna. 1988. Daniel Garrison Brinton. The “fearless critic” of Philadelphia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, Department of Anthropology. Darnell, Regna, Judith Irvine, and Richard Handler, eds. 1999. The collected works of Edward Sapir, vol. 3: Culture. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Dowthwaite, James. 2018. Edward Sapir and modernist poetry: Amy Lowell, H.D., Ezra Pound, and the development of Sapir’s Literary Theory. Modernist Cultures 13 (2): 255–277. Eliot, Thomas Stearns. 1999. Tradition and the individual talent. In Selected essays, 13–22. London: Faber and Faber (text first published 1919). Fortis, Jean-Michel. 2014. Sapir’s form-feeling and its aesthetic background. History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences. https://hiphilangsci. net/2014/10/15/sapirs-­form-­feeling-­and-­its-­aesthetic-­background. ———. 2015. Sapir et le sentiment de la forme. Histoire Épistémologie Langage 37 (2): 153–174. https://doi.org/10.1051/hel/2015370208. ———. 2019. Sapir’s notion of form/pattern and its aesthetic background. In Form and formalism in linguistics, ed. James McElvenny, 59–88. Berlin: Language Science Press. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2654353.

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Golla, Victor, ed. 1984. The Sapir-Kroeber correspondence. Letters between Edward Sapir and A.  L. Kroeber 1905–1925. Survey of California and other Indian languages 6. Berkeley: University of California. Handler, Richard. 1983. The dainty and the hungry man: Literature and anthropology in the work of Edward Sapir. In Observers observed. Essays on ­ethnographic Fieldwork. History of anthropology, ed. George W. Stocking Jr., vol. 1, 208–231. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1986. The aesthetics of Sapir’s language. In New perspectives on Edward Sapir in language, culture, and personality, ed. William Cowan, Michael Foster, and Ernst F.K. Koerner, 433–451. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ———. 1999. Edward Sapir’s aesthetic and cultural criticism. In The collected works of Edward Sapir, vol. 3: Culture, ed. Regna Darnell, Judith Irvin, and Richard Handler, 731–747. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. ———. 2007. Significant form. Sapir’s phonemic poetics. History of Anthropology Annual 3: 22–37. Irvine, Judith T. 1999. The psychology of culture: Editor's introduction. In The collected works of Edward Sapir, vol. 3: Culture, ed. Regna Darnell, Judith Irvine, and Richard Handler, 389–411. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Johnson, Tomas H., ed. 1958. The letters of Emily Dickinson. Cambridge, MA/ London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. King, Charles. 2019. Gods of the upper air. New York: Anchor Books. Kroeber, Alfred L. 1917. The Superorganic. American Anthropologist 19 (2): 163–213. Laplantine, Chloé. 2013. À propos de l’introduction du Handbook of American Indian Languages: une écriture du point de vue. In Franz Boas. Le travail du regard, ed. Michel Espagne and Isabelle Kalinowski, 179–189. Paris: Armand-­ Colin/Recherches. ———. 2018. Préface. In: Franz Boas. 2018. Introduction du Handbook of American Indian Languages (1911). Édition bilingue, traduction française d’Andrew Eastman et Chloé Laplantine, préface de Chloé Laplantine, 11–38. Limoges: Éditions Lambert-Lucas. ———. 2019. “Single Algonkin words are like tiny Imagist poems.” Edward Sapir, une poétique du langage. Studi italiani di linguistica teorica e applicata 48 (2): 304–316. Lowell, Amy. 1918. The rhythms of free verse. The Dial 64: 51–56. Romand, David. 2019. More on formal feeling/form-feeling in language sciences: Heinrich Gomperz’s concept of “formal logical feeling” (logisches Formalgefühl) revisited. Histoire Épistémologie Langage 41 (1): 131–157.

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Sapir, Edward. 1925. Sound patterns in language. Language 1 (2): 37–51. ———. 1949a. Language. An introduction to the study of speech. New  York: Harcourt, Brace & World (text first published 1921). ———. 1949b. The unconscious patterning of behavior in society. In Edward Sapir. Selected writings in language, culture, and personality, ed. David G. Mandelbaum. 544–559 (text first published 1927). ———. 1949c. The grammarian and his language. In Edward Sapir. Selected writings in language, culture, and personality, ed. David G.  Mandelbaum, 150–159 (text first published 1924). ———. 1991a. A type of Athabaskan relative. International Journal of American Linguistics 2 (3–4): 136–142 (text first published 1923). ———. 1991b. The phonetics of Haida. International Journal of American Linguistics 2 (3–4): 143–158 (text first published 1923). ———. 1994. The psychology of culture. A course of lectures [1928–1937]. Reconstructed and edited by Judith T.  Irvine. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. ———. 1999a. The twilight of rhyme. In The collected works of Edward Sapir, vol. 3: Culture, ed. Regna Darnell, Judith Irvine, and Richard Handler, 885–890. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter (text first published 1917). ———. 1999b. Do we need a “Superorganic”? In The collected works of Edward Sapir, vol. 3: Culture, ed. Regna Darnell, Judith Irvine, and Richard Handler, 27–41. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter (text first published 1917). ———. 1999c. The poetry prize contest. In The collected works of Edward Sapir, vol. 3: Culture, ed Regna Darnell, Judith Irvine, and Richard Handler, 926–929 (text first published 1920). ———. 1999d. The musical foundations of verse. In The collected works of Edward Sapir, vol. 3: Culture, ed. Regna Darnell, Judith Irvine, and Richard Handler, 930–944 (text first published 1921). ———. 1999e. Review of Gerard Manley Hopkins, poems. In The collected works of Edward Sapir, vol. 3: Culture, ed. Regna Darnell, Judith Irvine, and Richard Handler, 950–954 (text first published 1921). ———. 1999f. Review of W. A. Mason: “A History of the Art of Writing.” In The collected works of Edward Sapir, vol 3: Culture, ed. Regna Darnell, Judith Irvine, and Richard Handler, 955–957 (text first published 1921). ———. 1999g. Culture, genuine, and spurious. In The collected works of Edward Sapir, vol. 3: Culture, ed. Regna Darnell, Judith Irvine, and Richard Handler, 43–71 (text first published 1924).

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———. 1999h. Emily Dickinson, a primitive. In The collected works of Edward Sapir, vol. 3: Culture, ed. Regna Darnell, Judith Irvine, and Richard Handler, 1001–1006 (text first published 1925). ———. 1999i. The emergence of the concept of personality in a study of cultures. In The collected works of Edward Sapir, vol. 3: Culture, ed. Regna Darnell, Judith Irvine, and Richard Handler, 303–312 (text published 1934). Siouffi, Gilles, ed. 2021. Le sentiment linguistique chez Saussure. Lyon: ENS Editions. Stocking, George W. 1996. Boasian ethnography and the German anthropology tradition. In Volksgeist as method and ethic. Essay on Boasian ethnography and the German anthropological tradition, ed. George W.  Stocking Jr., 3–8. Madison: Wisconsin University Press. ———. 1982. A Franz Boas reader, The shaping of American anthropology, 1883–1911. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press (book first published 1974).

7 Meaning-Blindness, and Linguistic Feeling: Wittgenstein on How We “Experience” Meaning Michel Le Du

The public nature of language has been frequently underlined by linguists, social scientists, and philosophers. In that respect, one thing, at least, is clear: this public nature results from the language being a rule-­ based institution. Moreover, it seems that mutual understanding between speakers could not be achieved if such a public dimension did not exist. Wittgenstein devoted many efforts to demonstrate the impossibility of what he called a private language. In such a language, the speaker would, so to speak, be the author of his language rules and decide freely what he is being told by them. Consequently, no difference would remain between what a word means and what one thinks it means. The conclusion drawn by many scholars from the so-called private language argument is either that no room is left within language use for a private ingredient or that the nature of this ingredient is largely misconstrued, due to the grip of false images. Both claims are defendable. In

M. Le Du (*) Centre Gilles Gaston Granger, Aix-Marseille University, Aix-en-Provence, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Romand, M. Le Du (eds.), Emotions, Metacognition, and the Intuition of Language Normativity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17913-6_7

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some respects, rules being shared or, at least, sharable, there is nothing essentially private in linguistic activity. In other respects, it can be said more accurately that the alleged privacy is misunderstood if one’s idea is that certain terms of language (psychological words) denote private events and processes. Wittgenstein sketches such a line of thought when he suggests that words for pains do not denote private episodes and are better understood as extensions of primitive and prelinguistic reactions to pain, such as cry. If this analysis is correct it results in the idea that a pain is not a private event I can witness with the help of an inner sense and then report openly. Consequently, saying that a pain is private cannot be anything more than echoing a grammatical rule: a pain, a feeling are necessarily someone’s pain, someone’s feeling, and so on. But this is not all that there is to the story. The above inclines us to admit that there is nothing essentially private in the semantic working of language. But such a conclusion is entirely compatible with the idea that its use and understanding can be connected to typical experiences and that these connections are worth examining. In other words, even if no private element intervenes in the explanation of language use, it remains that the collective practice of language has various echoes among speakers who, accordingly, can have various “experiences of meaning” although, as we will see, meaning is neither an object of experience, nor an experience. This raises the question of the nature of linguistic feelings and of their impact on the way individual speakers enter linguistic practice.

1 Rules and Understanding Wittgenstein is well known for his rule-based conception of language and, within such a conception, little room seems left for the idea of an experience of meaning. As a matter of fact, it seems that such an experience requires meaning to be some kind of object one can get acquainted with, and this is precisely what Wittgenstein’s idea of language use as a rule-guided activity seems to exclude in the first place. He does not deny that various experiences can be connected to the use of words and to the understanding of meaning but underscores that these experiences cannot be constitutive of what we call understanding or using words. One might

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feel inclined to think that describing language as rule-governed is simply endorsing common sense knowledge. But the layman is not supposed to have a considered opinion about the connection between the concepts of meaning and rule and is not supposed to have an overview of the multifarious uses of the word “rule” either. In addition, the analogy between language and other rule-governed activities, such as board-games, has been variously exploited by different thinkers driven by different theoretical motivations.1 Language is structured by rules of variable nature. That it is wrong to follow a plural subject with a singular verb is one of them. The application of such a rule is not a matter of judgment and leaves no place for choice: it dictates what to say. But if by “rule” one means a stylistic canon, its application requires choices that can be made thanks to an educated sense of sameness and difference. In such a case, the rule guides the way in which one speaks or writes but doesn’t dictate that one should speak or write that way rather than another (Winch 1958, p. 58). In other words, in order to benefit from the guidance provided by the canon one must exert one’s judgment. Kindred remarks can be made about the use of words: it is very often sheer routine but can also be surprisingly inventive. Invention can be sometimes described as a transgression of existing rules but is sometimes better accounted for in terms of an unexpected application of an established rule (or as the introduction of a new rule). And the very same word can be employed routinely or innovatively, depending on the context. Accordingly, what is called the ability to employ a word is composite: sometimes using the term is akin to executing a protocol and sometimes it is ingenious and unpredictable – but it can be rule-governed in both cases. One could object that such a disparity is nothing more than a superficial feature, the important thing being that speakers do abstract the same concept. But such an assumption begs the question: How can one be sure that the abstracted concept is the same? Moreover, the very notion of “abstracting a concept” is obscure. As Norman Malcolm (1994, p. 62) says: “This phrase provides nothing more than a picture of something being drawn from something else  – as a tooth is extracted from a jaw. There is embodied in this picture the assumption that a  See, for instance: Harris (1990).

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‘concept’ is a unitary thing. But if we understand by a ‘concept’ the use of a word, then the idea of a concept as a definite unitary object vanishes.” Wittgenstein rejects the idea that a concept is, to use Malcolm’s words, a unitary entity. If he is right, we should free ourselves, in the first place, from this misleading picture of something being extracted.2 But there is a more general assumption behind the rejection of this particular picture. Mistaking a concept for a unitary entity boils down to committing a category mistake, as concepts are capacities, not objects: concepts are not unitary entities because they are not entities at all. For that very reason, they cannot be stored anywhere.3 In other words, the mastery of a concept is the possession of a capacity whose exercising can take many different forms. This does not provide us with a full answer to the question of how children learn concepts, but it definitely shows that the notion of something being extracted cannot do the job. It is equally wrong to think that mastering a concept involves the perception of a feature shared by all the entities illustrating this concept. A word’s meaning is ramified and often has blurred boundaries (Wittgenstein 2009, I, §68–71).4 A general term such as “chair” covers very dissimilar entities and there is not one single rule accounting for its whole use. And when it comes to color words, even the way in which all green things, for instance, are supposed to be similar is not that easy to bring out (Goodman  Wittgenstein examines a similar point in his Cambridge lectures (Wittgenstein 1979, p.  80): “When a child is able to use a word, we say that he has got hold of an idea, that he understands the word […] The hypothesis that he has the general idea corresponds to the assumption of a hypothetical mechanism which we do not know because it is seen from the outside […] We very often think of ideas in this way. An idea is like a mechanism whose workings we do not know.” Wittgenstein insists that when we talk about a general idea, we are inclined to liken it to an inner mechanism we don’t know about. Such a mechanism is supposed to result from the extraction process mentioned above. 3  As Peter Hacker (2013, p.  386) emphasizes: “The psycholinguists’ notion of concept-modules storing concepts in the brain, and words-modules storing words that name those concepts is incoherent. Concepts are not storable – anymore than are the powers of chess-pieces. One can store one’s chess-pieces in a box, but one cannot store the powers of chess-pieces in the same box, or in a different box, since they are not storable.” 4  Game is Wittgenstein’s most well-known example of a “blurred” concept (verschwommener Begriff). The adjective “blurred” refers to two different features: (1) there is not one single characteristic shared by everything we call “game,” no “essence” but multiple transitions and ramifications within the extension of the concept; (2) the external limits of the concept are blurry because, among other things, many practices can be considered games under certain circumstances and not within other contexts. See Fogelin (1977, p. 133). 2

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1976, p. 78). All in all, “having a concept in mind” is not intuiting or experiencing some kind of entity. The hypothesis of such a Fassung (grasping) is a main point of disagreement between Wittgenstein and Frege. According to the latter, meanings are timeless abstract entities nevertheless lending themselves to an intuitive grasping, and this grasping is supposed to be an episode of mental life whose nature remains entirely mysterious. But taking the problem the other way round and hypothesizing abstract entities bearing on our thought processes equally engenders obscurity (Wittgenstein 2009, I, §559).5 Wittgenstein considers the idea of an ethereal entity acting causally on our representational and linguistic skills a mythology he labels Bedeutungskörper [meaning body] Mythologie. Examining the nature of logical rules, he underscores that Two negations yield an affirmation is not to be understood on the model of Carbon and oxygen yield carbonic acid. This last sentence describes an autonomous process of nature. The first one must be understood as the expression of a rule and the rule, he adds, “doesn’t give a further description [of negation], it constitutes negation” (Wittgenstein 1978, p. 32). Hypothesizing a nature of negation that the so-called rule of negation would help to describe is a complete mistake. And from this there is a more general lesson to be learned: rules never respond to meaning, they constitute or stipulate meaning.6 And, strictly speaking, a sentence is not made out of meanings (Wittgenstein 1980a, §327). As he explains in the Philosophical Investigations (2009, II, §37): “The meaning of a word is not the ­experience one has in hearing or uttering it, and the sense of the sentence is not a complex of these experiences […] The sentence is composed of words, that is enough.” This last claim seems very trivial. What do we learn from reading that a sentence is made of words? This is something even a village idiot would know. The point of the whole passage is to reject the idea that sentences are composed not only of words, but also of meanings whose connection yields the sentence’s meaning. From the point of view of school grammar both the square has four sides and the square is round are correct as none of them violates any grammatical rule. But the second one  See also Ludwig Wittgenstein (1980a, §42–43) and Friedrich Waismann (1965, pp. 234–236).  “Rules do not follow from an act of comprehension. Analogously, we are tempted to think we can deduce the rules for the use of a word from its meaning, which we supposedly grasp as a whole when we pronounce the word” (Wittgenstein 1979, p. 51). 5 6

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looks semantically unacceptable and, upon noticing this, we might feel inclined to ascribe its discrepancy to entities located “behind” the words and incapable of fitting together. Wittgenstein tries to hold us back from making this move. The eradication of the Bedeutungskörper mythology gives emphasis to the common sense’s view that sentences are composed of words and leads to the conclusion that meanings cannot be entities the speaker gets in contact with while building up a sentence. And, as suggested in the quotation above, they cannot be experiences either.7 Nevertheless, Wittgenstein thematizes a so-called experience of meaning and devotes much attention, in various passages, to the description of what lacking such an experience would look like. The above suggests that this experience cannot be, strictly speaking, an experience whose object is meaning and this raises the question of the role it is supposed to play. In order to elucidate these issues, he introduces the idea of a meaning-blind speaker and tries to figure out how his deficiency would surface in his public behavior. By the same token, it’s even worth asking if the adjective “blind” is the best choice here as, normally, a blind person is someone lacking a sensation (Wittgenstein 1980a, §189). It’s difficult to evade the question of how these remarks and the general account of meaning we have recounted in this section can be pieced together and the remainder of this chapter is dedicated to this question.

2 Aspect-Perception and Aspect-Blindness We are confronted to a paradox: Wittgenstein discusses in detail what it is like to be meaning-blind and claims, on another note, that someone deprived of this so-called experience of meaning would not miss much: he insists that such an experience does not seem important to the use of language (Wittgenstein 1980a, §202). He also suggests that a meaning-­ blind speaker would speak like an automaton (Wittgenstein 1980a, §198). Using his own words, one could say that “fine shades of behavior”  “I am merely objecting to the idea that there must always be an experience there when we understand. For in great many cases in which we use the word ‘understand,’ we can substitute for it ‘knowing the use of ’” (Wittgenstein 1979, p. 80). 7

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(feine Abschattungen des Verhaltens) would distinguish a “meaning-­sighted” person from a meaning-blind one (Wittgenstein 2009, II, §180, 210). It is important to understand that meaning-blindness is a special kind of a larger phenomenon for which Wittgenstein coined the term aspect-­ blindness (Glock 1996, p.  39). Aspect-blindness is the inability to see aspects in certain objects, especially schematic drawings, paintings, and so on.8 Understanding what is at stake in such an inability requires that we first get an overview of the gamut of phenomena Wittgenstein labels aspect-perception: one can come across the drawing of a cube and see it as a box, as an electric equipment or as the illustration of the geometrical concept of cube. Such changes in one’s visual experience can be called aspect changes. They might be prompted by an instruction given to the viewer. It is important to notice that the use of the verb to see covers a categorial difference between different kinds of “objects” of sight: Two uses of the word “see.” The one “What do you see here?”—“I see this” (and then a description, a drawing, a copy). The other: “I see a likeness in these two faces”—let the man to whom I tell this be seeing the faces as clearly as I do myself. (Wittgenstein 2009, II §111) I observe a face, and then suddenly notice its likeness to another. I see that it has not changed; and yet I see it differently. I call this experience “noticing an aspect.” (Wittgenstein 2009 II, §113)9

The difference between seeing an object and seeing, for instance, a likeness between two faces, in other words the acknowledgment that the verb to see is far from being univocal, is central to the account of aspect-­ perception. But the word as is not univocal either. I can say that I see a creature as a giraffe and this can mean simply that I see this creature under the concept of giraffe: as, in such a context, is simply the expression  This is not to say that one cannot discover aspects in nature (a cliff in the evening light, looking like a human face, for instance) but the fact is that most examples provided by Wittgenstein are picture-objects such as the famous duck-rabbit. Cf. Wittgenstein (2009, II, §118). He also claims that it is characteristic of the aspect that something is seen in a picture. Cf. Wittgenstein (1980a, §1028). 9  See also Wittgenstein (1980a, §33). 8

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of a subsumption (Scheffler 1965, p. 41). Someone missing this concept could see the very same creature as a mammal, or simply as an animal. This would involve different conceptual perceptions but not different aspect perceptions: seeing a creature as an animal (and not as a giraffe) does not change anything to one’s visual experience. On the contrary, seeing a drawing alternately as a rabbit and as a duck yields such a change. Talking about seeing something as in such a case implies (1) that one is aware of the possibility that the drawing could be seen under another aspect and (2) that the aspects are mutually exclusive: experiencing both of them at the same time is impossible (Wittgenstein 2009, II, §157).10 Hence the idea of a shift in aspect. On the contrary, seeing a creature as a giraffe and seeing it as a mammal are not mutually exclusive. The most prominent features of aspect-perception can be summed up as follows: 1. Suddenness: The dawning of an aspect is sudden. A new aspect attracts attention and can cause surprise. This dawning can prompt a reexamination of the object revealing such an unexpected aspect. I can express my aspect-perception by an exclamation like “Now it’s a rabbit!” ­Contrary to simply saying “It’s a rabbit,” such a sentence is not a report of my perception. But it is still an expression of my visual impression: my visual experience has changed, but if I try to capture the nature of this change with the help of a drawing, I shall fail (Wittgenstein 2009, II, §131). The point is that seeing an aspect is often best described as a reaction (to a picture, for instance) in which the viewer is caught (Wittgenstein 1980a, §84). 2. Objectivity: Seeing an aspect not being a perceptual report, it does not inform us about the external world (Wittgenstein 1980a, §899). In his Philosophical Investigations (2009, II, §247), Wittgenstein insists that aspects are not properties of an object. Aspects are neither mere  Wittgenstein (2009, II, §118) introduces the idea of “continuous seeing of an aspect” (dem “stetigen Sehen” eines Aspekts) which he distinguishes from “an aspect lighting up.” Glock (op. cit., p. 40) suggests that such a continuous perception of an aspect is confined to drawings. I think that a grammatical point should be added: Avner Baz (2020, p. 27) underlines that the so-called continuous seeing of an aspect “is not simply a continuous version of what Wittgenstein elsewhere refers to as the ‘seeing of an aspect.’” His argument for this claim is that even someone we would rightly label aspect-blind would probably have the ability to “continuously see an aspect.” 10

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figments of our imagination nor objective components of the world (unlike being made of H2O molecules or weighing 215 pounds). As Avner Baz (2020, p. 25) says: “It is not objectively there; but neither have we placed it there just by imagining it there.” In other words, the ability to see aspects involves the exercising of imagination but this does not mean that the aspects are mere products of our fantasy. Let us examine an example: George and Edgar are two brothers and they look very much alike: they have the same morphology, the same tone of voice, and so on. Let us imagine someone recording and filming them and, upon watching the recorded film sequence, pointing out the similarities in their expressions, behaviors, and so on. The resemblances between the two brothers can be considered “objective,” if by this epithet we mean that they lend themselves to public check. But if (1) George is one of my closest friends and if (2) I have never been acquainted with Edgar so far and (3) see the two of them together for the first time, then I might have the unprecedented experience of seeing George under the aspect of his resemblance with Edgar. Contrary to the existing resemblances between George and Edgar, this “Edgar aspect” of George is not objective, but it is not something I invented either. Becoming conscious of it alters my visual experience of George.11 Someone previously acquainted with both George and Edgar would probably be aware of their resemblances. He could still have his attention attracted by one of these likenesses upon meeting them, but wouldn’t experience the novelty of the dawning of the “Edgar aspect.”12 And an aspect-blind person, seeing George and Edgar together for the first time, could probably inventory the likenesses between them and, yet, would be unable to

 “In the change of aspect, on becomes conscious of the aspect” (Wittgenstein 1982, §169).  “‘I noticed the likeness between him and his father for a few minutes and then no longer.’ One might say this if his face were changing and only looked like his father’s for a short time. But it can also mean that, after a few minutes, I stopped being struck by the likeness” (Wittgenstein 2009, II, § 239). 11 12

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experience the “Edgar aspect” of George or the “George aspect” of Edgar.13 3 . Voluntariness: Wittgenstein (2009, II, §248) claims that seeing is a state. But, in other passages, he seems ready to admit that the aspect is “subject to the will” (Wittgenstein 1980b, §544). How can seeing as be a state and be voluntary at the same time? Following an instruction such as “Try to see this ellipse as a flattened circle” is, for sure, voluntary (Wittgenstein 2009, II, §203). Accordingly, it makes sense to say that when someone wants to see an aspect and succeeds in seeing it, aspect-perception is voluntary. Nevertheless, an aspect can dawn on one without one willing to see it. Besides, one can comply with the instruction and look consequently at the ellipse in a certain way without being successful at conjuring up the aspect. In such a case, it is more accurate to say that it is one’s looking at or paying attention to the ellipse that is voluntary. Moreover, one might not be wanting to see an aspect one is seeing, try to get rid of it and be successful or not in doing so. Here the situation is very similar to the one of a day dreamer trying to banish traumatic images besetting him (Wittgenstein 1980b, §83, 86). Imagining, in such a case, is voluntary in a minimal sense: one can try to banish these disturbing images and such a trial would have no point in the case of a disturbing perceived scene. In sum, regarding this issue, an appropriate conclusion is provided by Wittgenstein himself: “We can produce a change of aspect, and it can also occur against our will” (Wittgenstein 1982, § 612). 4. Seeing aspects and interpreting: Seeing as is close to interpreting and interpreting is doing something. This echoes our previous remarks about the voluntariness of aspect-perception. Nevertheless, seeing as being a state, it cannot be reduced to an act of interpretation even if  Wittgenstein doesn’t come to a clear-cut conclusion regarding how extended the perceptual inabilities of an aspect-blind person are (see, e.g., Wittgenstein 2009, II, §257). It’s worth noticing that we can all display such a blindness under certain circumstances. An appropriate instruction (or suggestion) can be an effective remedy to this temporary blindness (a caption under a picture in a museum often plays a similar role as it orients the visitor’s visual experience). 13

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such an act does intervene. There is such a thing as an aspect-­perception when the interpretation is, so to speak, embodied in the visual experience [sie verkörpert sich auch gleich im Geschehen]. One does not only interpret a figure but dresses it with its interpretation (Wittgenstein 1980a, §33). Under certain circumstances, we are indeed able to see according to an interpretation (Wittgenstein 2009, II, §164). But this account is not entirely convincing: an interpretation is a conjecture that might well later prove false and being identified as false is not something that can happen to sentences like “I see this figure as an F.” There is even no point in speaking of a control in such a case (Wittgenstein 1980a, §8). Nevertheless, the idea that something similar to interpretation intervenes in the grasping of an aspect draws our attention on the role played by thought and conceptualization in the occurrence of aspects: “The lighting up of an aspect is half visual experience and half thought” (Wittgenstein 2009, II, §140, 248). When I describe an aspect, my description involves concepts that do not belong to the description of the figure as such (Wittgenstein 1980a, §1030). In sum, thought is involved in aspect-perception to varying degrees. Seeing a drawing alternately as a duck and as a rabbit would be impossible without the mastery of the concepts of duck and of rabbit. 5. Seeing as and imagination: Peter Hacker (2013, pp.  415–416) has insisted that imagination is a multifocal concept. One of its focuses is the sub-concept of perceptual imagination. This is precisely the kind of imagination involved in experiencing aspects. Obviously, seeing a triangular figure as a picture of an object that has fallen over demands imagination (Wittgenstein 2009, II, §217). Like thought, imagination can intervene to various degrees. Hans-Johann Glock (1996, p.  39) explains that: An aspect-blind person could apply a new description, use, for example, the schematic drawing of a cube as a picture of a threedimensional object. But he would not experience this as seeing something different, experiencing a jump in aspect, and would not recognize the incompatibility with treating it as a two-dimensional complex of three parallelograms. His defect is not of sight but of imagination.

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This doesn’t mean that an aspect is a mental image (in fact, mental imagery is another focus of the concept of imagination). It only demonstrates that seeing an aspect and imagining something are related concepts (Wittgenstein 1980b, §543). The very idea of a perceptual imagination refers to this relation.

3 “Experiencing” Meaning As the concept of experiencing the meaning of a word and the concept of seeing an aspect are closely connected (Wittgenstein 2009, II, §261), the features listed in the previous section can be found, mutatis mutandis, in typical cases of the so-called experience of meaning. Wittgenstein has dedicated a lot of attention to ordinary expressions such as “thinking in one’s head” or “having an idea in one’s head.” These expressions have been inculcated in us on our parent’s knees. But do we really have a feeling that we think with our head (Gefühl des Denkens im Kopf)? Wittgenstein suggests that our inclination to believe that our thoughts have a location [ein Ort des Denkens] is similar to our tendency to assume the existence of Bedeutungskörper (as we have seen, the belief in meaning bodies is the belief that we have some kind of contact with abstract entities located behind the words): both beliefs pertain to what Wittgenstein labels mythologies (= mistakes rooted in conceptual confusions). In the present case, the ambiguity of the word “feeling” is responsible for the confusion. We do not feel our thoughts going on somewhere like we feel a sting in our left arm (Wittgenstein 1980a, §350) or a bump in the mattress. Feeling a bump is perceiving it and we do not have such a perception in the case of the so-called location of our thoughts as there is no such thing as an internal sensory organ informing us about our thought processes. We do not have any perception of abstract (and extra-mental) entities such as meanings either. In other words, if Wittgenstein is right, expressions such as “thinking in one’s head” are misconstrued if we interpret them as reporting experiences about our thought processes: we do not have any experience of our thoughts being located somewhere, although various experiences can be

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connected to the use of these expressions. In sum, confusion sneaks in when, talking about experiences appended to the use of sentences such as “I am calculating in my head” or “I am thinking (or reflecting on something) in my head,” we mistake them for a kind of perceptual account. In conclusion, words such as “feeling” or “experience” can mislead us as they can be used to refer both to perceptions and to the Gefühle rooted in our inclination to use certain turns of phrase. The feeling that we think with our head can be considered a paradigmatic example of feeling appended to the use of a term or a phrase. Another example is the impression we get when we read expressively a word that “it is completely filled with meaning” (Wittgenstein 2009, II, §265). It would be wrong to read such a sentence on the model of “the bottle is completely filled with alcohol.” Again, we can perceive the alcohol in the bottle (and even taste it if we will), but there is no such thing, strictly speaking, as perceiving a meaning filling a word. Nevertheless, having learned precociously this turn of phrase, a halo of experiences evolves in connection with its repeated use. This results in this expression forcing itself on us. In the same order of ideas, we sometimes come across words we feel inclined to describe as having a “slight aroma” or an “atmosphere” (Wittgenstein 1980a, §243). This seems especially true of proper names such as “Mozart” or “Beethoven” that we are sometimes inclined to describe as having a particular “character” in addition to their institutionalized use. Wittgenstein (1980a, §293) claims that the possible uses of an expression (Möglichkeiten der Verwendung eines Ausdrucks) seem to “float” around us, so to speak. The important point in that respect seems to be that such an experience might be of importance to us, but it remains that we understand other people without asking them if they have the same Erlebnisse (experiences). In other words, such a feeling of floating meaning possibilities does not seem to have any crucial role in communication. This is the reason why communication with a meaning-blind speaker who is deprived of such Erlebnisse is not especially hindered. Nevertheless, one could think that feelings connected to the use of phrase turns might have a cognitive role. In French, the verb laver (to wash) is used correctly only if the action involves the use of water, contrary to nettoyer (to clean). Accordingly, someone using the expression

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laver à sec (dry washing) would be making a mistake. And an interlocutor having a normal command of French, upon hearing such a phrase, would probably have a feeling of error, resulting from his mastery of the semantic rules of French language and this mastery can be purely practical: it is very possible that the rule, as stated above, has never crossed the hearer’s mind, that he has never consulted it (Wittgenstein 2009, I, §82). Such a feeling would have a cognitive role. Wittgenstein, as far as I know, does not say anything on that topic. His main concerns seems to be with the feelings frequently connected to words and he aims at showing that they can occur and recur (at least if the speaker is not meaning-blind) although meaning is nothing but the use of words. This can be accounted for by referring to the connection to aspect-perception. Aspects, as we have seen, are not objective properties of objects. Similarly, meaning experiences, atmospheres, halos, characters, whatever you call them, are not properties of meaning either: such concepts do not have any crucial role in the explanation of how meaning works. But they are important to the description of how the use of language, as a rule-guided activity, echoes variously in the Erlebnisse of speaking individuals.

4 Conclusion In other words, although unimportant to the account of meaning understood as a collective institution, linguistic feelings are central to the description of the relation individuals have with such institution. There is a simple way of explaining their importance. Wittgenstein’s rule-based account of meaning brings out its intersubjectivity and, as we have seen, demonstrates that this intersubjectivity does not involve the grasping, by various subjects, of identical “objective” meanings. Regarding the so-­ called experience of meaning, it reveals the various ways in which individuals subjectively relate to the social and institutionalized dimension of linguistic practices. This does not boil down to saying that meaning has a subjective aspect. Rather, it suggests that the rule-guided working of language echoes variously in speakers’ mental life. And the existence of such echoes accounts for our inability to provide a full simulation of language use by automatons and machines.

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References Baz, Avner. 2020. The significance of aspect perception. Cham: Springer. Fogelin, Robert. 1977. Wittgenstein. London: Routledge. Glock, Hans-Johann. 1996. Wittgenstein dictionary. Oxford: Blackwell. Goodman, Nelson. 1976. The languages of art. Indianapolis: Hackett. Hacker, Peter. 2013. The intellectual powers. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Harris, Roy. 1990. Language, Saussure and Wittgenstein. London: Routledge. Malcolm, Norman. 1994. Wittgenstein: A religious point of view? Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Scheffler, Israel. 1965. Science and subjectivity. Indianapolis: Hackett. Waismann, Friedrich. 1965. In Principles of linguistic philosophy, ed. Rom Harré, 1st ed. London: Macmillan. Winch, Peter. 1958. The idea of a social science. London: Routledge. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1978. Philosophical grammar. Oxford: Blackwell. ———. 1979. In Wittgenstein’s lectures 32–35, ed. Alice Ambrose and Margaret Macdonald. Oxford: Blackwell. ———. 1980a. Remarks on the philosophy of psychology. Vol. 1. Oxford: Blackwell. ———. 1980b. Remarks on the philosophy of psychology. Vol. 2. Oxford: Blackwell. ———. 1982. In Last writings on the philosophy of psychology, ed. Georg Henrik von Wright and Heikki Nyman, vol. 1. Oxford: Blackwell. ———. 2009. Philosophical investigations. ed. Peter  Hacker and Joachim Schulte. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Part II Current Scientific and Philosophical Perspectives on Linguistic Feeling

8 Intuitions in Linguistics: A Blessing or a Curse? Els Elffers

Long ago, the Greek grammarian Apollonius Dyscolus (second century AD) criticized the Aristotelian view that only nouns and verbs are genuine words, whereas members of other word classes only serve as “glue or binding agent” between nouns and verbs.1 Apollonius presents articles as counterexamples: in the man walks about (ho anthropos peripatei), the article ho (the) bears a relationship to the noun, but not to the verb. Adverbs are mentioned as examples of the converse situation: bearing a relation only to the verb. Even real “binders,” such as conjunctions (sundesmoi), do not bind together nouns and verbs: we do not say Tryphon and reads (Tryphon kai anagognoskei). Instead, they bind similar elements, for example, a noun and a noun, as in Theon and Tryphon (Matthews 1994, p. 31).  I dedicate this chapter to my former colleague Sies de Haan. Our narrow cooperation during the late 1970s laid a firm foundation for developing my present ideas about linguistic intuitions. 1

E. Elffers (*) University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Romand, M. Le Du (eds.), Emotions, Metacognition, and the Intuition of Language Normativity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17913-6_8

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In this very early example of grammatical argumentation, appeal is made to facts about Greek, Apollonius’ mother tongue. How did he establish these facts? We can safely assume that Apollonius did not collect large corpora of spoken or written Greek texts, nor that he elicited judgments of large numbers of native speakers of Greek. He undoubtedly consulted his own knowledge of his language, and produced what are nowadays called intuitive judgments or intuitions about the language phenomena at issue. Since Apollonius’ days, linguists have been operating in exactly this way, although the expression linguistic intuitions has been applied only recently.2 Of course, other methods of data gathering are also applied, depending on the research object: text corpora (indispensable for historical linguistics), questionnaires and informant responses (indispensable for foreign language research), and experimental elicitation (indispensable for child language research). But for linguists investigating their mother tongue, the empirical basis has always largely consisted of self-­ intuited data. We can only agree with Newmeyer’s (1983, p. 49) statement about this practice: “In fact, dismissing such data is tantamount to dismissing work ranging from the ancient Sanskrit and Greek grammarians to every modern school of linguistics.” This quotation suggests that “dismissing such data” is a seriously defended idea, and this is indeed the case. The appeal to linguistic intuitions became controversial in the course of the twentieth century and has remained so up to today. The first doubts arose in the first half of the twentieth century, as a corollary of increasing methodological rigor, and especially logical-empiricist influences on the humanities and the social sciences. Current sources of knowledge in these areas were scrutinized and often criticized as too unreliable. Especially in America, the research areas of psychology and (psycho-)linguistics were redefined in terms of sensory perceptible behavior. Data based upon sources such as “feeling,” “introspection,” “intuition” were regarded as highly unreliable, irrelevant, or even non-existent. In linguistics, American structuralism redefined the object of research in terms of sound waves produced by language users, together with behavioral reactions to these physical phenomena.  Linguistic intuitions are extensively discussed in Schindler et al. (2020).

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Generative grammar, initiated by Chomsky during the 1950s, revolutionized the American structuralist program, including its anti-intuition attitude. Chomsky’s statement “The empirical data I want to explain are the native speaker’s intuitions” became the general guideline for generative linguistics, which soon became the most prominent linguistic approach.3 Never before had linguistic methodology been described in this way.4 The new conception of grammars as explanatory theories about unlimited amounts of intuitively available data triggered an unprecedented eagerness to gather these data and build theories upon them. As a result, Newmeyer (1983, p. 9) has no difficulty in enumerating many new generalizations about syntactic processes in English, made possible by what he calls the “methodological revolution” of intensive use of intuitive data. Especially the appeal to intuitions about what is linguistically impossible, although already practiced by Apollonius Dyscolus, as observed above, increased enormously, and made restrictions on syntactic processes visible. At first sight, this intensified use of intuitions has the appearance of a blessing for linguistics, especially for syntax. However, clouds appeared on the horizon from the very beginning of generativism. Serious objections were raised to Chomsky’s redefinition of linguistic data as “the native speaker’s intuitions.” Not only linguists, but also psycholinguists, sociolinguists, and philosophers argued, and still do, against this idea. The most current objection is the alleged unreliability of linguistic intuitions. Denying linguistics the status of a serious science is the most severe corollary of this view; cf. Sampson (1975, p. 60): “If linguistics is indeed based on intuition, then it is not a science.” Most criticisms are not that destructive and do not involve a total abandonment of intuitions. Various kinds of proposals are made for a more controlled use of them. For example, an extension of the number of informants is required, from one, namely the linguist himself, to a well-­ balanced group of native speakers.  Chomsky has often repeated this statement. This quotation is from Chomsky’s contribution “A Transformational Approach to Syntax” to the 1958 Texas Conference on problems of linguistic analysis in English. Cf. Chomsky (1962). 4  Some anticipations in Saussure’s work are argued for in Siouffi (2021). 3

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During the last half century, there has been a permanent discussion of the “intuitions problem.” Remarkably, research practice based upon the linguist’s intuitions went on, hardly disturbed by the storms of criticism and hardly sensitive to correction proposals. If, however, there is a grain of truth in the objections, this continuation of intense and unqualified use of intuitions could turn out to be a curse for linguistics rather than a blessing. In this chapter, I shall defend the view that intuitions as used in current research practice are the linguist’s blessing, be it not without some qualifications. Current objections against intuitions are for a large part caused by erroneous ideas about linguistic intuitions, which have led to fruitless attempts to improve linguistic research practice. Linguists’ reluctance to follow these attempts is a blessing, not a curse. Exploring the preliminary question of what intuitions actually are, in general and in linguistics in particular, is crucial to my argumentation. Sections 1 and 2 will deal with these issues. In Sect. 3, I shall critically discuss Chomsky’s influential view of linguistic intuitions. Section 4 will deal with the objections that were raised to the idea of intuitions as linguistic data. I shall argue that the Chomskyan view of intuitions is the actual problem, not the intuition-based linguistic practice itself. In Sect. 5 a counter-movement will be made: linguistic practice does not remain entirely undamaged by misconceptions about intuitions. Conclusions will be presented in Sect. 6.

1 Intuitions: What Are they? Throughout the centuries, the term intuition has been applied to widely diverse phenomena, varying from divine revelations to commonplace hunches. In philosophical contexts, intuition constitutes an epistemological category: the term refers to a certain type of knowledge, namely knowledge by direct apprehension, which means: non-reflective, non-­ inferential knowledge. In the words of Osbeck and Held (2014, p. 7): “A crude summary of what is common to the divergent senses or versions of intuition across at least a broad sample of its philosophical history is that

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of an intellectual faculty of direct apprehension, one contrasted, that is, with inference or deduction (which are indirect).” In philosophy, explicit appeal to intuitions has traditionally been made in, for example, logic, epistemology, and moral philosophy. Outside philosophy, intuition traditionally plays a variable role in mathematics and psychology. Its prominent explicit role in linguistics is of recent date. In ordinary life, “intuition” is a current term to refer to unverified,5 but “felt” knowledge.6 Just like knowledge, intuition suffers from a systematic ambiguity between psychical phenomena and their content. Intuition may refer to the process of immediate and unreflective apprehension and to its result, the apprehended content. Moreover, there is a meaning without counterpart in knowledge: capacity to immediate and unreflective apprehension. In this chapter, only the content meaning is relevant. The data Chomsky refers to in the above quotation are alleged linguistic facts, grasped intuitively by the native speaker. It is this use of the term intuition that became current (and controversial) in linguistics from around 1960. Earlier, the term was hardly used in linguistics. When it was used, the capacity meaning was dominant, in line with German Sprachgefühl.7 Traditionally, the basic, non-inferential character of intuitions was equated with their status of evident, infallible a priori knowledge. Philosophical currents made different assumptions about the types of knowledge that hold this status, however. They also differed in their ontological assumptions about intuited objects. These are conceived as psychological phenomena—in this case intuition is introspection—or as phenomena belonging to some abstract, for example, Platonic, reality. Popper (1969) explains that in earlier varieties of rationalism (Plato) and empiricism (Aristotle, Bacon) all knowledge was thought to be directly available to human beings, through intuition or sense perception  Most philosophers regard sense perception as a separate type of immediate apprehension. A minority considers sense perception as a subcategory of intuition. 6  The link between “intuition” and “felt knowledge” is made particularly palpable in German, the term traditionally used for “intuitive” being gefühlsmäßig. 7  Cf. Fortis (2019 and Chap. 5 of this volume) for Sapir’s use of intuition as a capacity, which was inspired by Croce’s and Jung’s use of the term. For Sprachgefühl, see Unterberg (2020 and Chap. 2 of this volume). 5

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respectively. In Plato’s Meno, Socrates guides the mathematical intuitions of a young uneducated slave, so that he “recalls” the proof of Pythagoras’ theorem. For Aristotle, induction results in perceiving the true nature of things. In Popper’s (1969) words, these philosophies embodied the doctrine that “truth is manifest.” Accordingly, knowledge is justified by its sacrosanct sources (intuition or senses), which are innate in human beings. The corollary of this view is that error is caused by a disturbed appeal to these sources, through prejudices or false beliefs. Error can be repaired, however, by a “therapeutic” process, so that true knowledge can be attained after all. Socrates’ maieutic method, Descartes’ method of systematic doubt and Bacon’s purging of the mind from “idols” are all examples of methods to eventually arrive at the self-evident truth (Popper 1969, p. 15). Later rationalists and empiricists rejected this all-encompassing idea of immediately available and infallible truth, which was incompatible with the enormous changes in western science from the seventeenth century onward. Newer types of rationalism and empiricism restrict truth is manifest to some privileged categories of “foundational” intuitions and “observation sentences,” which provide a bedrock of indubitable knowledge, functioning as endpoint of the chain of justification of statements in terms of other statements. Non-basic statements are regarded as the scientist’s fallible theoretical inferences from basic statements. So intuitions fulfill an important function in so-called justificationist types of epistemology. For early justificationism, all types of knowledge can be justified by a direct appeal to their sources. Later justificationism restricts this appeal to some “basic” types of knowledge. Only relatively recently has justificationism been seriously challenged. From the 1950s onward, critical rationalist philosophers (e.g., Popper) denied the existence of a basis of privileged pre-theoretically evident knowledge.8 All judgments, intuitive and observational judgments included, involve interpretation in the light of background knowledge  Non-justificationism was defended through several lines of argumentation, which cannot be discussed here separately. I suffice with mentioning the Duhem-Quine thesis, implying that hypotheses cannot be tested in isolation by checking specific “basic” facts, but only in relation to the total “web of belief.” See for instructive information about critical rationalism and (non-)justificationism Wetterston’s contribution to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Wetterston 2022). 8

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and are, therefore, theory-laden. Consequently, no statement is principally immune to falsification, no concept is immune to revision. What are intuitions in a post-justificationist era? Phenomenologically they remain what they always were: immediate, non-inferential judgments. But their epistemological status has changed dramatically. In a naturalized epistemology, intuitions no longer provide an a priori basis of manifest truth. They are ordinary judgments, only differing from other judgments “by being fairly immediate and unreflective” (Devitt 2006a, p. 10). They are theory-laden but theory does not play a conscious role in their use. This situation applies, first, when naïve concepts are used. Naïve concepts, such as many concepts used in daily life, are applied directly, without conscious processes of checking characterizing features; they hardly “have” such features, and which of them are defining is undetermined. Naïve concepts gradually become theoretical concepts when they are embedded in more and more refined theoretical networks. During this process, they acquire defining features. This results in reflective concept use..9 Second, theoretical concepts may be used intuitively, when they are applied by experts. After reaching a theoretical status, a concept’s earlier more naïve intuitive application becomes obsolete and is properly dubbed “unreliable.”10 Disease concepts are good examples, given their rapidly changing theoretical load and concomitant changing diagnostics. However, a physician may acquire, through intensive practice, a diagnostic sensitivity that makes non-inferential use of theoretical disease concepts reliable, at least in clear cases. In unclear cases, the concepts’ theoretical load is activated. These expert intuitions can be found in many professional practices. Comparable to automatization of learned physical movements, theoretical concept application may become unreflective

 The transition from naïve to theoretical concepts is beautifully illustrated by developments of the mathematical concept “polyhedron” in Lakatos (1976). See Kornblith (1998) for a clear and instructive explanation of the naturalized view of intuition. 10  This explains the “hunch” meaning of “intuition.” 9

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Table 8.1  Justificationist versus naturalized views of intuitions Intuitive judgments Status Content Availability Process Error

Justificationism

Naturalism

Pre-theoretical, evident, truth guaranteed by source Fixed Egalitarian Access to source Distorted access. Reaction: “therapy”

Theory-laden, hypothetical, fallible Variable Dependent on expertise New thought Falsification. Reaction: theoretical innovation

through cognitive automatization. In this way, expert intuitions may be part of current scientific practice.11 Expert intuitions change when theories change. Theories build on (“reconstruct”) earlier intuitive concept use and, in turn, induce intuitions of a new type. In philosophy, the expression reflective equilibrium was introduced to refer to this type of interaction between intuitions and theory development.12 Table 8.1 summarizes the differences between justificationist and naturalized views of intuitive judgments:

2 Linguistic Intuitions What can we learn about linguistic intuitions, taking into account what was said thus far about intuitions in general? When we look at linguistic practice, linguistic judgments appear to exhibit all features of expert intuitions. Devitt (2020, pp. 54–55) rightly compares linguistic intuitions with a paleontologist’s immediate identification of a white stone as a pig’s jawbone, or an art expert’s immediate recognition of an allegedly old Greek statue as a fake: “Perceptions of  The difference between expert intuitions and inferential expert judgments has been investigated intensively during the last few decades. The “dual system approach” accounts for their difference in terms of two separate, but often interacting, mental systems, responsible for “fast” and “slow” thinking processes. Cf. Cokeley and Feltz (2014) and Kahneman (2011). 12  Reflective equilibrium was introduced in Goodman (1955). The term was coined in Rawls (2005 [1971]). 11

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strings (of words, E.E.) […] can yield theory-laden intuitions about the properties of the strings in just the same way in which perceptions of a white stone or a marble statue can yield theory-laden intuitions about the properties of these entities. And the greater the expertise, the more theory-­laden the intuitions.” Linguistic concepts that occur in intuitive judgments, such as “grammaticality,” “ambiguity,” and “synonymy,” are not daily life notions and are, therefore, never entirely naïve. Learning to apply them means acquiring a general language-oriented attitude. In the case of “grammaticality,” it requires, moreover, the ability to distinguish grammatical (im)possibility from semantic and pragmatic (im)possibility, and from other types of queerness. Other concepts (“ambiguity,” “synonymy”) have their own equally sophisticated requirements. So it is quite understandable that linguists appeal to their own (and their colleagues’) use of these concepts. Once acquired, such concepts can be applied immediately and unreflectively by experts, at least to clear cases. In unclear cases, theoretical aspects of the concepts are activated, so that unclear cases may become clear cases. For example, in Emonds (1976), unclarity about sentences such as I believe that an A, you’ll never get in that class was turned into clear ungrammaticality judgments through a check, based upon Emonds’ theory about restrictions on topicalized sentences.13 When it comes to problematic cases, theory is not equipped to decide, and has to be further elaborated. This occurred, for example, when Chomsky made “identical presuppositions” a defining feature of the concept “synonymy,” thus allowing the conclusion “not synonymous” as the solution for the problematic synonymy of dissuade and persuade not, which led to conflicting intuitions between Chomsky and Lakoff (Chomsky 1972, p. 149).14 Developments in linguistics during the 1960s did not go unnoticed in branches of philosophy that simultaneously developed a naturalized view of intuitions. Significantly, some philosophers referred to Chomsky’s work as an instructive example. For instance, in moral philosophy, Rawls  This example is discussed in Newmeyer (1983, p. 54), together with Ross’ (1968) judgment that these sentences are grammatical, which was based upon his own theory of topicalization. The Emonds-Ross difference illustrates the variable working of reflective equilibrium. 14  The case is discussed in Botha (1973, pp. 213–214). 13

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(2005 [1971], p. 49) describes the reflective equilibrium between moral intuitions and moral rules, and claims that linguists’ “sense of grammaticalness” may be similarly affected by linguistic theory. In the same vein, Scheffler (1970 [1963], pp. 7–14) regards philosophy of science as a discipline that reconstructs, not simply describes intuitions about, for example, the concept “theory.” He claims that linguists similarly reconstruct grammatical concepts “over and beyond conventional interpretations” (Scheffler 1970 [1963], p. 8). Therefore, according to Scheffler, linguists studying their mother tongue would never engage in eliciting judgments from non-professional informants.

3 Chomsky’s View of Linguistic Intuitions What Rawls and Scheffler thought to have learnt from Chomsky is not what Chomsky had taught; they created Chomsky in their own image. The naturalized view of linguistic intuitions presented above is not Chomsky’s view, nor that of most other linguists. Throughout the years, only a small minority of scholars objected to Chomsky’s view and presented some variety of naturalism as an alternative. Devitt is by far the most well-known of them.15 From 2006 onward, he has discussed linguistic intuitions in a series of publications, in which he developed a full-­ fledged naturalized view (cf., e.g., Devitt 2006a, 2006b, 2020). What is Chomsky’s view? For Chomsky, the linguist’s data are the intuitions of the native speaker. Despite general linguistic practice, including his own, Chomsky takes the attribution of intuitive linguistic knowledge to non-expert native speakers seriously. He assumes that the competence of their native language that speakers acquire—as far as it is not innate—allows them not only to speak and understand, but also to produce veridical intuitive judgments about this competence. These intuitions are “already there” and lay ready to be observed introspectively. Their status is, therefore, purely factual and fixed. The concepts figuring  Arguments for a non-justificationist view of linguistic intuitions are presented in De Haan (1978) and Elffers (1978). In Pullum (2017), reflective equilibrium is argued to apply to linguistic intuitions. 15

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in the judgments belong to the native speakers’ psychical make-up. The linguist has no special task with respect to these concepts, other than recording their intuition-based applications. Given this perspective, the Chomskyan view leaves no room for expert-­ related intellectual processes, such as redefinition, reconstruction, re-­ interpretation “over and beyond conventional interpretations,” in short: theoretical and conceptual change (Scheffler 1970 [1963], p.  8). A theory-­driven change of a linguist’s “sense of grammaticalness” cannot exist either. We have to conclude that Chomsky’s conception of linguistic intuition represents a purely justificationist view, in line with views that used to be current in philosophy, but soon disappeared during the years he developed his generative program. This view was uncritically accepted by other linguists who adopted Chomsky’s linguistic approach. Linguistic texts began to abound with allegedly “evident,” and even “instinctively known” data. After some time, data were simply presented, without explicit reference to their epistemological status (cf. Botha 1973, p. 186). Two objections to my way of rendering Chomsky’s view might be made. First, Chomsky’s distinction between grammaticality, a theoretical-­ linguistic notion, and acceptability, a common sense notion, referring to “naturalness” of utterances, appears to indicate that he does not overlook the influence of expertise on intuitions. Second, Chomsky fully recognizes the possibility that intuitions are mistaken, which may suggest an a posteriori status rather than a pre-theoretical, evident status. As to the first objection, Chomsky (1965, pp. 10–15) introduced the distinction between grammaticality and acceptability on behalf of his explanation of the distinction between competence and performance, without any reference to acceptability judgments as possible data. In his explanation of the linguist’s data only grammaticality judgments are at issue, alongside other types of judgments, for example, about structural ambiguities, paraphrases, and synonymy. Later generative linguists began to attribute only the capacity to produce acceptability (not grammaticality) judgments to non-expert native speakers. However, other types of intuitions, most of them more expertise-requiring than grammaticality-­ intuitions, did not acquire such a common sense counterpart. Moreover, acceptability intuitions of native speakers can only be useful data for the

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linguist, if linguistic acceptability judgments are elicited, which brings acceptability, again, near to grammaticality (Devitt 2006b, p. 490). As to the second objection, Chomsky’s remark that “introspective judgments are not sacrosanct and beyond any conceivable doubt” and that “their correctness can be challenged and supported in many ways” (Chomsky 1970 [1964], p. 57) only seemingly refers to processes of theoretical discussion and innovation. Passages in Chomsky (1965, pp. 18–27) indicate a different interpretation. Cases of incorrect intuitions are presented and explained as results of “looking inside” too superficially. Native speakers’ intuitions may very well be “not immediately available.” An example is the intuition that I had a book stolen has “at least three structural descriptions.” But such facts can be “brought to consciousness,” especially with some help of the linguist, for example, through presenting slight elaborations of the sentences, which make the ambiguity more observable. Chomsky regards this as “guiding and drawing out the speaker’s intuition,” which allows him to “determine what is the actual character of his knowledge of his language,” a technique “as old as Plato’s Meno” but “too often overlooked.” A clearer symptom of what Chomsky actually means by “challenging” intuitions than his appeal to this early and long abandoned type of justificationism can hardly be given. Devitt (2006a) introduced the eloquent expression Voice of Competence (VoC) to refer to Chomsky’s view that “linguistic competence alone provides information about the linguistic facts” and that “a speaker has a privileged access to facts about the language, facts captured by the intuitions, simply in virtue of being competent” (Devitt 2006a, p. 96). In the rest of this chapter I shall adopt Devitt’s terminology. VoC is, by the way, not the only justificationist view of linguistic intuitions. In reaction to Chomsky’s psychologist view of language, some scholars, for example, Itkonen (1978) and Katz (1981) developed an ontologically different view of language, but retained the view that native speakers have direct access to this non-psychological reality and can thus produce infallible linguistic intuitions.16 I will not discuss these views in  Itkonen incorporates language in a non-empirical realm of “common knowledge,” Katz in a Platonic reality. 16

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this chapter. Actually, objections against linguists’ appeal to intuitive judgments, discussed in the next section, are always made against mainstream justificationism (VoC).

4 Linguistic Intuitions in the Line of Fire As soon as native speakers’ linguistic intuitions were introduced as the linguist’s data, objections arose in all shapes and sizes. It is significant that problematic aspects of intuitions were put forward at the first big conferences (Texas 1958 and Cambridge, MA 1962) where Chomsky presented his program (Chomsky 1962, 1964). In a few years, psychologists, psycholinguists, and philosophers had joined the linguists as critical discussants of problems with linguistic intuitions. Their involvement gradually overshadowed the involvement of linguists. Among practicing linguists, most early critics were members of the older generation, whereas a newer generation largely adopted Chomsky’s view. During the last few decades, however, proponents of new approaches such as usage-based linguistics raised new objections to intuitions. For philosophers and psychologists, the problems have retained their stubbornness until the present day. In the following subsections, the objections will be summarized and commented, more or less following the chronology of their being raised for the first time.

4.1 Remnants of Behaviorism The first objections to linguistic intuitions resulted from a logical-­ empiricist, behaviorist perspective on linguistics. This is not at all surprising; Chomsky’s program was launched in the heyday of attempts to make psychology and social sciences more scientific by replacing allegedly suspect mentalistic talk by allegedly clear descriptions in terms of sensory perceptible behavior. Levelt (2013, p.  241) characterizes this period as mainly occupied by translating “mentalese” into “behaviorese” at the expense of substantial scientific work.

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In this intellectual climate, Chomsky’s new and atypical focus on intuitions, was rejected by many scholars as unscientific. Proposals were made to banish intuitions altogether, or at least to “translate” them, which meant developing behavioral tests for, for example, “grammaticality.” Behavioral tests were a hot topic at the 1958 conference. Remarkably, Chomsky himself was still ambivalent in those days. Despite his explicit claim about intuitions constituting the linguist’s data at this very conference (cited in the introduction of this chapter), he also presented a negative view of intuitions and a positive, though pessimistic view of behavioral tests, saying that he “dislikes reliance on intuition as much as anyone, but if we are in such a bad state that it is only intuition that we are using, then we should admit it.” We must, however, “try to refine it by testing” (Chomsky 1962, p. 177).17 Behaviorism was gradually fading out during the 1960s, so this variety of anti-intuitionism was disappearing soon, also from Chomsky’s methodological statements.18

4.2 Disbelief at Native Speakers’ Intuitions A rather “basic” disbelief in the capacity of uneducated native speakers to judge sentences in terms of grammaticality, ambiguity, and so on was a widespread reaction to the generative program after its introduction. European linguists especially, who, more than their American colleagues, were aware of the theoretical struggles behind many linguistic terms, felt baffled at his idea. But also in America, for example, Hill (1961) concluded that non-expert native speakers are unable to make linguistic judgments, after an experiment with allegedly clear cases of ­(un)grammaticality, which resulted in a wild diversity of judgments between experimental subjects. As linguistic intuitions embody claims of propositional knowledge (e.g., about the grammaticality of a string of words), it was almost  Chomsky’s initial preference for and later rejection of behavioral tests are discussed in several contributions to the volume Chomskyan (R)evolutions (Kibbee 2010). 18  Today, Chomsky is often regarded as having actively contributed to the decline of behaviorism, mainly through his seminal review of Skinner’s Verbal Behaviour (Chomsky 1959). 17

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historically inevitable that the philosopher Ryle’s (1968 [1949]) distinction between “knowing how” (skills) and “knowing that” (propositional knowledge) was applied to the intuitions controversy. Indeed, quite a few philosophers and linguists appealed to this distinction in order to argue that linguistic competence is of the “knowing how” type (Harman 1969, p. 145; Stich 1971, p. 496; Sampson 1975, p. 75). In recent cognitive psychology the issue is reframed in terms of “declarative knowledge” versus “procedural knowledge.” The pairs of concepts differ in their theoretical elaboration, but also when the newer distinction is applied to the language knowledge of native speakers, this capacity is argued to belong to the counterpart of “knowing how”: procedural knowledge (Devitt 2006a, pp. 47, 217). The general conclusion is forcefully worded by the philosopher Stich (1971, p. 75): “Competent speakers, qua speakers, know nothing.”

4.3 Native Speakers’ Intuitions: Unsuitable as Linguistic Data Unlike Hill, many psycholinguists who encountered chaotic results of experiments with linguistic judgments of native speakers did not decide on their inability to make linguistic judgments, but to the unreliability of the experimental results, due to their sensibility to irrelevant influences. This is a current problem of psychological research, and the reactions were in line with current methodology. First, intuitions were compared to other competence manifestations, to the detriment of intuitions. Compared to speaking and understanding, regarded as primary manifestations of linguistic competence, metalinguistic behavior was regarded as secondary, and, moreover, as a psychological terra incognita.19 This argued against their prominent role in generative linguistics, as emphasized by Levelt (2008 [1974], p. 6):

 The expression “metalinguistic behavior” applies to all linguistic behavior that refers to language in the broadest sense. Intuitive judgments about properties of words or sentences belong to this category, but also a sentence such as “John beat Mary and vice versa” has metalinguistic features. 19

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[N]othing is known of the origin of linguistic intuitions; […] nor do we know to what extent intuitions are learnable, or how they originate and develop in the child. We simply do not know the psychological factors which determine the formation of such intuitions. It would be foolish to make linguistic virtue of psychological necessity by concluding that these factors are unimportant simply because they are unknown, but this is precisely what is done when linguistic intuitions are made the key to linguistic competence.

Nowadays, the etiology of linguistic intuitions is still felt to be unknown. Santana (2020, p. 136) concludes that “good empirical evidence of the causal connection between linguistic competence and intuitions has yet to be produced,” which reduces their evidential value.20 Second, attempts were made to solve the reliability problem. The existence of this problem was confirmed time and again by multitudes of experiments with various kinds of experimental subjects. Psycholinguists focused on general intervening factors they knew about already, but new ideas about factors in language research in particular were also developed. Levelt (2008 [1974]) presents ideas about both general and language-­ specific factors, based upon his own very divergent experimental results with grammaticality judgments. He mentions general influences such as the well-known pay-off effect (results reflect subjects’ expectations) and specific linguistic intervening factors such as the difference between written and spoken sentences in the experimental design, and the distracting effect of semantically unnatural examples. Levelt is pessimistic about the immediate solvability of reliability problems and he is disappointed about the lack of interest of linguists to learn from psychologists about these matters. Labov (1975, p.  6) discusses intervening factors of a sociolinguistic type: experimental subjects’ intuitions are inclined to conform with the language variety they consider as correct, not with the variety they actually use.

 Santana (2020, p. 136) slightly nuances his statement, referring to, for example, Gross (2020), but he stresses the speculative character, admitted also by Gross, of recent etiological hypotheses. See also Droźdźovicz (2020). 20

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Recent research still confirms the unreliability diagnosis. Several dozen years of experiments with various types of subjects did not make the “key to linguistic competence” more transparent. Results are still chaotic and ambiguous, articles that summarize possible irrelevant factors that cause unreliability are still appearing (e.g., Sprouse 2013), and conclusions about the unsuitability of linguistic intuitions for an evidential role in linguistics are still presented. For example, Santana (2020, p. 142) concludes, after a thorough discussion of unreliability issues, that intuitions “belong to the class of evidence that is proscribed in scientific practice.”

4.4 Intermediate Score Negative views about linguistic intuitions, summarized thus far, concern the intuitions of non-expert native speakers, conceived in a VoC framework. They result from attempts to attain information about the unconscious competence through alleged manifestations of this competence, namely metalinguistic behavior of native speakers. These manifestations are problematic: (a) there are doubts about their very existence, (b) their etiology is unclear, and (c) the diversity of measurements shows their unreliability, but little is known about the workings of irrelevant factors. These problems disappear when linguistic intuitions are conceived in a naturalized framework, as described above. From that point of view, they are not etiologically obscure symptoms of pre-existing competence facts, but new and fallible unreflective theoretical claims of experts. Native speakers, who lack the relevant expertise, are forced to guesswork about concepts they have to apply in experimental settings. In the best case, they engage in a kind of rapid theory development resulting in some folk-­ linguistic tentative demarcations of the concepts in question. Both folk-­ linguistic theories and guesses are inevitably divergent. Both are, moreover, linguistically irrelevant.21 Problems with non-expert native speaker intuitions are caused entirely by the VoC interpretation of these intuitions.  “We do not generally take theory-laden folk judgments as primary data for a theory. So we should not do so in linguistics” (Devitt 2006b, p. 489). 21

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However, intuitions of professional linguists were criticized as well. The next subsection will deal with this criticism.

4.5 Expert Intuitions Rejected Expert intuitions are often criticized for unreliability, on a par with non-­ expert intuitions. For example, Levelt’s abovementioned experimental results involved conflicting intuitions between linguists. In these cases, the above comment applies equally to both types of intuition. However, criticisms of expert intuitions in particular were also put forward. Three types can be distinguished. First, there is the frequent claim that expert intuitions are biased: linguists want to see their pet theories confirmed, so they are unconsciously inclined to influence their judgments in the desired direction. The amazement of psycholinguists, not only about linguists’ extremely small number of experimental subjects (namely one), but, moreover, about the selection of a biased person for this task (namely themselves) has been repeated innumerable times, from the early 1970s (e.g., Levelt 2008 [1974], pp. 17–19) until today (e.g., Santana 2020, p. 133). Second, there has been a considerable methodological change toward the use of language corpora at the cost of linguists’ intuitions about made­up word strings, during the last few decades. This development was mainly triggered by the rise of new currents such as cognitive linguistics, construction grammar and usage-based linguistics. The enormously increasing availability of big digital corpora facilitated this transition. In this context, corpus data are not only regarded as a welcome addition to intuitions; intuitions are also seen as inferior data. They are regarded as less “real” than corpus data, because of their constructed character and their lack of embeddedness in a communicative context (Kemmer and Barlow 2000, p. xv). Third, there are very recent criticisms, put forward by scholars who adopt Devitt’s naturalized view of expert intuitions, but at the same time want to vindicate native speakers’ intuitions as relevant data. In order to achieve this, they develop sophisticated methods to elicit intuitions of native speakers, allegedly without any appeal to linguistic concepts,

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thereby preventing folk-linguistic intrusions.22 Again, these data are not regarded as valuable supplements to expert intuitions, but rather as substitutes. Expert intuitions are dubbed “the wrong kind of intuitions” because of their theory-ladenness (Brøcker 2021). Neither of these criticisms appears to be well-founded. Remnants of justificationism can be found in all of them. The bias objection presupposes VoC, including the concomitant framing of intuitive judgment as results of sending a probe into the unconscious competence, which requires that the probing instrument is free of irrelevant influences. In a naturalized view, expert intuitions are normal scientific judgments, which can be tested in case of suspicion of bias or other reasons for doubt. The objections by corpus linguists seem to be a step back to the days when American structuralists retired to corpora in order to avoid appeals to non-physical, “unreal” entities. It is well-known that, in their research practice, these linguists could not avoid the use of intuitions to interpret, correct, and supplement corpus data (Matthews 1993, pp. 128–141). The objections feel like an anachronism, and so does the defense in Broekhuis (2020) of intuitions against the new corpus linguists: he triumphantly emphasizes the dependence of corpus research on intuition. Revitalizing this outdated methodological conflict is polarizing and unnecessary: a look at current linguistic practice shows that methodological choices exhibit a natural dependence on research themes. Corpora are popular in questions where contextualization and frequency of language phenomena are relevant. Intuitive thought experiments with permutations and substitutions in constructed sentences are adequate for syntactic problems as discussed by Broekhuis. Third, the view that expert intuitions are “wrong intuitions” is based upon the mistaken idea that their theory-ladenness implies that they are not genuine data. Data should be “atheoretical” (Brøcker 2021, p. 8169).23 As current types of intuitive data proved to be theory-laden,  Cf. Gross (2020) and Brøcker (2021). Both capitalize on natural reactions to linguistic input, as in self-correction, and are looking for ways in which such reactions “can be fairly directly translated into an intuitive judgment […] without the application of (folk) theoretical concepts” (Brøcker 2021, p. 8177). 23  A comparison is made between linguistic intuitions of the “right” type and “a subject’s report of how bright a flash of light appeared.” Brightness may be a naïve concept, but this does not render it atheoretical. 22

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new types of intuitions should be developed. Although wrongly motivated, I feel that the new types of data presented by Brøcker and others may be useful additions to the linguist’s toolbox, all depending on the research questions at hand.24 But this does not invalidate the use of propositional expert judgments as data, in linguistics and elsewhere.

5 Collateral Damage Up to now, I have presented linguistic practice and the role of intuitions therein as an unproblematic enterprise, undisturbed by erroneous ideas about this practice. Unfortunately, this is not the whole truth. Justificationist views of linguistic intuitions had their negative impact on linguistic practice. They cause stagnations in theory and concept development. As a first example, let us return to Sect.  2, where problematic cases were discussed as potential incentives to theory development. We observed how a problem of unclarity and conflicting intuitions about dissuade and persuade not could bring about a further theoretical elaboration of the concept “synonymy.” Such a theoretical development is, however, not a current reaction to problematic cases. Moreover, when such reactions occur, they are insufficiently recognized as theoretical moves and often remain ad hoc, without triggering a general change toward a more sophisticated concept. Due to their Chomskyan view of intuitions, generative linguists are inclined to follow, in Botha’s (1973, pp. 210–217) terms, the “majority vote” strategy, or to play the “my dialect”–“your dialect” gambit in case of conflicting intuitions, instead of engaging in grammatical argumentation. So concepts are doomed to a status of inert entities. This problem is actually bigger than is suggested by the standard enumerations of the few types of linguistic intuitions that constitute the linguist’s data: grammaticality, ambiguity, and synonymy. Quite often, one or two more types are added, and always an “etc.” ends the list. Especially  In the light of these extensions of the intuitions area, Gross’ (2020, p. 14) suggestion that “linguistic intuitions in fact do not form a natural kind” seems very plausible. 24

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the latter addition should make us suspicious. Why this “etc.”? Shouldn’t linguists have a precise idea of the data they have to account for? Of course, thoughts about the types of judgments assumed to be intuitively available may vary, and change through time. From a naturalized point of view, this is to be expected. Expert intuitions, however, can only develop when the relevant concepts are in a relatively stable state. “Grammaticality” may be relatively well-entrenched nowadays, but in the first half of the twentieth century, there was a huge and complex controversy about the criteria for classifying word sequences as “sentences.” In this situation, intuitive concept use was much less obvious (Ries 1931). From a VoC point of view, things are different. Actually, it seems natural that, if the competence can “speak,” there is no principled limit to its spoken content. Alongside grammaticality etc., abstract theoretical elements of allegedly internalized grammars might also be exteriorized as linguistic intuitions. Nobody believes, however, that ordinary speakers have intuitions about “transitivity, heads, A-positions, c-command, cases, transformations etc.,” as Devitt (2006a, p. 101) observes. Devitt (2006a, p. 101) continues: “Why is that? Why doesn’t linguistics have a much wider range of intuitions to rely on? Linguistic theory is very rich. If our competence consists in representing this theory and our competence speaks to us at all, how come it says so little?”25 Devitt’s answer is that it is commonly felt that highly theoretical concepts are not available to non-­ professionals. Another reason might be that for linguists, grammaticality etc. appear as relatively stable and basic concepts, and therefore as candidates for an intuitive status, whereas the status of more abstract theoretical concepts is clearly hypothetical, in accordance with “later justificationism” as described in Sect. 1. However, in line with my suggestion that Chomsky actually adopts “early justificationism,” generative linguistics also bears traces of the belief that truth is manifest about a much wider variety of language phenomena than grammaticality etc. This implies a less “silent” competence, and this is what we do find in linguistic practice here and there. Especially in the  This question has an interesting counterpart in Popper’s remark that intuitionism in mathematics cannot explain “why we—or more precisely Plato and his school—had to wait so long for Euclid” (Popper 1974, p. 136). 25

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earlier days of generative grammar, many types of actually unstable, debatable, theoretical judgments are presented as intuitions, in a rather capricious and unsystematic way (which explains the clumsy “etc.”).26 Clear examples are sentence structures. From his earliest publications onward, Chomsky presents examples of sentence structures as intuitively known by native speakers, in accordance with his frequently repeated claim that a descriptively adequate grammar should generate the grammatical sentences of a language and their structural descriptions (e.g. Chomsky 1965, p.  60). Not surprisingly, this assumption of intuitive availability of complete sentence analyses has been criticized, even ridiculed; cf., for example, Sampson’s (1975, p.  72) remark that linguists who assume an intuitive ability to parse sentences must be supposed to “have forgotten the struggles their less language-minded class-mates went through in the English lessons of their childhood.” If sentence structures had been stable and well-entrenched in linguistic theories over many years, the belief that non-expert native speakers can intuit them would not have been harmful for linguistic practice. The problem is, however, that sentence structures have been objects of lively and open-ended scholarly debates from the nineteenth century onward until the rise of generative linguistics (Elffers 1991; Graffi 2001). It is significant that, at the 9th International Congress of Linguists in Cambridge, MA 1962, two of Chomsky’s opponents (Halliday and Uhlenbeck) criticized the allegedly intuition-based main division of sentences in an NP and a VP, which they interpreted as uncritically following traditional grammar (Chomsky 1964). In these and similar cases, the justificationist myth of introspectively available sentence structures caused a radical stop of ongoing theoretical discussions. Sentence structures, as they were conceived by generative linguists around 1960, became “frozen” for a long time. Later developments in linguistics diminished this problem, without erasing it however. Statements about native speakers’ intuitive knowledge of complete sentence analyses gradually disappeared. Newer linguistic  As early as 1955, Chomsky enumerates alleged native speaker intuitions about, for example, phonological similarities, relations between verbs and their nominalizations, sentence types and subtypes, and subtle ambiguities and subtle difference in sentence structure (Chomsky 1975 [1955], p. 62). 26

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approaches, such as cognitive linguistics and construction grammar, offer a partial counterbalance by allowing for new theoretical ideas about sentence structure.27

6 Conclusion Intuitions have always played an important and useful role in linguistics, and will do so in the future. Linguistic intuitions gained momentum due to the rise of generative grammar in the 1960s: their use became intensified and, simultaneously, controversial. I have argued that problems with linguistic intuitions are caused by erroneous, justificationist ideas about intuitions. The problems dissolve when, in a naturalized perspective, linguistic intuitions are conceived as ordinary, theory-laden, unreflective expert judgements. Linguistic practice has always implicitly conformed to the expert view of intuitions, but did not remain entirely undamaged by justificationist influences: concepts became “frozen” and immune to theoretical revision. Naturalism can unfreeze them. Acknowledgments  In preparing the final version of this chapter, I benefited from useful remarks made by David Romand, Henk Verkuyl, Theo Kuipers, and Ad Foolen.

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 Construction grammar, for example, rejects the uniform binary structures of generativism and conceives of sentence structures as networks of binary, ternary, and other substructures. Cf. Langacker (2000). 27

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Sprouse, Jon. 2013. Acceptability judgments. In Oxford bibliographies online: Linguistics, ed. Marc Aronoff. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://www. socsci.uci.edu/~jsprouse/paters/Acceptability.Judgments.OUP.pdf Stich, Stephen P. 1971. What every speaker knows. Philosophical Review 80: 476–496. Unterberg, Frank. 2020. Sprachgefühle: wissenschaftliches und alltagsweltliches Sprechen über “Sprachgefühl.” Zur Geschichte, Gegenwart und Vieldeutigkeit eines Begriffs Doctoral Dissertation, University of Duisburg-­Essen. https:// doi.org/10.17185/duepublico/73443 Wetterston, John R. 2022. Karl Popper: Critical rationalism. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://iep.utm.edu/cr-­ratio/#H2. Accessed 24 Jan 2022.

9 The Good, the Bad, and the Yucky: Valenced Linguistic Intuitions and Linguistic Methodology Jeffrey Maynes

The “linguistic feeling” retains a central role in contemporary linguistic argumentation, though its form has changed. Inspired by the arguments of Noam Chomsky, one of the primary sources of evidence for linguistic theories are the intuitions of competent speakers. 1 Our intuitions about what strings are acceptable or not, what different sentences mean, and a myriad of other linguistic properties are used to develop and justify linguistic theories. Beyond this seeming platitude, the nature and role of intuition are controversial, from what counts as good empirical practice when arguing on the basis of intuitions to what intuitions are and why they might be considered evidence in the first place.

1

 See, for example, Chomsky (1986, pp. 36–40).

J. Maynes (*) Department of Philosophy, St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Romand, M. Le Du (eds.), Emotions, Metacognition, and the Intuition of Language Normativity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17913-6_9

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Chomsky championed the use of intuition because they can be elicited in ways that allow us to overcome weaknesses in the corpus of linguistic productions occurring “in the wild” of normal use. Further, within this context of his generative program, intuitions are typically taken to be highly mediated behavioral manifestations of our linguistic competence, and it is this competence which is the primary object of inquiry. Philosophers and linguists alike have shown considerable interest in linguistic intuition, and these debates over the nature and significance of linguistic intuition are important, both for the methodological guidance they offer and for the insight they provide into questions central to the interpretation of generative linguistics: what is it about, and how do we justify our claims? One feature of the “linguistic feeling” is its normativity—we intuitively recognize certain utterances and inscriptions as correct or incorrect (right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate, etc.) (Unterberg 2020). This normative character seemingly sits at odds with the descriptive nature of contemporary, generative, linguistics. A tradition of critics, such as Esa Itkonen, have argued that language is fundamentally social and normative, and that linguists ought not conceive of their work as the descriptive study of the minds of individual speakers. If our linguistic intuitions are normatively laden in the same way as the “linguistic feeling,” then this may tell against descriptive approaches to linguistics, and in favor of Itkonen’s normative approach. In this chapter, I will argue first that normativity is indeed present in the intuitions elicited and used by linguists. I nevertheless argue that the normative features of linguistic intuition do not support a broader normative reading of linguistics itself, and that linguists with divergent interpretations of linguistic intuition can accommodate these normative features within a descriptive linguistics. First, however, I review the debates over the nature of linguistic intuition in generative linguistics, and in particular, the debate between mentalists such as Georges Rey and the anti-mentalist approach of Michael Devitt.

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1 Intuitions in Linguistics: Their Nature and Justification Since the definition of a linguistic intuition is controversial, it is perhaps best to start with paradigmatic cases. If I am exploring co-reference between anaphoric expressions and proper nouns, I might ask you as my audience, myself as the author, or even a sample of respondents, whether the following sentences are acceptable, assuming that “Chidi” and “he” refer to the same person: (1a) Chidi knew that he was in the right. (1b) *He knew that Chidi was in the right. I, or my sample or audience, judge that (1b) is unacceptable (indicated by the *), and so I infer that it is, in fact, ungrammatical under that reference assignment, while (1a) is acceptable, and so grammatical. From a large array of such instances, including various manipulations of the sentence structure, I might draw conclusions about how co-reference works between anaphoric expressions and proper nouns. In this case, the judgments that (1a) is acceptable, and that (1b) is not, are linguistic intuitions. Linguists rely on such intuitions about a wide range of linguistic properties, including those belonging to syntax, semantics, morphology, phonology, and pragmatics, among others. In particular, linguists focus on what Rey calls, the “WhyNots?” WhyNots are, often, pairings of strings where one of the strings is acceptable and the other is not. For example, take the triad (Rey 2020, p. 21): (2a) You think friends of Susan amused Bill. (2b) You think friends of who amused Bill? (2c) *Who do you think friends of amused Bill? Sentences (2a) and (2b) are fine, but (2c) is unacceptable. Why not (2c)? Answering these questions not only provides the explanatory impetus for work in linguistics (asking us to identify, in this case, the syntactic rules that permit (2a) and (2b) but not (2c)), but also our intuitive

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responses are used to evaluate proposed theories. This seemingly perplexing observation invites us to develop a theory explaining wh-movement, or how wh-words (who, what, which, how) are able to be moved to the front of sentences in place of other information contained in the sentence, such as removing “Susan” and asking whose friends amused Bill. To test out the theories we develop, we can test them against a variety of WhyNot pairs that test various possibilities, such as whether the distance the wh-word has to move matters (it turns out it doesn’t!). There are three principal lines of debate within linguistics and philosophy concerning these intuitions. First, what are intuitions in the first place and how should they be characterized? Second, why should intuitions count as evidence for and against linguistic hypotheses? Third, assuming intuitions are, in at least some cases, good evidence, what practices ought linguists use to collect and analyze them? In this chapter, I will set the third of these questions aside. Important as it is, it concerns questions of methodology that can be more clearly distinguished from the interpretive and philosophical questions about the nature of linguistic theory raised by the first two debates. A fitting place to start is with a rather obvious question: why should any linguists or other scholars care about intuitions in the first place? Indeed, the term “intuition” has more than an air of the unscientific about it. Whatever role an intuition might play at the hypothesis formulation stage of inquiry, surely it has no role to play in justifying linguistic claims. It is first worth distinguishing between two kinds of intuitions. Linguists are interested in intuitions about particular linguistic items— sentences, utterances, phrases, and so on. They are not interested in intuitions about linguistic rules or principles, such as whether Binding Theory or Generative Grammar itself is intuitive. Such claims are established by argument, and intuition does not supplant argument. Instead, intuitions can serve as the data for scientific reflection analogous with data in other fields (Ludlow 2011; Maynes 2012). Instead of beginning with a precise definition of what linguistic intuitions are, I will begin with the loose characterization that they are judgments about linguistic items which are not based in conscious reasoning. This loose definition is only intended to point us to the phenomena in

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question. We can get a sharper understanding of intuitions by beginning with the justification for their use. Even this rough definition may be presuming too much, as some define intuitions in terms of some other propositional attitude, rather than as judgments. Mark Textor (2009) argues, for example, that intuitions are not the judgments themselves, but rather linguistic seemings. That is, the intuition is the phenomenological state of a linguistic item seeming acceptable, or two sentences seeming to share a meaning (among others), and this seeming is the basis for the subsequent judgment that the sentence is acceptable, or that two sentences do share a meaning. Starting with judgments is preferable, however, because it accords with linguistic practice. Whether we locate the intuition with the seeming or the judgment, linguists collect judgments in their daily work, and it is these judgments which serve as evidence. However, I will return to the phenomenology of these intuitions, and what we can learn from it, below. To characterize the role of intuition, Peter Ludlow (2011) begins with a taxonomy of the levels of description involved in making a linguistic claim. Starting from the datum that a speaker judges “who did you hear the story that Bill hit?” (hereafter, p) unacceptable, we can first identify a surface fact about my idiolect, namely that p is unacceptable to me. More precisely, and drawing on a distinction owing to Lycan (1988), that a speaker has the intuiting (the psychological occurrence of the intuition) with a particular content is evidence that for that speaker, the content, or the intuited, is true of their idiolect. One reason to characterize the relationship between the data and the facts about a speaker’s idiolect as inferential is to explain linguists’ attitudes toward performance errors. If I judge “the horse raced past the barn fell” to be unacceptable, one might be tempted to say that, simply by virtue of my judging it unacceptable, that it is unacceptable for me. However, if you take the time to explain the sentence to me, or put in a comma after “barn,” I might recognize that the sentence is indeed acceptable to me, that is, acceptable in my idiolect. Similarly, in cases of grammatical illusion (Phillips et al. 2010), a speaker may consistently judge a sentence to be unacceptable when it is really acceptable (or at least grammatical), or vice versa. The surface fact that p is unacceptable me is then used as evidence for inferences about what explains that fact. For example, that p is

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unacceptable to me because it violates subjacency is an explanatory fact about my idiolect. Explanatory facts are not given in either one’s intuitions, or in the surface facts, but rather inferred from them. These explanatory facts about my idiolect, in turn, are used in inferences as to the explanatory facts about the grammar of my idiolect. These facts specifically concern my linguistic competence and the underlying grammar of my idiolect, whereas explanatory facts about my idiolect may include properties that arise from other factors (such as processing, pragmatic, and socio-cultural factors). For example, an explanatory fact about the grammar of my idiolect is that the syntactic structure of p is ungrammatical because it violates subjacency. Finally, on the basis of such facts, the linguist might then infer a grammatical rule (for the grammar of my idiolect), such as: “moved elements cannot jump a NP and a S node without an intervening landing site.” Intuitions, then, are one source of evidence at the basis of a chain of inferences. The hard work of linguistics is sorting out these inferences on the basis of a wide range of data sources, including intuition, corpus data, and psycholinguistic measures. The crucial point for our purposes is that linguistic intuitions are the initial data which support the inferences that compose linguistic investigation. In terms of Bogen and Woodward’s (1988) distinction between data and phenomena, linguistic intuitions are data used to infer the phenomena, and it is the phenomena which linguistic theories attempt to explain. On this approach, intuitions are not the subject matter of linguistics, nor does conflict between theory and intuition necessarily falsify the proposed theory. Intuitions are one source of evidence, perhaps among may, linguists use to justify their claims. Though intuition is just one source of data, it provides access to information that could not otherwise be obtained. Chomsky (2002) argues that while our intuitions about grammatical principles are unreliable as an evidential base for linguistics, our intuitive judgments about sentences are not only useful, but essential. This is because we can collect intuitive judgments about gaps in the corpus. A sentence like: 3. While Ngoc was fairly confident that the robotic elephant sitting on her shoulder was benign, she did not trust it enough to let down her guard by her tea kettle.

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Has presumably never before been uttered and is not present in any corpus (at least until this very moment). From its mere absence in the corpus, we cannot determine whether (3) has not been uttered because it is ungrammatical, or if it is simply a sentence that no circumstance has occasioned. What’s more, actual utterances include ungrammatical sentences that nevertheless are communicatively successful, and they contain slips, starts, and stops that belong to a theory of performance, but not to a theory of the grammar of a language. Eliciting intuitions about sentences allows us to remedy these weaknesses in the corpus data, and so even if we extensively rely on the corpus, some use of intuitions will be essential in linguistic practice. Of course, one might still worry. Physicists, for example, know better than to trust their intuitions about how physical bodies will move through space; they use experiment and well-attested theories to predict and explain such phenomena. Such intuitions are notoriously unreliable, why think that linguistic intuitions would be any different? One potential justification for using linguistic intuitions to draw inferences about a speaker’s idiolect is that the intuition is itself a causal consequence of the object of study, namely, the speaker’s linguistic competence. This is the approach favored in the Chomskyan, generative tradition, where the aim of linguistic investigation is to understand the psychological mechanisms of linguistic competence. I will call this the mentalist justification for the use of intuitions.2 By contrast, Michael Devitt argues that our linguistic intuitions are better understood as central processor judgments that are “fairly immediate unreflective judgments about the syntactic and semantic properties of linguistic expressions, metalinguistic judgments about acceptability, grammaticality, ambiguity, coreference/binding, and the like” (Devitt 2006, p. 95). On Devitt’s account, intuitions are metalinguistic in that they are judgments about linguistic performances, and we rely upon them to the extent that we are reliable in our judgments about those performances. He develops this view (which he calls the “Modest Explanation”) as an alternative to the “Voice of Competence” (VoC) view of linguistic intuition, a form of mentalistic justification wherein the  See Maynes and Gross (2013) for a review.

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intuiter’s competence supplies the content of the intuition. “On the received linguistic view [VoC],” Devitt writes, “the competence supplies information about [linguistic] properties. On the modest view I am urging, it supplies behavioral data for a central-processor judgment about those properties” (Devitt 2006, p. 110). To illustrate the difference, let us take a simple example. Suppose I am presented with the following expression: 4. *He the opened door. I have the intuition that (4) is an unacceptable sentence. On the VoC explanation, I supply (4) as input to my linguistic competence. That competence operates by applying linguistic rules, which are represented or somehow embodied in my mind/brain, to strings like (4) through some kind of computational process to derive the content of the intuition, in this case, that (4) is ungrammatical. Intuitions are reliable on the VoC, according to Devitt, because the content of the rules is preserved through this computational process, and so made available to other parts of the mind. On the modest explanation, I instead make a central processor judgment about this sentence in the way I might judge whether the Mets will win the pennant this year. In both cases, I have developed a theory (about what sentences are acceptable, or what baseball teams are likely to win) based upon my available data (prior utterances by myself and others, prior baseball seasons), which I then apply to this particular case (sentence (4) or this baseball season). Linguistic intuitions are distinct from other judgments insofar as they are fairly unreflective and immediate, and are distinct from most other intuitions in that we have a lot of data upon which to base them. We should expect linguists’ intuitions to be reliable because they are likely to have sophisticated and well developed linguistic theories available to them. Owing to the wealth of data speakers are both exposed to and produce, competent, non-linguist, speakers’ intuitions are likely to be fairly reliable guides to linguistic reality as well. Devitt claims a number of advantages for his account over the VoC:

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1. Defenders of the VoC appeal to our intuitions about acceptability, rather than our intuitions about grammaticality. The impetus for this move is that grammaticality is a technical concept in linguistic theory, whereas acceptability is less technical, and likely to be clearer to the intuiters. But, if the rules represented in our language faculty concern grammaticality, why do we not get intuitions about grammaticality itself? 2. Why don’t we have more intuitions? That is, in addition to intuitions about properties like grammaticality, why do we not have intuitions about linguistic properties like c-command? If both c-command and grammaticality are represented in the language faculty, it is unclear why the systems producing our linguistic intuitions would give us access to one but not the other. On the modest explanation, we only have access to the data produced by our linguistic abilities (about what we would say, and about what is said), and concepts like c-command are applied to explain linguistic facts. As such, the issue does not arise for Devitt’s view, as acceptability and grammaticality are simply concepts belonging to different theories we can apply to the data. 3. The VoC presumes a disanalogy with how vision reports are used in vision science. On the VoC view, content about the linguistic rules is transmitted out of the language module, whereas in vision reports, one only gets the output of the vision module (what is seen). Similarly, on the modest explanation, our language faculty gives the what-is-said as output, and it is this which serves as the data for further theorizing. 4. Linguists and the folk have differing intuitions, but this should not happen if VoC were correct, since the intuitions of each group would be produced by similar linguistic competence. On the modest explanation, this is not only explainable, but predicted. We should expect linguists to have different (and better) intuitions because they have more sophisticated theories.3 5. On the VoC, the same representations are involved in producing our linguistic intuitions and our utterances. We would expect that improvement in one ability would come with improvement in the other. But, improved linguistic competence is not always paired with  Though see discussion of Culbertson and Gross (2009) below.

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improved intuitions. This disassociation between our linguistic and metalinguistic competence is explainable on the modest explanation, since each is a different process. 6. The VoC can be interpreted as drawing upon either represented linguistic rules, or embodied rules. If the rules are represented, then the modest explanation has the virtue of simplicity, as it posits fewer representations (and, Devitt argues, ceteris paribus we should prefer positing fewer representations to positing more). If the rules are embodied, then we have no idea how such embodied rules can lead to contentful intuitions about linguistic properties. We have no corresponding intuitions for other embodied skills, such as touch-typing and swimming, so why would we have such intuitions for our language abilities? Without some account of the mechanism, the embodied approach fails a minimum threshold for an inference to the best explanation. The mentalist conception of linguistic intuitions has been widely defended in the literature, and Devitt has been engaged in a long-­running debate with his critics.4 Many critics challenge the VoC characterization of mentalism, arguing that our intuitions are not justified because our competence directly provides their content, but because their etiology allows us to infer properties of that competence. Rey (2020) offers the most prominent recent defense of mentalism. Contra Devitt, Rey proposes that linguistic intuitions play a role analogous to perceptual reports in the study of vision (as an open empirical question, Rey stops short of arguing that the view is true, only that it is a plausible empirical hypothesis that undermines Devitt’s conceptual arguments). If a subject is presented with a visual stimulus and asked, say, to judge the relative lengths of two lines, the subject is not being asked because they are assumed to be a reliable judge of the lengths of lines. They are being asked because the occurrence of the judgment, with its particular content, is partially caused by the underlying vision systems of interest to the researchers.  For example, see Collins (2007), Antony (2008), Pietroski (2008), Rey (2008), Longworth (2009), Jutronic (2014), as well as numerous replies by Devitt, including more recently, Devitt (2014, 2020). 4

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In the case of language, Rey argues, our linguistic competence produces non-conceptual structural descriptions (SDs), which are themselves inputs into various processes that culminate in linguistic production and perception. While inferring the contributions of linguistic competence from our intuitions is neither obvious nor direct, this is no different from the normal challenges of science. This account is not limited to intuitions alone. Intuitions are just one kind of behavioral manifestation of our linguistic competence, and other behaviors such as “hesitation, perplexity, or just pupillary dilation would suffice as well” (Rey 2020, p. 227). In each case, the behavior is caused (partially) by the contributions of the SD produced by linguistic competence, and we can infer properties of that competence from these outputs. In defense of this view, Rey points to three phenomena which support an inference to the best explanation in support of his mentalistic account. Each of these phenomena points to the presence of structure in our perception of linguistic items. This representational structure is provided by the SDs, and since these categories are available to one conscious perceptual task (hearing), we should presume that they are available to another— namely, linguistic intuition. Analogously, if certain perceptual distinctions are present in my visual awareness, then I can rely upon my judgments about what I see in order to draw inferences about the processes involved in the production of that structured visual awareness. This is not to say, however, that the SDs themselves are available to conscious awareness. Rather, it is that the SDs structure that awareness, and it is the structured awareness that we access in both perception and intuitive judgment. First, Rey (2020, p. 250, emphasis in original) points to the fact that we cannot “help but hear speech in our native tongues as language.” We hear it as possessing certain properties, and as bearing syntactical and morphological structure. That is, we cannot hear an utterance of our own language (provided adequate listening conditions) as mere noise. “How we judge what it said,” Rey (2020, p. 251, emphasis in original) writes, “is surely determined by how we hear it.” The involuntary parsing present in hearing speech in our language indicates precisely those structural features linguists try to get at through intuitions. Second, on Devitt’s conception, our linguistic competence provide us with “the message,” or the content of “what is said” by the utterance or

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inscription. From that message, we infer the syntactic structure using our best developed linguistic theories, and our syntactic intuitions are simply those syntactic judgments that are fairly unreflective. However, Rey notes that competent speakers can readily parse syntactical forms without understanding its meaning, and conversely glean a message from syntactically malformed strings. In the former category, we can parse abstruse philosophical passages, or even the meaningless text of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky.” In the latter, even when we recognize that “who you wanna sing?” is unacceptable and syntactically malformed, we can readily extract its meaning. Our ability to do so suggests that we are not working backward from the message or content of the string, as our syntactic perception can be disassociated from our grasp of meaning. Third, and similarly, Rey points to cases where syntactic parsing of a sentence seems to take precedence over the semantic content, or message, of the utterance. For example, a study by Cowart and Cairns (1987) found that, participants took longer to respond to sentence (5a) than (5b): (5a) Whenever they lecture during the procedure, charming babies is boring. (5b) Whenever they lecture during the procedure, charming babies are boring. This suggests that the participants parsed these sentences by supplying “charming babies” as the referent for “they,” as it is the first structurally available noun phrase. However, this results in a clearly implausible message. The priority of the syntactic parse suggests that the speaker begins with the SD of the sentence, rather than working backward to a parse from a message associated with the sentence itself, as suggested by Devitt’s account. Rey’s account covers at least those linguistic intuitions that get at the properties of the SDs produced by the language faculty, and which are available in perception and to judgment. Other kinds of linguistic intuitions, such as those concerning sociolinguistic facts, may or may not have a role to play in linguistic theorizing, but they are not of the kind picked out by “linguistic intuition” in these contexts, and the same justification for their use is not available.

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The debate between Devitt and the mentalists illustrates the stakes of the debate over linguistic intuition. It has immediate implications for method, such as whether one should elicit intuitions from non-linguists, and whether one should elicit intuitions about properties like “acceptability” or “grammaticality.” What’s more, disputes over the nature and role of our linguistic intuitions get at the heart of what linguistics is about in the first place. Devitt develops his account of intuition in order to block an inference to the best explanation argument in favor of a mentalistic interpretation of linguistics. Instead, Devitt contends that linguistics is the study of the properties of sentences, which exist independently of the linguistic competence that produces them. While this view is beyond the scope of this chapter, it is in sharp contrast with the traditional, mentalistic, interpretation of Chomskyan generative linguistics. The loosely characterized category of “linguistic intuitions” I began with may include judgments of the type identified by Rey, and those of the type identified by Devitt. For example, judgments about the frequency or social appropriateness of a particular utterance are good candidates for Devitt’s analysis, as they are grounded in theories about language use based upon experience with that language. At issue between the two approaches is whether these characterizations are appropriate for the kinds of intuitions used by linguists, and it is an open possibility that no single characterization of these intuitions is forthcoming. Thus, instead of beginning with a definition of linguistic intuition, linguists and philosophers of language are better served by developing accounts such as those offered by Rey and Devitt, and then determining which justification applies to the methodology behind any particular argument or set of arguments.

2 Normative Intuitions Many of our linguistic intuitions share features typical of normative judgments. While a grammaticality judgment may simply involve the application of a theoretical concept to a string, acceptability judgments and

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other similar intuitions have a positively or negative valenced phenomenology, carry motivational force, and are prescriptive or proscriptive.5 The positive or negative valence can be seen most readily simply by reacting to an unacceptable sentence. As Paul Pietroski (2008, p. 661) notes, an acceptability judgment may just be a judgment of “yuckiness,” or at least involve the recognition that the sentence is “yucky.” For a sentence to be unacceptable is to negatively experience that sentence, and implicitly respond about how others with similar idiolects to mine ought to take that sentence. The positive or negative valence from the unacceptability of the sentence is only one contributor to the phenomenology of the intuition. While a string like “cat the attic door by ran” may be experienced simply with negative valence, “colorless green ideas sleep furiously” is not experienced in the same way (by this author at least). In the latter case, my experience of the sentence is also conditioned by other influences, such as its poetic nature and its long history of use in the field (note also that its unacceptability is semantic in a way that the first string is not). The sources of this valence are varied. The motivational force of linguistic intuition is seen most obviously in the fact that people self-correct errors. Any teacher has also surely experienced the motivational force of recognizing a student’s sentence to be unacceptable, or to “sound wrong.” While our intuitions are typically elicited without a speaker to correct, were nevertheless motivated to fix the broken sentences, and when rendering similar intuitive judgments about our own errors, we self-correct. These very same reactions are presumably also deployed in metalinguistic evaluation accompanying our own linguistic production. Nozari and Novick (2017) review different models of linguistic monitoring, which are deployed in linguistic correction. If these processes are similarly involved in linguistic intuition, they would account for the phenomenologically obvious motivational force our linguistic intuitions carry. The prescriptive and proscriptive features of our intuitions will take a bit more work to identify, and so it is worth looking at the nature of acceptability judgments themselves. On Devitt’s conception of linguistic intuition, linguists can rely directly on grammaticality judgments. A  These features of normative judgment are drawn from O’Neill (2017).

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relevant intuition just is a judgment about how the concept of grammaticality applies to a string, based upon the judge’s implicit theory of grammaticality. On the mentalist conception, however, grammatical knowledge or ability is implicit in the language faculty and a cause of our intuitions, but we should not expect speakers to have any direct access to what makes a string grammatical or not. Instead, linguists ask about acceptability as a way to draw inferences about grammaticality. One consequence of this approach is that linguists do not presume that speakers have a well-developed theory of acceptability. Instead, an operational definition is usually given with the task. The prescriptive and proscriptive features of linguistic intuition can be found in these instructions. In their analysis of judgment data and acceptability judgments in particular, Schütze and Sprouse give a few different potential glosses on this notion: [Acceptability is] the extent to which the sentence sounds “good” or “bad” to them. Acceptability judgments (as we refer to them henceforth) involve explicitly asking speakers to “judge” (i.e., report their spontaneous reaction concerning) whether a particular string of words is a possible utterance of their language, with an intended interpretation either implied or explicitly stated. (Schütze and Sprouse 2013, p. 28) It is common to instruct participants to imagine that the sentences were being spoken by a friend, and ask whether the sentences would make them sound like a native speaker of their language. (Schütze and Sprouse 2013, p. 36)

Culbertson and Gross (2009, p. 735) give participants the following four-point scale for rating “acceptability:” 1. PERFECT: This sentence sounds perfect, you would use it under appropriate circumstances. 2. OKAY: This sentence is not completely perfect, but still pretty good, and you might say it under appropriate circumstances. 3. AWKWARD: This sentence sounds strange, you doubt you would ever say it.

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4. TERRIBLE: This sentence sounds terrible, you would never say it under any circumstances. At first glance, these definitions seem to exhibit a tension between two distinct conceptions of acceptability. First we have an explicit appeal to a normative notion, namely whether or not the sentence sounds good or bad (or perfect, strange, or terrible). Second, the very same definitions appeal to seemingly descriptive or even statistical notions, like the possibility of making that utterance (and whether how we would interpret a friend who said, or whether we could imagine saying it). However, closer inspections show a great deal of overlap. The possibility of uttering a string cannot be understood as logical or metaphysical possibility. After all, linguists will say things like “colorless green ideas sleep furiously” because Chomsky introduced this string, without it thereby being acceptable. Such a string is a possible utterance, but not a possible utterance of my language. This aligns with the second passage from Schütze and Sprouse. While that definition moves the focus to other speakers, it nevertheless ties acceptability to the speaker’s language. Presumably uttering S makes one sound like a native speaker if and only if S is a sentence in that speaker’s language. The Culbertson and Gross definition returns back to the speaker’s own idiolect, and similarly inquires about the possibility of the speaker using the sentence. While defining whether a sentence sounds “terrible” in terms of whether one would use it under any circumstances, most speakers are not likely to interpret this as indicating anything nearly as strong as metaphysical or logical possibility. In keeping with the similarities noted above, Schütze and Sprouse (2013, p. 37) contend that these differences in instruction matter little: The consensus among experienced acceptability judgment experimentalists is that the exact nature of the instructions (modulo the issues discussed in the previous paragraph [whether the sentence is likely to be uttered, whether it is conflict with prescriptive grammar, and whether it is true or false]) matters relatively little. To put this another way, the experimenter has relatively little control over how participants choose to respond to the sentences presented to them.

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Indeed, there is a tension between an overly precise definition of acceptability and the kind of data linguists are interested in. Linguists, after all, are interested in acceptability insofar as they expect judgments about acceptability to track grammaticality and the speaker’s implicit knowledge or linguistic ability. A more precise formulation of acceptability runs the risk of confounding those natural and intuitive judgments, as speakers might instead struggle to understand and apply the newly learned concept. Directions on the application of acceptability should point the speaker away from relevant misunderstandings (such as whether a sentence is consistent with rules of prescriptive grammar), and indicate a concept that the speaker is already able to employ. It is for these reasons that we should not be surprised that linguistic intuitions have normative features. Speakers do not simply apply a formally defined notion of grammaticality to sentences in the same way they might apply any newly defined and artificial technical term. They are relying upon their own linguistic ability, and counter-factual judgments about what they or fellow speakers, would be able to say given the constraints of their language. Utterances that are not possible in the speaker’s language are not just statistically unlikely, otherwise you’d expect a speaker to find sentence (3) to be unacceptable. Speakers recognize the difference between a sentence being rare to the point of never being uttered, and a sentence being impossible in one’s idiolect. With a valenced phenomenology, motivational force, and prescriptive or proscriptive content, it is clear that lay speakers (and likely linguists as well) have intuitions with normative features. In the next section, I turn to the implications of these properties, and whether they can be accommodated within the descriptive study of linguistics and the Chomskyan tradition.

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3 From Normative Intuitions to Normativity in Language A persistent tradition in the philosophy of language and in linguistics has defended the claim that language is fundamentally normative, in that it is constituted by social rules. Wittgenstein’s famous, and contentious, “Private Language Argument,” for example, has been taken to show that a language of one speaker is impossible, and that for any bit of language to be meaningful, it must be embedded in those social rules (Wittgenstein 1991, see also Kripke 1984). Itkonen has appealed to this argument, among others, to argue that generative linguistics has neglected the normative character of language (Itkonen 2008). Indeed, he contends that an anti-normative bias exists in the field, in part because of a misconception that non-normativity is a requirement of the scientific study of language. That is, it is presumed that being descriptive is a necessary condition on being scientific. Itkonen draws support, in part, for this view from his analysis of linguistic intuitions as “the subjective (non-observational) knowledge of norms” (Itkonen 2008, p.  291), seen in the normative features of our intuitions as judgments of correctness. He points to the contortions involved in fitting linguistic intuition into a descriptive box: There is the temptation to replace the (normative) “correct vs. incorrect” distinction by the (non-normative) “possible vs. impossible” distinction. Thus, Jackendoff (1994, pp.  49–50) claims that, unlike a sentence like “Harry thinks Beth is a genius”, a sentence like “Amy nine ate peanuts” is “not a possible sentence of English”. However, it is not only the case that this is a possible sentence of English. We see with our own eyes that it is also an actual sentence of English, namely incorrect English. It must be actual because (an exemplification of ) it occurs in space and time. (Itkonen 2008, p. 302)

Itkonen’s argument here finds support in the definitions of acceptability offered to participants examined above, which included covert and overt normative language. However, the normativity of our linguistic intuitions does not support Itkonen’s critique of the descriptive interpretation

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of linguistics. Yet, at the same time, this normativity may shed important light into the nature of linguistic intuition. In what follows, I argue that both the Devittian and mentalist views of linguistic intuition can accommodate this normative character within a descriptive take on the enterprise of linguistics. For Devitt, the solution is straightforward. On his model, the intuiter is applying concepts developed through exposure to linguistic data. That a concept of acceptability has normative features is indeed not surprising. We are taught how to use our language through a prescriptive lens, in terms of rules learned in classrooms, and correction on what is wrong to say, or what cannot be said. An everyday speaker, not steeped in generative linguistics, is liable to build a concept of acceptability that includes such normative features. This is all the more reason to abandon the judgments of naive speakers and to instead rely upon the intuitions of linguists. It is these linguists, Devitt argues, who have better developed theories of grammaticality, and since it is grammaticality linguists care about, it is those judgments we ought to rely upon. That is, mentalists are not interested in people’s concepts of grammaticality, and instead use behavior like acceptability judgments to draw inferences about grammaticality. Grammaticality, however, is a competence-level property, not a performance-level one. That is, it is a description of an idealized knowledge or ability which may variably and imperfectly manifest in people’s actual linguistic behavior. By contrast, for Devitt, grammaticality is a property of sentences that linguists and other scholars build theories of based upon their close examination of linguistic objects. We care about intuitions about grammaticality insofar as they are grounded in good linguistic theories, and it is linguists who possess the superior theories. Intuitions about acceptability, laden with normative properties, simply are not the judgments linguists care about on Devitt’s view. This solution is available to Devitt, and does preserve the descriptive character of work in generative linguistics. It comes, however, at a cost. First, it is not clear that, in practice, there is a significant difference between acceptability judgments by lay participants and the judgments made by linguists, suggesting that the two populations are not using different concepts. Culbertson and Gross found no significant difference

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between the intuitions of linguists and non-linguists with minimal task-­ specific knowledge (Culbertson and Gross 2009; see also Gross and Culbertson 2011). If linguists were relying on a wholly different concept (that of grammaticality) than non-linguists, such that all of the normative features of the concept used by the latter are not present, we would expect to see greater differences in their judgments. Second, Itkonen could simply reply that this is a dodge, and an example of the anti-normative bias in linguistics. That is, that we are simply adopting a descriptive conception of grammar as our object of inquiry despite the fact that the available intuitive data indicates normative richness in language that ought to be accounted for. If so, then the normative character of linguistic intuitions gives us no guidance on whether language, and the study of it, should be understood in normative terms. Other arguments are needed to establish which concept better describes the relevant phenomena, and ultimately value judgments are required on what phenomena are worth studying. A better solution is available to Rey and defenders of the mentalist approach, as the normativity is suggestive of the mechanisms by which those intuitions are generated. Chomsky famously distinguishes between competence, the underlying knowledge or ability responsible for our creative, generative, and systematic linguistic powers, and performance, or the actual use of those powers. Performance is the result of deploying competence, but only in a mediated fashion. Other systems, from memory to those involved in articulation, all play a role in generating our actual linguistic behavior. If the normative features of our intuitions result from other contributions to performance, then the task of describing the individualized, psychological capacities involved in linguistic competence remains the central task of linguistics. A plausible model that would account for these normative features is Steven Gross’ Error Signal hypothesis (Gross 2020). Gross notes that, while the details are contentious, it is a widespread view that we have some mechanisms for language monitoring which are involved in detecting, preventing, and correcting linguistic errors. When underlying linguistic systems, such as the parser, fail, we might hypothesize that an error signal is generated. This signal is taken as input into the monitoring systems, and so plays a role in generating the resulting intuition, as well

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as other monitoring behaviors. Indeed, Gross notes that many of the normative features of intuition, such as its negative valence, motivational force, and indication of norm violation, are among the sources of evidence for the error signal hypothesis. Gross makes it clear that his arguments aim only at establishing the plausibility of this hypothesis, not its truth. A deeper understanding of the mechanisms involved in linguistic production and comprehension, as well as how they relate to metalinguistic judgment, is needed to further substantiate the hypothesis. However, the central point for my purposes is that these normative features are relevant phenomena in explaining those mechanisms. If successful, Gross’ proposal would offer an alternative explanation of those normative features. As an open empirical question, we are not warranted in drawing inferences about the normativity of language itself from the presence of normative features in our intuitions, and those features suggest promising lines of inquiry for the mentalist to better understand our intuitions, and thus, linguistic competence. What then, can we learn from the normative features of linguistic intuition? For one, as Gross shows, these features might shed important light into the mechanisms which produce linguistic intuitions in the first place. These mechanisms are poorly understood at present, and the clearer our understanding of them, the better we will be able to infer properties of the language faculty, tracing them back through the SDs they produce, and the performance systems that take up those SDs in linguistic production, comprehension, and evaluation. The presence of normative features in those judgments may indicate error signals or some other feature of that causal chain (such as an interaction with processes responsible for affective states plausibly at play in the feeling of “yuckiness” and other features of the valenced phenomenology of our intuitions). By way of analogy, suppose that I were trying to identify the contributions that a single crew member made to a film. If I do not know the role they played, and the role that others in the production played, then I stand little chance of distinguishing their contributions from watching only the finished film itself. The better I understand the process of making the film, and the jobs that each crew member plays, the more likely it is that I’ll be able to pick out the contributions I am interested in. So too with linguistic intuition—from linguistic behavior, we infer the

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contributions of linguistic competence. The deeper our understanding of what goes into that behavior, the more readily we can identify the contributions of that competence. Second, the normative features of our intuitions help explain the persistent pull toward prescriptive linguistics. A common source of tension between linguists and popular linguistic guides, such as Strunk and White’s famous The Elements of Style (1959), is that the latter focus on prescriptive linguistic rules which are not grammatical rules in the linguist’s sense. That is, the prescriptive rules often concern stylistic preferences rather than utterances that can be uttered in that language. Such a tension makes sense given the normative features of linguistic intuition. These intuitions, which are widely shared by linguists and non-­ linguists alike, are guided away from stylistic concerns, but nevertheless concern what can be said, and what it would be wrong to say. This normativity differs markedly from that of prescriptive linguistics, as stylistic deviations like comma splices and ending a sentence with a preposition, are not only possible, but common. By contrast, the unacceptability of a sentence indicates that, even if the sentence is produced, it is not part of the language in question. While linguists are able to work around these properties (by inferring grammaticality from noisy judgments about acceptability or by applying the concept of grammaticality directly), the persistence of lay confusion about the aims of linguistics may be explained by the fact that lay speakers do not sharply distinguish normative prescriptive considerations from descriptive ones. Finally, while these normative features may be instructive as to the mechanisms involved in producing linguistic intuition, they are not indicative of the normativity of language more generally, or of the failure of the Chomskyan interpretation of linguistics. Understanding these mechanisms not only further enriches our understanding of the relationship between language and mind, but allows us to draw more precise inferences from intuitions to the features of the underlying language faculty. If, however, language is best understood in terms of normative rules holding between speakers, as Itkonen argues, the evidence will have to come from elsewhere.

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References Antony, Louise. 2008. Meta-linguistics: Methodology and pantology in Devitt’s Ignorance of language. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 86 (4): 643–656. Bogen, James, and James Woodward. 1988. Saving the phenomena. Philosophical Review 97 (3): 303–352. Chomsky, Noam. 1986. Knowledge of language: It’s nature, origin, and use. New York: Praeger. ———. 2002. Syntactic structures. 2nd ed. Berlin/New York: Mouton De Gruyter. Collins, John. 2007. Review of Ignorance of language, by Michael Devitt. Mind 116 (462): 405–416. Cowart, Wayne, and Cairns, Helen S. 1987. Evidence for an anaphoric mechanism within syntactic processing: Some reference relations defy semantic and ­pragmatic constraints. Memory & Cognition 15 (4): 318–331. https://doi. org/10.3758/BF03197034 Culbertson, Jennifer, and Steven Gross. 2009. Are linguists better subjects? British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 60: 721–736. Devitt, Michael. 2006. Ignorance of language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2014. Linguistic intuitions: In defense of “Ordinarism.” European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 10 (2): 7–20. ———. 2020. Linguistic intuitions: A response to gross and Rey. In Linguistic intuitions: Evidence and method, ed. Samuel Schindler, Anna Drożdżowicz, and Karen Brøcker, 51–68. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gross, Steven. 2020. Linguistic intuitions: Error signals and the voice of competence. In Linguistic intuitions: Evidence and method, ed. Samuel Schindler, Anna Drożdżowicz, and Karen Brøcker, 13–32. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gross, Steven, and Jennifer Culbertson. 2011. Revisited linguistic intuitions. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 62 (3): 639–656. Itkonen, Esa. 2008. The central role of normativity in language and linguistics. In The shared mind: Perspectives on intersubjectivity, ed. Jordan Zlatev, Timothy P. Racine, Chris Sinha, and Esa Itkonen, 279–305. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Jackendoff, Ray. 1994. Patterns in the mind: Language and human nature. United States of America: Basic Books.  Jutronic, Dunja. 2014. Which are the data that competence provides for linguistic intuitions? European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 10 (2): 119–143.

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Kripke, Saul. 1984. Wittgenstein on rules and private language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Longworth, Guy. 2009. Ignorance of linguistics: A note on Devitt’s Ignorance of Language. Croatian Journal of Philosophy 9 (1): 21–34. Ludlow, Peter. 2011. The philosophy of generative linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lycan, William. 1988. Judgment and justification. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Maynes, Jeffrey. 2012. Linguistic intuition and calibration. Linguistics and Philosophy 35 (5): 443–460. Maynes, Jeffrey, and Steven Gross. 2013. Linguistic intuitions. Philosophy Compass 8 (8): 714–730. Nozari, Nazbanou, and Jared Novick. 2017. Monitoring and control in language production. Current Directions in Psychological Science 26 (5): 403–410. O’Neill, Elizabeth. 2017. Kinds of norms. Philosophy Compass 12 (5): e12416. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12416. Phillips, Colin, Matt Wagers, and Ellen Lau. 2010. Grammatical illusions and selective fallibility in real time language comprehension. In Experiments at the interfaces, syntax & semantics, ed. Jeffrey Runner, vol. 37, 147–180. Bingley: Emerald Publications. Pietroski, Paul. 2008. Think of the children. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 86 (4): 657–669. Rey, Georges. 2008. In defense of folieism. Creation Journal of Philosophy 8 (2): 177–202. ———. 2020. Representation of language: Philosophical issues in Chomskyan linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schütze, Carson T., and Jon Sprouse. 2013. Judgment data. In Research methods in linguistics, ed. Robert J. Podesva and Devyani Sharma, 27–50. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Strunk, William, Jr., and E.B.  White. 1959. The elements of style. New  York: Macmillan. Textor, Mark. 2009. Devitt on the epistemic authority of linguistic intuitions. Erkenntnis 71 (3): 395–405. Unterberg, Frank. 2020. Sprachgefühle: wissenschaftliches und alltagsweltliches Sprechen über “Sprachgefühl.” Zur Geschichte, Gegenwart und Vieldeutigkeit eines Begriffs. Doctoral dissertation, University of Duisburg-Essen. https:// doi.org/10.17185/duepublico/73443 Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1991. Philosophical investigations. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

10 Linguistic Feeling in Real Life and in Linguistics Ad Foolen

The fact that a whole volume is dedicated to linguistic feeling, or in German Sprachgefühl, can be taken as an indication that this notion is still not very well understood. Indeed, over the past two centuries the notion has taken on various shadings and nuances from different discoursal perspectives. I use “discoursal” here in the French sense as in discours politique, scientifique, racial, and so on: a collection of texts and talks, dealing with the same issue, sharing implicit assumptions, reacting to each other, and so on. In this chapter, I intend to consider linguistic feeling and related notions as they occur in ordinary language use in German, English and Dutch, and in specific discourses, in particular in modern linguistic theories. By including some related notions, I hope to contribute to some terminological clarification and perhaps even indicate a direction for further research. In Sect. 1, we will first take a look at the German word Sprachgefühl and its counterparts as it occurs in academic and

A. Foolen (*) Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Romand, M. Le Du (eds.), Emotions, Metacognition, and the Intuition of Language Normativity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17913-6_10

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non-­academic texts, dictionaries, and corpora in German, English, and Dutch respectively. This will be followed in Sect. 2 by a look at twentieth-­ century linguistic theorizing, asking in particular how linguistic feeling is conceptualized in the discourses of structuralism and generative grammar. In accordance with recent developments in linguistic theorizing, we will then turn from the linguistic system to language use and ask ourselves how the notion of linguistic feeling can be reframed from the perspective of what is called a usage-based perspective. We will do that in two steps. First a more general look will be taken at habits and norms as discussed in recent sociological and philosophical literature (Sect. 3), after which we focus on usage-based linguistics in Sect. 4, and specifically on variation in linguistic feeling in Sect. 5. A short Sect. 6 will conclude this chapter. The quotes from texts in languages other than English are my own translations from the original.

1  Sprachgefühl in German, English, and Dutch 1.1 German In German philological discourse, the word Sprachgefühl has been in use for at least two centuries. Joachim Heinrich Campe (1746–1818) used it in 1807 (see Campe 1969) in the foreword to his Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache.1 Here Campe stated that he considered himself a good representative of the speakers of German, so that for the explanation of the meaning of the words in his dictionary he could just as well use his own linguistic feeling, instead of asking other speakers or checking extensively in written texts. In Deutsches Wörterbuch, the dictionary initiated by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in 1854 (Grimm & Grimm 1854), the entry for Sprachgefühl in Volume 16, written in 1905 by Moritz Heyne, contains a reference to Campe and gives as the definition of the word: “the instinctive feeling for language expression.”  Cf. Unterberg (2020) for a general overview of the origin and use of the notion in the two centuries since then. See also Unterberg’s contribution to this volume. 1

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In the German context we can, however, distinguish a second line of discourse, which is of a didactic type. As Hohm (2005, p. 26) pointed out, Johann Christoph Adelung (1746–1818) had already used the phrase das feine und richtige Gefühl [the fine and right feeling], in his didactically oriented Deutsche Sprachlehre (1781; see Adelung 1977), thus preceding Campe, at least notionally. According to Adelung, the fine and right feeling (for language) should be developed on the basis of being confronted with good literature. This didactic discourse was continued, among many others, by Hildebrand (1890), in his essay on linguistic feeling of the Romans and the Germans, where he pointed out (in his Sect. 2.2) that “linguistic feeling manifests itself in more than one way. Partly, it develops into language awareness, otherwise it remains mainly in a state of simple language instinct.” This development into awareness is, of course, one of the goals of language classes in school. Turning to the twentieth century, we see a continued use of Sprachgefühl in different discourses. The DWDS, the Digital Dictionary of German ([Sprachgefühl, das] n.d.), defines Sprachgefühl as “sense for language norms, for the possibilities available in a language and their development,” with example phrases like ein gutes/unzureichendes Sprachgefühl haben [to have a good/insufficient linguistic feeling], and das Sprachgefühl der Schüler durch planmäßige Lektüre entwickeln [to develop the linguistic feeling of pupils via systematic reading]. Both the definition and the examples reflect the two discourses in which Sprachgefühl is used: on the one hand, the given feeling for the language, and on the other hand the feeling which results from being taught. Interestingly, DWDS also provides frequency data. For Sprachgefühl the use of the word starts around 1800, then rises throughout the nineteenth century till 1900, reaching nearly 1.0 word per million, then goes down somewhat, stabilizing at around 0.3 per million words in the second half of the twentieth century. Sprachgefühl also has an entry in the German version of Wikipedia and in some linguistic dictionaries ([Sprachgefühl] n.d.-a). In his Linguistisches Wörterbuch, Lewandowski (1980, p.  836) started his rather extensive explanation of the notion as follows: “Sprachgefühl [linguistic instinct, sens linguistique, jaykovoe čut’ë]. […] The intuition of the speaker, his

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competence, the naïve, i.e., non-mediated judgment of the native speakers about the rightness of language use.” It is impossible to go through all the nuances that Sprachgefühl has taken on in the course of the two centuries that the word has been in use in different German discourses, but before turning to English, I want to refer to Klein (2014), who documents an extreme use of the notion. As Klein shows, in the strongly ideological context of the 1930s, some German authors claimed that you needed authentic roots in a nation or race, in order to be able to have a deep linguistic feeling for the language of that nation or race. “Others” can learn the language in a rational way, but would never reach the authentic feeling. Such a view is not restricted to the racial context just discussed, as shown by Pinker (1994, p. 258) who gives some additional examples, “like the claim of some French speakers that only those with Gallic blood can truly master the gender system, or the insistence of my Hebrew teacher that the assimilated Jewish students in his college classes innately outperformed their Gentile classmates.” In such discourses, linguistic feeling carries a biological connotation which, luckily, has not become part of the more general linguistic discourse. However, as Kinzler (2021) points out, such views are rooted in a natural tendency to “essentialism” (see also Sect. 5.2).

1.2 English Turning to English, we observe that Sprachgefühl is present in that language as a loanword. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary ([Sprachgefühl] n.d.-b) provides a definition of Sprachgefühl in two points: (a) the character of a language; (b) an intuitive sense of what is linguistically appropriate, and comments: “Sprachgefühl was borrowed into English from German at the end of the 19th century and combines two German nouns, Sprache, meaning ‘language, speech,’ and Gefühl, meaning ‘feeling.’ […] [T]he word itself is rare, making only occasional appearances in our language.” Sprachgefühl also made it into at least one English linguistic dictionary, namely Matthews (1997, p. 351): “Sprachgefühl: A linguist’s intuitive feel for a language: cf. intuition.” And the entry for Intuition in Matthews

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(1997, p. 186) states: “Variously of the intuitive grasp that people have or may have of the structure of their own language, and of the intuitive feeling that a linguist may have in investigating it.” It is noteworthy that intuition is assigned here to native speakers and linguists alike, whereas Sprachgefühl is reserved for linguists. The English Wikipedia contains an article titled Feeling for language— Sprachgefühl, which is a direct translation of the corresponding article in the German Wikipedia. In the text itself, the phrase sense of language is used. The explanation of the term in Wikipedia ([Feeling for language— Sprachgefühl] n.d.) is rather informative, which is why I quote it here in full: A sense of language is the intuitive, unreflective and unconscious recognition of what is perceived linguistically as correct (in terms of word choice and grammar) or as appropriate (situational and contextual) or as incorrect or inappropriate. It is shaped in particular in the course of acquiring the mother tongue, where the child’s origin, social environment and education and the corresponding linguistic experience of the child play a decisive role. Through intensive linguistic experience in everyday (also media) communication, which also includes literary and other reading experiences, the feeling for language can also be trained and modified in later years.

Both the basic and the to-be-developed sense of Sprachgefühl (see the subsection on German above) are reflected here. As Merriam-Webster notes, the word Sprachgefühl is not frequently used in English; translated counterparts, like in the Wikipedia article (“feeling for language,” “sense of language”) are used instead. To illustrate: A Google search on feeling for language results in more than half a million hits and sense of language even ten times more.

1.3 Dutch In Dutch discourses, Sprachgefühl cannot be found. Instead, taalgevoel is used, probably as a loan translation from the German word. A search in Delpher ([Delpher] n.d.), an online corpus of newspapers, journals, and books, ranging from the seventeenth century till the present, results in

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about 12,000 hits for taalgevoel. The first uses occur in the middle of the nineteenth century and the word stays in use till the present. The earliest examples in Delpher show the same two discoursal contexts as signaled for German in the first part of the nineteenth century: lexicographic and didactic. In 1859, several Dutch newspapers reported on a meeting of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences, where a proposal for the uniform writing of Dutch place names, in Dutch plaatsnamen, is discussed. One of the attendants comments that he considers the word plaatsnamen itself as being “not right and also not sounding good.” He states explicitly that it hurts his taalgevoel. He proposes namen der plaatsen in Nederland [names of the places in The Netherlands] as a preferable alternative. Apparently, the issue in this discussion was whether a compound or an analytic phrase fits the Dutch taalgevoel better. Note, by the way, that the verb used by the discussant (kwetsen [to hurt]) doesn’t simply refer to a neutral judgment of what is right or wrong in Dutch; it suggests emotional pain, caused by the wrong variant. A Dutch example showing the use of taalgevoel in a didactic context is taken from a contribution to the didactic journal De wekker (1895), where it is stated that “the cultivation of taalgevoel is necessary because a developed taalgevoel makes the understanding and use of language easy.” Reading good books, hearing “the impeccable language of the teacher,” plus learning texts by heart and performing them in front of the class are the proper means of reaching the intended goal. The Dutch Wikipedia has an article on taalgevoel, which seems to be conceived independently from the German and English articles on Sprachgefühl. The definition is, however, similar: “Taalgevoel or sense of language is the human capacity for sensing intuitively whether a text or utterance obeys the rules of grammar and style. Taalgevoel relates to knowledge of language like common sense relates to science” ([Taalgevoel] n.d.). All in all, we can conclude that the term Sprachgefühl and translated counterparts like linguistic feeling in English or taalgevoel in Dutch have been part of semi-scientific and didactic discourses since the beginning of the nineteenth century. In the next section, we will explore the presence of this notion in two linguistic discourses of the twentieth century, structuralism and generative grammar.

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2 Linguistic Feeling and the Linguistic System 2.1 Structuralism In the methodological appendix A of the Cours (1968 [1916], pp. 250–258), Saussure distinguishes between “analyse subjective” “and analyse objective” (p. 250). Objective analysis is typically undertaken by the diachronic linguists. For example, in the French word enfant [child], they will distinguish two parts, en-fant, literally “not speaking.” The present-day native speakers of French, however, do not make this distinction, for them the word is non-compositional. The linguist who takes a synchronic perspective should follow this subjective analysis of the native speaker. If we identify this subjective analysis as the structuralist version of linguistic feeling, then we can consider analyse subjective as the counterpart of Sprachgefühl in Saussure’s terminology. Siouffi (2021b) and other contributors in Siouffi (2021a) have investigated another notion in Saussure’s writings, namely sentiment de la langue or sentiment linguistique, as it occurs in particular in his manuscripts which are not part of the Cours. These close readings of Saussure strongly suggest that analyse subjective and sentiment de langue/linguistique are indeed aimed at the same concept (Siouffi 2021b, p. 19) and that we can identify it with what we are discussing here under the label linguistic feeling.2 Analyse subjective/objective is a distinction, treated only in an Appendix of the Cours, probably one of the reasons why it has attracted much less attention than the “classical” Saussurean dichotomies of signifiant/signifié, diachronie/synchronie, langue/parole, and forme substance. But the distinction between analyse subjective and analyse objective is, in fact, central to Saussure’s thinking: The subjective analysis provides, or should provide, the basis for the linguist’s synchronic analysis, which takes, or should take, the perspective of the speaking subject. From this perspective, the question to be asked is which units are the “real” units for the native  In his notes of Saussure’s classes, Riedlinger uses the phrase le sentiment des sujets parlants, “the feeling of speaking subjects” (see Komatsu & Wolf 1997, p. 63). 2

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speaker. This perspective offers a natural link between Saussure’s thinking and phenomenology, where the human subject and how they experience phenomena is the central concern (Stawarska 2015, 2020; Aurora and Flack 2016, 2018). One specific aspect that deserves further attention in the future is the conscious versus unconscious status of the sentiment de langue/sentiment linguistique. Saussure’s way of talking about this aspect varies, as is pointed out, for example, in Siouffi (2021a), and this variation is in accordance with what we see in the literature more generally (see also Sect. 5.3).3 A second author from the structuralist period who is relevant in the present context is Edward Sapir. In Chapter III of his Language (1921, p. 42), Sapir writes: “The feeling that the average speaker has of his language is that it is built up, acoustically speaking, of a comparatively small number of distinct sounds, each of which is rather accurately provided for in the current alphabet by one letter or, in a few cases, by two or more alternative letters.” And in the last sentence of Chapter III (1921, p. 56) he concludes that “[b]oth the phonetic and conceptual structures show the instinctive feeling of language for form.” Note that the “instinctive feeling” that we encountered already in relation to German Sprachgefühl is now specifically ascribed to language itself, focusing on the abstract linguistic system, “form.” Fortis (2015, 2019, see also the contributions by Fortis and Laplantine in the present volume) has convincingly shown, that Sapir’s “form-feeling” had its roots in German art theory, where Formgefühl, “feeling for form,” was a central notion. It would be interesting for future research to take a closer look at the older German literature to see to what extent Formgefühl and Sprachgefühl arose against a shared discoursal background. As Darnell (1990, pp.  378–379), in her biography on Sapir, points out, Sapir also stressed the importance of linguistic feeling in his methodological guidelines for linguistic fieldwork. She quotes Sapir as follows: “The feelings of natives about such matters are extremely important, even if they express themselves amateurishly.”

 In the same paragraph where Riedlinger addresses the feelings of the speakers (see Note 2), he also uses the phrase la conscience de la langue, “the consciousness of the language.” 3

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The Dutch Slavicist Nicolaas van Wijk (1880–1941) uses the notion taalgevoel 50 times in his textbook on structuralist phonology (1939). He assumes that taalgevoel informs the native speaker and the linguist about the sounds that “count as” the same phoneme and about other aspects of the phonological system, like which phonemes are in direct contrast, which item is marked in relation to another item, and so on. Taalgevoel is also the basis for segmenting a word into syllables (van Wijk 1939, p. 106). Van Wijk sometimes adds onbewust [unconscious] to taalgevoel, for example, on p. 70: “for our unconscious taalgevoel, d and z are the marked counterparts of t and s.” Van Wijk also suggests that there is something like a zuiver taalgevoel, “a pure linguistic feeling,” which some native speakers have and which enables them to distinguish in an unconscious way between varying phonetic realizations of a phoneme. We can conclude that in the structuralist methodology linguistic feeling is the basis for judging linguistic phenomena in terms of their belonging to the same abstract entity or not: Are two sounds allophones or not, are two morphemes allomorphs or not, are two constructions “allostructions” or not, and so on. All linguistic feelings together define how a linguistic system is structured. This view is rather uniformly subscribed to in structuralist thinking, represented here by Saussure, Sapir, and van Wijk. In the generative context, which considered itself as a follow-up or even replacement of structuralism, another type of linguistic feeling is addressed, generally labeled as “intuitions.” These intuitions play a crucial role in generative research, as we will see in the next subsection.

2.2 Generative Grammar When considering linguistic feeling in the discoursal context of generative grammar, notions like intuition, grammaticality, and acceptability judgments are the relevant concepts to consider. From the beginning, intuition has played a central role in the empirical cycle of generative grammatical research. Generative rules, hypothesized by the linguist, generate sentences and it is these sentences that are confronted with the judgments of native speakers, in particular those of

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the linguist themself. This confrontation results in acceptance or (different degrees of ) rejection, indicated by an asterisk and question marks. Methodologically, one should realize that grammaticality judgments represent a very specific type of linguistic feeling. In everyday life, native speakers are rarely confronted with pairs or lists of sentences to be judged on their (degree of ) grammaticality. The same can be said, by the way, about the structuralist question as to whether two linguistic items are “felt” to be the same or different. In everyday discourse, the addressed linguistic feelings are unconsciously present and normally not addressed in metalinguistic discourse. But this does not imply that native speakers, when brought into such a “reflective situation” are principally unable to produce such judgments. It is methodologically an empirical question to find out how reliable and consistent such judgments are. As Elffers (this volume) points out, the generative methodology of making systematic use of intuitions has been very successful. As the method of turning to one’s own intuitions “worked,” the generative enterprise did not abound in methodological doubt, but in recent years we see an increase in reflection on the status of grammaticality judgments. In particular Schütze (1996, re-published 2019), was influential as a starting point for research on grammatical intuitions as empirical data: their variation among native speakers and contexts, their reliability, and so on. It was increasingly realized that they may be “contaminated” by prescriptive norms (see Maynes, this volume), or by performance problems due to complexity of sentences. Recent contributions to this methodological debate are, among others, Broekhuis (2020), Francis (2021), Goodall (2021a, b), Pajunen and Itkonen (2019), Schindler et al. (2020), Sprouse and Schütze (2019), and Schoenmakers (to appear). The following quotes are meant to provide a flavor of the kind of reflections that are exchanged in the context of generative methodological discussion. Schütze acknowledges the problematic status of intuitions, while at the same time claiming that they will remain a part of generative research for the foreseeable future: Certainly, intuitive judgments by native speakers (but, one hopes, fewer and fewer linguists) will not be replaced by other kinds of language behavior as the major source of data, at least on syntactic questions, in the fore-

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seeable future. […] While their potential contamination by extraneous factors is an important concern, once we are willing to actively explore the nature of these factors the problem becomes manageable. […] The realization seems to be growing that the psychology of grammaticality judgments can no longer be ignored. (Schütze 2019, pp. 207–208)

In a similar spirit, Goodall (2021a and b, p. 34) argues that the traditional and modern experimental methods of dealing with intuitions are complementary: “Just as no one would argue that we need to choose between self-paced reading and ERP techniques for the study of syntax, similarly no one should argue that we need to choose between traditional methods and acceptability experiments. Each can do things that the other cannot and they both have important roles to play in syntactic research.” The distinction between grammaticality and acceptability judgments has a long tradition in generative grammar, at least going back to Chomsky (1965, p. 11): “The notion ‘acceptable’ is not to be confused with ‘grammatical.’” Acceptability is a concept that belongs to the study of performance, whereas grammaticalness belongs to the study of competence. Broekhuis expresses trust in the linguist’s ability to distinguish between the two types of judgments: The notion grammaticality is the easier one to define, as it is a theoretical term: a syntactic object is grammatical if the language user is predicted to be able to produce it, and ungrammatical if the language user is predicted not to be able to produce it. […] The notion of acceptability is not a theoretical term but refers to the feelings/intuitions that language users have about utterances. These intuitions depend on the speaker’s competence, but are also affected by numerous other factors like interpretability and language norms. (Broekhuis 2020, p. 185)

Among the “other factors” referred to in the last sentence of the quote, one could think of aesthetic judgments (cf. Schoenmakers to appear) and intuitions about frequency of use. The challenge of the generative grammarian who wants to elicit grammaticality judgments is to design experiments in such a way, that the contamination by such other factors is reduced or even completely filtered out.

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The target of generative research are the rules and principles that constitute the “inner grammar” of the native speaker. From this perspective, only the grammaticality judgments are relevant. In contrast to such an “internalist” account, one could conceive of linguistic research from a social perspective, with regularities of behavior as the target, compare Li and Tomasello (2021, p. 100), who distinguish between an internalist vs. an externalist account of language (and of other human capacities, like morality). As Elffers (this volume) focuses on the internalist generative perspective, and see also the quotes just given, I have decided to explore in the rest of this chapter the externalist perspective in more detail. In the following sections, the main question will be how the notion of linguistic feeling makes sense in relation to such an externalist perspective. As announced in the introduction, we will start with a general excursion into habits and norms as discussed in recent sociological and philosophical literature (Sect. 3), after which we return to linguistics, in particular usage-based linguistics (Sect. 4) and variational studies (Sect. 5).

3 General Human Behavior: Norms and Habits Our species has often been characterized as Homo loquens or Animal rationale. A lesser used label is normative animal, which brings in the perspective of a species for which cooperation and sharing are strong distinguishing properties (Hawkins et al. 2019; Henrich and Muthukrishna 2021). Cooperation plays a central role in everyday human life, from hunting and caring, to food and knowledge sharing. These practices imply and are supported by shared norms and language. At the same time, we have to be aware that the sharing and cooperation is primarily group-specific, that is, we tend to make a strong distinction between in-­ group and out-group. And within groups, we often observe an orientation to authority, to members who set standards with regard to norms and language (see Sect. 5).

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Exploring the socio-behavioral literature, we find discourses (again in the sense of French discours) which typically center around concepts such as custom, convention, ritual, routine, habit, and norm. The literature abounds in discussions about the similarities and differences between these concepts. For example, Lewis (1969, p. 97) states that conventions can be considered as a type of norms, whereas Verhagen (2021, p. 440) claims that “[c]onventions are another kind of phenomenon than a collection of similar habits.” It is impossible to discuss the subtle relations between these notions in detail (see for further discussion, Bicchieri 2012; Brennan et al. 2013). We will focus here on norms and habits. We start with the “normative animal thesis,” which has been discussed extensively in the contributions to Roughley and Bayertz (2019). In her review of the volume, Malković presents a clear summary of the thesis: The normative animal thesis […] states that different capacities often seen as unique or specific to the human life form are enabled by our sensitivity or tendency to normatively regulate our thought and behaviour. That is, social, moral, and linguistic capacities that have been traditionally thought of as specifically human may all be grounded in a more basic and generic capacity for normative thought and behaviour, understood as an orientation to obligations, permissions, and prohibitions. (Malković n.d.)

Li and Tomasello (2021, p. 100) depart from a view that is similar to the normative animal thesis: “Both language and morality are functionally directed ‘outwardly’ towards influencing other people’s mental states: in language, to communicate; in morality, to regulate; in both, to cooperate. This perspective is thus a socially externalist account of the nature of the interpersonal interactions—what happens between, not just within, minds—when humans engage with one another linguistically and/or morally.” They stress that morality should not be understood here in a strict ethical sense. It includes (Li and Tomasello 2021, p. 102) “both norms that are moral in the traditional, philosophical sense (e.g., moral norms pertaining to fairness, harm, and rights) as well as norms that are more conventional in nature (e.g., conventional norms pertaining to group identity or group customs, which are not inherently moral concerns).”

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If people behave according to norms in this general sense, one can say that they have the habit of behaving that way. It is then no surprise that part of the literature that is relevant for the present section prefers to talk about behavior in terms of habits, meaning more or less the same as what others refer to as normative behavior. The general picture is that the discourse on habits focuses primarily on the behaving subject, whereas the normative discourse tends to focus on the community which adopts the norms. The notion of habit primarily and typically applies to physical and interactional behavior; cf. for an example Cuffari (2020, p.  252), who observes that “navigating a cheek-kiss greeting is at once an issue of a present, particular, personal encounter and a matter of cultural competence.” In other words, there is a “cultural competence” of habits which, however, in their application in specific situations, require creative, situation-­specific application. Habits extend to more subjective practices like perception and emotion. With regard to emotions, Hufendiek (2020, p. 102) states: “Because emotional responses have typical forms that are shaped in different ways in different social contexts, they can be understood as habituated responses.” And Noë (2021) asks what kind of activity perceiving with the senses is. He proposes that perceptual activity is at least partly formed by culture (Noë 2021, pp. 960–961) so that “it is sometimes useful to think of it at the level of habit.” Another author who deserves to be mentioned here, again, is Sapir (see Fortis 2015, 2019, this volume, and also Laplantine, this volume). Sapir’s focus was, of course language, and indeed, as we have seen in Sect. 2.1, Sapir assumed that native speakers have an intuitive feeling for the forms and distinctions in their language. But in 1925, Sapir moved from Ottawa to Chicago, where he became involved with interdisciplinary social science (see Darnell 1990, Chap. 15). This scientific context might have stimulated his 1927 reflection on “the unconscious patterning of behavior in society” (Sapir 1985 [1927]). This patterning of behavior covers all behavior, including language. Sapir’s beautiful phrasings make it tempting to quote extensively from this article, but we will restrict ourselves to a few passages. The following quote (Sapir 1985 [1927], p. 546) illustrates that Sapir argued along the same externalist line we are exploring

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here: “All cultural behavior is patterned. This is merely a way of saying that many things an individual does and thinks and feels may be looked upon not merely from the standpoint of the forms of behavior that are proper to himself as a biological organism but from the standpoint of a generalized mode of conduct that is imputed to society rather than to the individual” (Sapir 1985 [1927], p. 546). As we have seen already in Sect. 2.1, Sapir ascribed unconscious status to linguistic feeling. This view returns when he talks about behavior more generally: Why are the forms of social behavior not adequately known by the normal individual? How is it that we can speak, if only metaphorically, of a social unconscious? I believe that the answer to this question rests in the fact that the relations between elements of experience which serve to give them their form and significance are more powerfully “felt” or “intuited” than consciously perceived. (Sapir 1985 [1927], p. 548)

It is interesting, moreover, that Sapir considers the unconscious status of the patterning of behavior as advantageous: I believe it can be laid down as a principle of far-reaching application that in the normal business of life it is useless and even mischievous for the individual to carry the conscious analysis of his cultural patterns around with him. That should be left to the student whose business it is to understand these patterns. A healthy unconsciousness of the forms of socialized behavior to which we are subject is as necessary to society as is the mind’s ignorance, or better unawareness of the workings of the viscera to the health of the body. (Sapir 1985 [1927], p. 558)

This unconscious status of feeling for social patterns is, however, not absolute. According to several authors, it can be brought into consciousness if circumstances demand it. Consider, for instance, the comment by Cuffari: The habit of having habits, as such, is only available to language users. This is the case because language users are equipped to reflect on habits, to “go meta” in regards to developing self-critical habits of revision, because we

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remain open to others and to the future. Dewey thinks that for humans, for linguistic bodies, having habits comes with at least marginal awareness (and the possibility of much greater awareness) of our own habitual nature. This is true even for children, who just by developing habits become (nearly) self-aware that their habits come from others and link past to future. Fear of having “bad” habits expresses this awareness. (Cuffari 2020, p. 255)

One might wonder whether embracing habits as a central notion in theorizing about humans doesn’t imply that there is a danger of falling back on behaviorism. Hadn’t we overcome behaviorism thanks to Chomsky’s “cognitive revolution,” implying competence as the basis for free behavior? We should indeed be careful and conceptualize habits in a non-deterministic way, as creatively changeable if the context requires it; compare Testa and Caruana (2021, p.  21), who stress that instead of being deterministic and restrictive, habits provide the conditions for creativity and innovation: “Accordingly, habit formation is integrally adaptive and anticipatory in nature, and flexibility, control, and intelligence can arise from automatized expert behavior.”

4 Habits and Norms in Linguistics Against the background of Sect. 3, we can now zoom in on language as one specific type of social behavior. Authors with varying theoretical backgrounds fit in with this line of thinking; we will, however, specifically look at modern usage-based cognitive linguistics. The externalist perspective will be continued in Sect. 5 with specific attention to variation. Talking about language in terms of habits and norms can be found in the pre- and post-generative literature. Jespersen writes about habits as follows: The only unimpeachable definition of a word is that it is a human habit, an habitual act on the part of one human individual which has, or may have, the effect of evoking some idea in the mind of another individual. A word thus may be rightly compared with such an habitual act as taking off one’s

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hat or raising one’s fingers to one’s cap: in both cases we have a certain set of muscular activities which, when seen or heard by somebody else, shows him what is passing in the mind of the original agent or what he desires to bring to the consciousness of the other man (or men). The act is individual, but the interpretation presupposes that the individual forms part of a community with analogous habits, and a language thus is seen to be one particular set of human customs of a well-defined social character. (Jespersen 1922, pp. 7–8)

Coseriu (1975 [1952]) introduced norm as a level in between the abstract system (langue) and free use of this system in speech (parole). He argued that people tend to use specific choices from the system: “Besides the functional system, one should pay attention to a normal realization, a less abstract degree, which, however, is as proper a part of languages [as the abstract system]” (Coseriu 1975, p. 80). In other words, speakers have a feeling for what a normal way of saying things is. Although the system offers alternative ways of saying the same thing, one sticks to normal language use, unless there is a special reason to deviate from it. Linguistic feeling encompasses more than this feeling for what is normal, but normality is, I would say, a substantial part of what constitutes linguistic feeling. See also Kabatek (2020, p.  7), who contrasts, with Coseriu, langue and norm, where the latter refers to the common, traditional ways of realizing the system. Zlatev (2014, p.  264) uses the term “communal values” to refer to what other authors call norms or habits. He takes an evolutionary perspective and stresses the co-evolution of the different types of social behavior, including language: “We, human beings, are special in the animal world not only for our ability to share languages and to use them cooperatively, but also for sharing communal values of right and wrong, and—at least among great apes—for the degree to which we tend to share material resources and child-care. The argument of this chapter has been that these different kinds of sharing co-evolved.” In a similar evolutionary perspective, Lamm (2014, p. 267) reflects on language as a specific type of norms: “Language and norms are both fundamental to human society. A social account of language evolution must

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take into account the normative context in which language acquisition, use, and change occur.” In addition, as we have addressed the issue of the conscious versus unconscious status of linguistic feeling already several times, the following observation in Lamm (2014, p.  278) deserves to be quoted here: “There is also a strong evolutionary pressure for the capacity to quickly and reliably recognize norm- as well as linguistic violations. This favours some level of dedicated processing that does not rely on conscious reflection and may involve recognizing physiological cues in others (e.g., blushing, sweating).” This evolutionary perspective thus stresses the relevance of quick and reliable unconscious recognition of norm violations, including linguistic violations, ungrammaticality  being an important part of it. This “normative” view of language fits in very well with the more general ideas on norms in language as developed in Mäkilähde et al.: A norm can be understood generally as a principle which enables one to judge actions as right or wrong, and which hence can guide people’s actions. […] Norms are a prototypical example of social entities; in the context of linguistics, they can be considered (for example) the object of the “common knowledge” of the speakers of a particular language, the speakers’ knowledge of these norms being ultimately based on their intuition. (Mäkilähde et al. 2019a, p. 2)

That a norm exists, is typically “discovered” when mistakes are made. According to Mäkilähde (2019a, b, p. 6): “[T]he existence of a rule of correctness often becomes apparent when the rule is violated: the exception proves the rule. In particular, those forms which conform to the norms do not make explicit any particular norms. For example, There are quite a few bottles on the table does not by itself exemplify any one particular norm, but it should be obvious which norm is violated by *There are quite a few bottle on the table.” But most of the time, the norms stay implicit and are established and confirmed again and again in interaction, as Enfield and Sidnell explain:

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When we say things in conversation, people’s responses, linguistic and otherwise, publicly display their understandings of what we have said […]. Part of this displayed understanding will be an appraisal of the degree of appropriateness of what we have said. Because conversation is a socially cooperative activity, with each move we make we are accountable for the appropriateness of our contribution. This accountability is a defining aspect of norms. […] Norm-grounded accountability in social interaction is ultimately what regiments the conventions of linguistic meaning, proximally through the always-present possibility of holding people to account for the (in)appropriateness of their usage of a word or phrase, and distally through the aggregate effects of this possibility in the historical conventionalization of form-meaning mappings in language communities. (Enfield and Sidnell 2019, p. 266)

Speakers have a feeling for this (in)appropriateness. If they didn’t, accountability wouldn’t work. In other words, both norms and linguistic feeling are normally “in the background,” but become manifest when “something has noticeably gone wrong which requires overt reflection” (Ask Zaar 2022, p. 33). The authors referred to in this subsection all look at language and language use from the perspective of norms and habits. At the same time, they each are embedded in different theoretical discourses: grammatical theory, conversation analysis, evolutionary thinking, and so on. As modern usage-based cognitive linguistics profiles itself from a perspective of relating linguistics to more general theorizing about norms and habits, we will close off this section with a short look at that approach. At first sight, giving linguistic feeling a place in usage-based cognitive linguistics seems harder than relating it to generative grammar. As we saw in Sect. 1, the methodological role of intuitions in generative grammar research provides a basis for such a link, but usage-based linguistics tends to use corpus data instead of constructed examples. There is an implicit assumption that corpus data are reliable data, not in need of strict intuitive  scrutiny with respect to their (degree of ) grammaticality. Ungrammatical examples are “overruled” in quantity by “normal” language use.

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Usage-based linguistics distinguishes itself from the generative approach in a few other respects. Firstly, competence is not primarily seen as developing from an innate universal grammar (UG). From a usage-­ based perspective, the acquired mental grammar is primarily based on language use as practiced in interaction with other native speakers. That practice is where the rules and regularities are “at home,” they arise there and change there. Of course, language practice cannot take place without brains in which the impact of such practices is “entrenched,” but this mental aspect is considered as part of the bigger picture, which involves in the first place interactional processes of sense-making with the help of symbols, also called “semiosis,” or better even “co-semiosis” (Schmid 2020, p. 5). In Schmid’s (2020) Entrenchment and Conventionalization model (EC model), the above-mentioned view is central. Like usage-based cognitive linguistics more generally, the EC model does not deny that “knowledge of language.” is represented in the brain. The representation is, however, strongly connected to and steadily changed by the process of language use. On the one hand, social processes of usualization, conventionalization, and diffusion take place, on the other hand, abstraction and entrenchment happen in the brain, leading to “knowledge of language.” This knowledge does not only pertain to how utterances are or should be structured, including a sense of their frequency of use, but also to the appropriateness of the utterance in a certain context. Such conventionalized language practices can very well be seen as norms, as Schmid emphasizes: Utterance types that are conventionalized in a given speech community function as norms […]. They influence speakers’ behaviour very strongly and are at the same time indexical of a mutually shared identity of a group of speakers […]. The essence of these norms can be captured by the phrase “this is how we speak” […]. These norms are part of a tacit sense of mutually shared identity among the members of a community, of whatever size, from two people living in a relationship to whole speech communities. As utterance types include cotextual and contextual specifications, their role as norms comprises a community-specific sensitivity for appropriateness with regard to use in different media, styles, registers, etc., so that a full account

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of the normative potential of conventionalized utterance types would be “this is how we speak in a situation of this type.” (Schmid 2020, p. 97)

The aspect of situational appropriateness already implies variation: The same form or meaning is “adapted” to specific media, styles, registers, and so on. In the next section, we will take a closer look at factors that are involved in variation.

5 Variation in Linguistic Feeling 5.1 Standardization The different social processes that play a role in the development of language norms have recently attracted quite a lot of research attention. The first factor we consider is standardization. At first sight, this leads to more uniformity. According to Schmid (2020, pp. 98–99): “[C]onventionalized utterance types function as implicit norms. Once in place, however, implicit norms tend to be subjected to further normation on various more explicit levels. […] The strongest form of explicit normation is known as codification and considered a key component of the process of standardization.” Processes of standardization have recently attracted a fair amount of attention; see, for example, Ayres-Bennett (2021), Mortensen and Kraft (2022), and Rutten and Vosters (2021). Rutten and Vosters (2021, p. 65) distinguish standardization “from above” from “nrm convergence” “Language standardization ‘from above’ occurs when language authorities seek to disseminate a standardized variety across a speech and writing community.” In contrast, norm convergence takes place as an uncontrolled process, when community norms of different smaller communities converge toward more widely accepted norms. However, when one variant is declared “standard,” then this does not lead to the immediate disappearance of other existing variants. Apparently, it is unavoidable, or maybe even useful, to keep variation as a property of the system. This then raises the question of how we can connect the notion of linguistic feeling to the sociolinguistic study of variation and norms. One

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way is to interpret linguistic feeling as “unspoken expectation,” as Hawkins et al. (2019, p. 158) point out: “[N]orms of all stripes share a common foundation. In each case, the behavior and beliefs of one agent depend in more or less complex ways on the often unspoken expectations held about the behavior of other agents.” This way, speakers get the feeling of belonging to the relevant community. Part of the unspoken expectations are caused by prescriptive rules, introduced in a speech community by some authority in the past. If such rules are not well-grounded in the existing speech practice, then they can be the cause of tensions for language users because they have to monitor their spontaneous language use against the background of the prescriptions. Linguists tend to be on the side of the language user, reassuring them that the prescriptive rules are against the natural linguistic feeling; see, for example, Pinker (1994, Chap. 12), who strongly contrasts the natural “instinct” and the artificial prescriptivist rules (Pinker 1994, p. 371): “The rules people learn (or, more likely, fail to learn) in school are called prescriptive rules, prescribing how one “ought” to talk. Scientists studying language propose descriptive things, and there is good reason that scientists focus on descriptive rules.” Van der Meulen and Rutten (2022, p.  1) relativize Pinker’s rather absolute distinction somewhat: “Even if prescriptive, or more generally normative works are perceived as highly prescriptive by contemporaries and/or by later readers, they may still be embedded in actual usage.” As is well known, the complex relation between natural and prescriptive language leads to evaluations by language users which can be quite confusing for their “natural” Sprachgefühl (Chapman and Rawlins 2020). As Rawlins and Chapman (2020, p. 13) write in the introduction to their edited volume, such evaluations are often phrased in binary terms: “good/ bad, correct/incorrect, careful/sloppy, formal/informal,” causing all kinds of emotions, from pride to shame.

5.2 Attitudes The topic of evaluation in relation to variation leads us to the attitudinal dimension. This dimension is not just a subjective feeling, processed by

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the individual “inside,” without consequences in the “outside,” social world. Attitudes imply social effects, as Kinzler (2021, p. 258) points out: “[S]tudents who speak a language or dialect that is considered less valued or less standard often face stigma in many places in their lives, including in schools.” Kinzler (2021, p. 252) argues that so-called social essentialism is at the basis of such effects: “The tendency to see language as a social cue that provides information about others has reverberating influences on psychology. Humans are predisposed toward social essentialism—that is, the propensity to see social differences as being real, immutable, and highly predictive of people’s attributes and behaviors.” Kinzler (2021, p. 353) also refers to research on children which shows “that an intuition to essentialize language emerges in childhood.” On the same page, she observes that “[a]lthough adults certainly have more advanced metalinguistic knowledge than children, linguistic essentialism does not necessarily fade with age.” Its impact goes beyond language, as Kinzler (2021, p. 354) points out: “The social significance of language and the tendency to essentialize language as a marker of group membership have big implications for whom people trust. Research with adults and children alike suggests that people are more trusting of information provided by native-accented speakers.” The reader of this chapter may wonder why it contains these sociolinguistic excursions into variation and attitudes. The reason is, that the discussion on linguistic feeling tends to focus on the feeling for what is the normal, unmarked way to communicate in a linguistic community. But a linguistic community is not uniform, in the sense that what is right or wrong is the same for all subgroups and in all situations. A “rich” concept of linguistic feeling comprises both uniformity and variation. Besides “right” and “wrong,” we have to include “different,” “appropriate in a specific context,” and so on.

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5.3 Linguistic Awareness 5.3.1 Culture Linguistic feeling is generally conceptualized as an unconscious phenomenon, as we have seen in the previous sections. This status should, however, not be taken as too absolute. Sometimes, some language users become aware of some aspects of their implicit feelings. In this subsection, we will look at a few factors that may contribute to such awareness. For some reason or other, talking about language and language use can take a rather prominent place in a community, as has been observed by anthropological linguists. Stross, for example, reports: In Tenejapa [a community of Tzeltal speakers in Mexico] the spoken word plays a major part in the social life of the inhabitants. Tenejapans not only talk a great deal; they also spend a substantial portion of their time recounting and evaluating the particulars of speech events to which they have access, judging the characters and emotional states of individuals on the basis of their speech, and commenting on or mocking the speech habits of others. As a consequence they have an extensive metalinguistic lexicon and an elaborate system of rules for applying the lexicon to specific situations. (Stross 1974, p. 215)

Such cultural practice will automatically have the effect that part of the initially unconscious linguistic feeling develops a certain degree of awareness. It would be an interesting line for further research to look at which aspects of linguistic feeling are typical candidates for getting conscious status. At first sight, it seems that in particular functional aspects of language use (the function of the talk) and quality of the performance of the speech are the focus of attention in communities like Tenejapa, rather than aspects of grammaticality.

5.3.2 Literacy Another cultural factor that certainly contributes to awareness is literacy. The naïve idea is that literacy helps to foster awareness of features of the

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language that are unconsciously already present in the linguistic feeling. But several authors have critically shown, that literacy implies knowledge of the structure of the script (alphabetic, consonantic, syllabic) and it is this structure that strongly influences the perception of the language. Ideas about how their language is structured differ rather strongly between illiterates and literates (see, e.g., Foley 1997, Chap. 21; Kurvers et  al. 2006; Wray 2015; Morais 2021). As Wray (2015, p.  733) shows, (semi-)literates are often uncertain about word boundaries. They may write a nuf instead of enough or in form instead of inform. According to Wray (2015, p.  736), “[o]rthographic practices encourage and perpetuate the expectation of clear and replicable boundaries between words. But perhaps they only fool us into believing that writing depicts what we already know, when in fact they are defining and marshalling aspects of a less tangible knowledge.” In a comparable way, the idea of phonemes as “real” properties of languages is strongly influenced by alphabetic spelling, as emphasized by Morais (2021, p. 4): “[W]e, alphabetic literates, do credit ourselves with phoneme awareness without examining what awareness really means and, hence, whether it is, or not, appropriate to say that we are aware of phonemes. […] knowledge of phones did not pre-exist the alphabet. The phones were created by it, or, more exactly, they were put into evidence by the scientific literacy of speech, based on alphabetic writing, as functional constituents of the speech act.”4 This critical stance implies that literate language users live with a “false consciousness” of their language as it exists in an unconscious state. According to Davidson (2019), the situation might be even more complicated: Literacy influences the unconscious linguistic feeling in such a way that it is no longer the same as it was before the impact of script on one’s experience of language.

 Note that Morais makes a distinction between phones and phonemes; cf. Morais (2021, p.  3): “[O]ne more superficial [layer], closer to the perceived representations, the phones, and the other, a deeper more abstract one, the phonemes.” 4

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5.3.3 Learning Other Languages L2 learning (and of course L3 learning, etc.) is another factor that contributes to linguistic awareness (Roehr-Brackin 2018). It is certainly an interesting line for further research to find out to what extent the given unconscious linguistic feeling of the L1 language is influenced by the reflection on the contrasts between L1 and L2. In reverse, such an awareness is often considered as contributing in a positive way to the learning process. Some authors, however, consider awareness rather a hindering factor in L2 learning; see, for instance, Smalle et al. (2022), who showed experimentally that “unconscious learning” might lead to better results than when awareness is given a central role in L2 learning. This reminds us of Sapir, who also stressed that it is generally better for the native speaker if linguistic feeling stays unconscious (see the end of Sect. 4). Probably, all three factors (cultural attention for speech, literacy, and L2 learning) have an impact on the unconscious linguistic feeling. It might thus be better to think about linguistic feeling in terms of a culturally formed feeling than in terms of a pure feeling that simply comes with the acquisition of native language and which is contaminated by “externalist” factors.

6 Conclusion Taking the German word Sprachgefühl as a point of departure, we have seen that this word or a counterpart in other languages, like taalgevoel in Dutch and linguistic feeling in English, has played a role in different types of discourses. After a survey of several such discourses, in everyday life and in particular in different discourses in linguistics, we have argued that a deeper understanding of the notion would benefit from broadening the perspective to a general theory of habits and norms, including their variational dimension. As a first step in this enterprise, we have explored recent literature on habits and norms and suggested that against that background linguistic feeling can be seen as targeting linguistic habits and norms. We hope to have shown that linguistic work by Jespersen, Sapir,

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Coseriu, and Schmid contains ingredients which can inspire further work on such an integrated theory. Important among these ingredients are: (i) The target of linguistic feeling: Rather than the “internal” language system, it is the appropriateness of utterances in relation to specific contexts of use. (ii) The unconscious nature of the linguistic feeling, including open questions like: Is there a continuum, including “half-consciousness,” can unconscious feelings be made conscious, leading to metalinguistic knowledge, or even be developed to a higher level? And to what extent does the step to consciousness change our view of the target of linguistic feeling or even the target itself? (iii) What is the role of linguistic feeling in the dynamics of a language? For example, if there is a high degree of metalinguistic discussion in a linguistic community, does that have an impact on the stability, systematicity, or rate of change of the language? (iv) The mutually shared norms and habits are context-dependent and this feeling for variation should be an integral part of a proper theory on linguistic feeling. This chapter has, hopefully, made clear that the native speaker is not simply a source of intuitive judgments for the linguist who wants to discover the structural units of the linguistic system or the rules that constitute the native speaker’s linguistic competence. From the perspective explored here, in particular in Sects. 3–5, the linguistic feeling of the speaking subject is itself an interesting object of research which deserves further investigation from the perspective of social and usage-based linguistics. Acknowledgments  I would like to thank Els Elffers, David Romand, Hans-­ Jörg Schmid, Gert-Jan Schoenmakers, and Martina Valković for constructive feedback on an earlier version of this chapter. Many thanks to Andrew Haigh for his careful correction of my English.

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11 Linguistic Feeling and Grammaticalization: From Concepts to Case Studies Gilles Siouffi

According to Combettes (2012, p. 131, my translation): If the notion of “linguistic feeling” is not often implemented as such in current research on the evolution of languages, whether it is a matter of placing oneself in general theoretical frameworks such as that of grammaticalization or of observing the functioning of more precise mechanisms such as the process of reanalysis, it is nevertheless present, in a more or less explicit way, in works that can be considered as precursors in this field. Authors such as Bréal or Jespersen, who use the term metanalysis to designate the interpretation of a structure, insist on the importance of the intuition that is necessarily at work in the realization of this type of change.

Combettes then recalls Wackernagel’s classic example of the interpretation of the English structure “The king was offered a seat.” In this structure, Wackernagel (1926, p. 48) considers the king to be an old dative reinterpreted as a subject. The example is often cited in histories of G. Siouffi (*) Department of French, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Romand, M. Le Du (eds.), Emotions, Metacognition, and the Intuition of Language Normativity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17913-6_11

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syntactic thought as one of the earliest examples of the contemporary notion of reanalysis. For his part, Jespersen (1922, p. 133) commented upon the erroneous junctural decisions made by children, such as napple (from an apple), or, in French, ce nos (from un os [a bone]). Jespersen (1922, p. 173) wrote: “I have ventured to coin the term ‘metanalysis,’ by which I mean that words or word-­groups are by a new generation analyzed differently from the analysis of a former age.” Indeed, in the history of linguistic notions, the terms grammaticalization and reanalysis have finally attracted more attention than Sprachgefühl or sentiment linguistique (linguistic feeling), which have often been perceived as unscientific or ill-defined: Everything in language goes by analogy; what a language is in the habit of doing, it can do, but nothing else; and habits are of very slow growth; a lost habit cannot be revived; a new one cannot be formed except gradually, and almost or quite unconsciously. And the reason of this lies in the common preferences of the speakers. We signify the fact popularly by saying that such and such a thing is opposed to the “genius of the language”; but that is merely a mythological term; the German calls the same thing the Sprachgefühl, “speech-feeling,” or “linguistic instinct”: both are expressions of a convenient dimness, under which inexact thinkers often hide an abundance of indefinite or erroneous conceptions. (Whitney 1875, p. 150)

The notion of grammaticalization, by all accounts, was first formalized by Meillet (1982 [1912]), but preparatory ideas can be seen in Condillac, Horne Tooke, Bopp (see: Lindström 2004, pp.  36–37). Subsequently, some of the facts classified by Meillet under the term grammaticalization have been interpreted in terms of reanalysis, as Hopper and Traugott point out: “Meillet appears to have identified reanalysis with grammaticalization. However, although many cases of reanalysis are cases of grammaticalization […], not all are the result of reduction of a lexical item of phrase into one that is more grammatical, less lexically categorial, etc.” (Hopper and Traugott 1993, p. 48), and: “As we have seen, Meillet made a distinction between the development of new grammatical forms and arrangements on the one hand, and analogy on the other. The first, which

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he called grammaticalization, is the result of what we now call reanalysis” (Hopper and Traugott 1993, p. 56). Traugott and Hopper believe that one can only realize that there has been a reanalysis when the change has been extended by analogy. We are then at the level of language. Their proposal therefore makes reanalysis a possible prior step in certain cases of grammaticalization. A debate has then emerged between those who give a prominent place to reanalysis, and those (e.g., Haspelmath 1998, 1999) for whom reanalysis only intervenes in a limited number of cases of grammaticalization. In both cases, it is a question of accounting for instances of change, as Béguelin et al. (2014) remind us. Today, the notions of grammaticalization and reanalysis are strongly recognized in the field of diachronic studies. The same cannot be said for the expressions Sprachgefühl and sentiment linguistique (which will be considered as synonymous at this stage), which have been given a rather synchronic interpretation when they have been used (see Gipper 1976). However, according to Haspelmath, there is a parallel to be drawn between the thinkers of Sprachgefühl or linguistic feeling and the precursors of the notion of reanalysis, with the difference that the notion of linguistic feeling itself is less present in the later scientific landscape. Nevertheless, one can notice that the starting points involved in the emergence of the notions of reanalysis and grammaticalization on the one hand, and sentiment linguistique on the other, are similar. If we examine the examples chosen by the thinkers of sentiment linguistique and Sprachgefühl, such as Paul, Bréal, Saussure, Gomperz, Sapir, among others, we will see that they mainly involve morphology and syntax or the link between the two. Concerning Gomperz, Romand writes, for example: “In other words, what Gomperz called the ‘linguistic form’ (Sprachform, sprachliche Form) corresponds, mutatis mutandis, to what modern linguists call morpho-syntax” (Romand 2019, p. 153). Our proposal is therefore to insert a more precise concept of linguistic feeling into this framework of thought. While not all instances of reanalysis would lead to grammaticalization, linguistic feeling could be described at an earlier stage, in the sphere of the speaker, and would not necessarily lead to reanalysis.

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To do this, we will begin by showing how the first reflections on linguistic feeling or Sprachgefühl were often linked with the problem of change, before the purely synchronic use that Saussure made of it. In a second step, we will propose a vision of linguistic feeling that is different from Saussure’s, although it is in his wake. We will explain why we do not consider linguistic feeling as normative, why we deem this concept to be too general, and we will modulate its application according to its possible objects. In a third step, we will illustrate this statement with examples from morphology and syntax, distinguishing between what we call “lexical feeling,” “morphological feeling” and “syntactic feeling.” In doing so, we will attempt not to place this contribution in the space of the history of ideas, but we will try to show how the notion of linguistic feeling can become operative again.

1  Sprachgefühl, Sentiment Linguistique, and Reanalysis: A Comparison In Siouffi (2021), which focuses on sentiment linguistique in Saussure, we have attempted to identify what could be understood under this term at the time Saussure took it up. We have shown the parallel development of the approach to certain cultural events by means of sentiment in France and Gefühl in Germany. In Littré (1863), in particular, we have been able to identify what we consider up to now to be some of the first attestations of the syntagm sentiment in the context of French linguistic description. Without the rigor and precision that would typify Saussure's writing, Littré perceived that speakers' perception of constructions had an influence on the evolution of the language. We will take up here only one of the quotations that we commented on: “When one follows the Indo-Germanic languages, to which we belong, from the earliest antiquity, one sees them constantly tending to change their grammatical system. The feeling for syntax is lost, as a result of each mutation and, moreover, the analogical affinities are broken” (Littré 1863, my translation, p. 311).

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Without over-interpreting this similarity of vocabulary, two terms here, at least, singularly announce Saussure: system and analogy. The look, moreover, is clearly oriented by the perspective of describing changes in syntax. In Hermann Paul, we find several remarks that comment on examples which are nowadays described in terms of grammaticalization: “We are able in many cases to trace historically the transition from the adjective strictly so called to the participle” (Paul 1888 [1886], pp.  414–415); “The adverbs, as far as we can trace their origin, are almost exclusively outcomes of crystallised cases of nouns, and to some extent of the combination of a preposition with its case” (Paul 1888 [1886], p. 422); “It is now our task to trace further how the fusion of the determinant with the determinate is furthered by the syntactical and formal isolation” (Paul 1888 [1886], p. 380). According to Lindström, this interest in the articulation between forms (of variable status) and constructions met with more interest in Paul's 5th edition of the Prinzipien. The problem is then approached in terms of Komposition: “What one can call a composite from the point of view of one’s language intuition, lies in the middle between these points [a simple word—a complex word]” (Lindström 2004, p. 222). While it is not possible to determine with certainty whether Saussure had read Paul, leading historians of linguistic ideas such as Koerner seem to agree that Saussure's relationship with Paul needs to be reassessed. According to Koerner (2020, p. 144), parallels between Paul and Saussure should nevertheless be taken “with a grain of salt, for reasons of historical appropriateness and potential epistemological differences.” For Saussure's part, for the last 20 years, and in a way that was undoubtedly stimulated by the publication of Ecrits in 2002, the presence of the notion of feeling has attracted more and more attention. One may refer in particular to the pioneering work of Marie-José Béguelin (e.g., 2002), to the synthesis of Emanuele Fadda (2017), and to the contributions (G.  Siouffi, V.  Nyckees, B.  Courbon, E.  Fadda, L.  Depecker, and Ph. Monneret) edited by Siouffi (2021). To emblematize the way in which Saussure makes the consciousness of speaking subjects the key place where both the system of language and the linguist’s view of it are defined, we will quote this single sentence

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from the “Notes on Morphology:” “Great principle: what is real in a given state of language is what the speaking subjects are aware of, all that they are aware of and nothing but what they can be aware of ” (Saussure 2002, p. 192). Béguelin and Fadda have shown that the essential texts which illustrate Saussure’s preoccupation with the notion of sentiment linguistique are based on morphology for the most part, whether it be the text “De l’essence double du langage” of 1891 (Saussure 2002), the morphology course of 1909–1910, of which we only have the Riedlinger version (the edition of the other versions being announced by Fadda), or a long handwritten note on morphology preserved in the Geneva Library that Fadda sees as contemporary with the courses (Fadda 2009). It should be noted, however, that while these texts are more explicit, there were already many glimpses in the Cours published by Bally and Séchehaye (Saussure 1972), and even more by Engler (Saussure 1968), and it is surprising that these passages have not received more attention. Generally speaking, the two privileged fields in which Saussure’s sense of the speaking subjects intervenes are cutting, or analysis, and analogy. To illustrate the phenomenon of cutting, let us read the following reflection: We do not intend to define morphology, nor to go through the field it occupies. We only want to focus our attention on an operation that is done in morphology, which is to analyze the word, to break it down into several parts. […] But we must ask ourselves in which case this analysis is legitimate, right or wrong. Well, there is no other measure than this: if it coincides with the feeling of the speaking subjects. To the extent that (I do not say consciously, instinctively) the speaking subjects will feel units of language, we will have a reason to establish them. (Godel 1957, p. 210)

Thus, for Saussure, analysis is a synchronic mechanism, which cannot claim a perennial value. It is deeply linked to analogy: “Who could even say if it is exactly in such and such a way that the feeling of language proceeds? graveur: graver = penseur: penser [engraver: to engrave = thinker:

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to think]. So (oser) oseur [(to dare) darer]” (Saussure 2002, p. 184). The combination of analysis and analogy thus entitles the speaker to create forms he has never heard before: “What is the absolute, peremptory proof that prefixes are alive? It will only be the analogical creation; it is because I can form: redémissionner [re-resign], recontempler [re-contemplate], without ever having heard them […] And this will only take place in connection with speech without my thinking, without my wanting to say recontempler, etc., so these prefixes are very much alive” (Saussure 1993, p. 99). The deductive creation of regular series, and thus of unattested forms, is an essential activity of the feeling of speaking subjects. The question “do prefixes exist in French?” cannot be answered for him, therefore, without this appreciation: “Are there prefixes in French? This does not mean: have there been any, or do grammarians distinguish any, but are there prefixes present in the consciousness of those who use them?” (Saussure 1993, p. 99). This sense, which grounds synchronicity, prohibits one from engaging, in a scholarly manner, in what he calls “retrospective morphological analysis,” or “morphological anachrony” (Saussure 2002, p. 185). Saussure’s position is then characterized by two fundamental features: (a) the linguistic feeling excludes diachronicity and the scholarly view; (b) it is the same for all speakers at a given moment. It is even this identity of linguistic feeling that constructs synchrony and the notion of language. As Nyckees (2021, p. 45) writes, “it is therefore neither erroneous nor exaggerated, in the economy of Saussurean theory, to consider that it is the language itself that analyzes the language.” This inflexible position naturally raises many questions, and we can accept to see in it, first of all, an epistemological necessity linked to the model rather than a will of empirical description of the language condition. In any case, it raises particular questions for those who want to try to link linguistic feeling and grammaticalization or reanalysis. It is here, therefore, that while considering it as a basis, we will separate ourselves from Saussure (see Siouffi 2019).

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2 For a Broader Conception of Sentiment Linguistique The first point concerns what can be conceived as a norm. For Saussure, linguistic feeling can be considered as the instrument of a synchronous grasp of the whole language. It thus creates a norm, and it is explicable that this vision includes a normative aspect, as Fadda (2017; see also: Siouffi 2021) has pointed out. In fact, it should be noted that definitions of Sprachgefühl are often aligned with this normative conception: “The norms that control and check the use of language, separating good from bad use, constitute in their entirety the linguistic feeling” (Kainz 1956, p. 343), or “Under the term language feeling one describes the intuitive, unreflective and unconscious recognition of what is perceived as linguistically correct and appropriate” (Gauger and Oesterreicher 1982, p. 14). According to this understanding of linguistic feeling, it essentially consists in grasping a set of given facts as reflecting what is mostly observed within usage and linking these facts together in such a way that they can sustain a coherent overall description. However, for our part, we do not consider that examples which are the norm constitute the majority of cases where linguistic feeling is activated. Indeed, subjecting simple words such as table, usual morphological formations such as the most frequent conjugation paradigms, or syntactically well-formed statements such as “The table is large” to linguistic feeling seems to us to represent an exaggerated cognitive cost. Where the mind can rely on a stabilized grammatical and semantic functioning, there is no need to solicit any conscious or unconscious reasoning. We therefore consider, on the contrary, that linguistic feeling intervenes mostly on the occasion of debatable cases: a rarely attested form although accessible to spontaneous comprehension, such as oseur, given as an example by Saussure; the extension of a morpheme to contexts where it was not commonly observed; or an awkward syntactic construction, which can be understood in two ways, or which slightly deviates from regularly observed patterns. We therefore choose to reserve the mobilization of linguistic feeling for borderline, marginal cases, cases of ambiguity or interpretability, in short, cases where a real action of the

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speaker can take place. In these cases, the linguistic feeling mobilized by the speaker often involves the confrontation of several competing forms or constructions, and triggers several types of reasoning. It is the competition of these types of reasoning that creates linguistic feeling. There is competition because linguistic feeling cannot be inferential inside a single frame of reference. Very roughly, we can say that linguistic feeling can appeal to two main worlds of reference: language as a system, and language as usage. Oseur is in the system, but not (really) in the usage. If linguistic feeling is based on a norm, we can therefore say that this norm can be of two types: a normativity that we will call systemic, based most of the time on analogy, and a normativity that is actually a normative perception of usage. The second major point on which we will separate ourselves from Saussure concerns the unity or homogeneity of linguistic feeling. As we have seen, the notion of linguistic feeling emerged in Saussure’s work to counter the gaze, and in particular the analysis, of language historians and grammarians. Saussure judged that only the profane linguistic feeling could be taken as a witness. “There is no common measure between the analysis of the speaking individuals and that of the historian, although both use the same procedure: the confrontation of the series which present the same element. They justify each other, and each retains its own value; but in the last resort, the analysis of subjects is the only one that matters, because it is based directly on the facts of language” (Saussure 1967, p. 251). The speaker thus proves to be the sole point of reference, for Saussure. And the speaker ignores diachrony. “The first thing that strikes us when we study the facts of language is that, for the speaking subject, their succession in time is non-existent: he is faced with a state. So the linguist who wants to understand this state must wipe out everything that produced it and ignore diachrony” (Saussure 1967, p. 117). Similar positions can be found in Paul (1888 [1886], p. 29): “The picture of a certain state of the language is very easily obscured if the observer is familiar with a closely related language or with a purely older or younger stage of development. From this point of view, historical linguistic research in particular has sinned greatly by simply transferring what it has extracted from research on the older state of the language to the younger state.”

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In both cases, we notice around linguistic feeling the presence of a certain type of epistemological “purism,” in short. For our part, we consider that the different types of analysis that the linguist can be led to practice on linguistic forms also belong to linguistic feeling, but of a particular form that is necessarily distinct from the linguistic feeling of the lay speaker. We therefore argue in favor of a stratigraphic conception of linguistic feeling, not a homogeneous one. In Saussure’s view, linguistic feeling is assumed to be the same for all lay speakers. Paul, on the other hand, opposes Individualsprache [individual language] and Gemeinsprache [general language]. His goal is to analyze the totality of linguistic feelings of individuals in their mutual interactions (Paul 1888 [1886], p. 22). Without going so far as to postulate that each speaker is endowed with an Individualsprache, one can in any case imagine a more detailed exploration of the various types of linguistic feeling For example, the degree of exposure to a written realization of the language seems to us to be an important factor to take into account when describing certain facts of morphology and syntax.

3 Examples in Morphology and Syntax In this third part, we will explain what we mean by “lexical feeling,” “morphological feeling” and “syntactic feeling.” We will start with an example given by Paul (1888 [1886], p. 427): In anstatt des Mannes [instead of man], the genitive was originally the regular sign of the independence of the noun. But whether the genitive is still felt as such depends on the question whether we still feel anstatt to be a combination of the preposition an with the substantive statt. If it is not so felt, the construction with the genitive leaves the place it had hitherto occupied in the group, and the preposition is created. It is possible in this case for the instinct of language to be in a high degree vacillating; nay, even different in the case of different individuals. For there can be no doubt that statt is no longer a substantive of general application, but is confined to certain isolated combinations.

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This reflection raises the problem of the respective roles of word identification, morpheme, and construction. The identification of the word (here statt) creates what we propose to call a lexical feeling. By this we mean the feeling of the word as a unit— unit as a part of a lexical whole, and unit as an indecomposable form-­ meaning path. We could say that it is this “lexical feeling,” for example, which is solicited in case of exposure to the apparently “new” character of an item (impression of “neology”). It is the lexical feeling that gives rise to dictionary “entries.” The dictionary establishes a certain “lexicality” of the word that we could call a “practical lexicality.” The lexical feeling functions on the synthesis. We will say that linguistic feeling has no choice but to be lexical in the case of non-complex or non-constructed items and that in the case of complex constructed lexemes, it can alternate with morphological feeling. Lexical feeling leads to lexical items being learned one by one, in the same way as what Di Sciullo and Williams (1987) calls listemes, while morphological feeling leads to analysis. We can therefore contrast morphological feeling, which makes us analyze the word and perceive it as constructed, with lexical feeling, which is based on the perception of a conventionalization of meaning, the result of lexicalization. Morphological feeling is based on analysis. But we would say with Saussure that the opportunity of analysis is precisely a matter of linguistic (synchronic) feeling. “In French nowadays, enfant [child], entier [entire] does not involve any kind of analysis, any more than the word pour [for] or the word moi [me]” (Saussure 2002, p. 186). Morphological feeling is particularly active if: (a) it is possible to carry out a double reading of the words (synthetic/analytical); (b) it is possible to construct paradigms; (c) it is possible to reactivate the value of the morpheme in the conditions of discourse. If we take as an example the morpheme re- in French, we can say: • That there is a double reading possible in rentrer [to re-enter], since in some of the uses of the verb, the morpheme re- (in its sense of iteration or in its sense of inversion), is activated, whereas this is not the case in some other uses where, in today's French, the verb has become synonymous with entrer [to enter].

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• That the construction of paradigms remains subject to the evaluation by linguistic feeling (will rêtre [to re-be] be accepted?) • That the reactivation of the value of the morpheme in discourse is possible: je te le re-dis [I re-tell it to you], detached by a hyphen in writing, or over-stated in speech. Thus, there are degrees of morphemes. The morpheme is a scalar concept, that does not have fixed borders, and it is then that morphological feeling intervenes. On the one hand, there are regularities, in derivational patterns, but this regularity clashes with the work of meaning that is accomplished once the compositional form is created. On the other hand, the analysis is sometimes no longer performed. As a disciple of Saussure, Henri Frei proposed to contrast, in the case of truncation, the link between the forms maths and mathématiques, on the one hand, and dèche and déchéance [decay], on the other: “We will call static change, or change for short, any reversible passage, i.e., one whose initial term can be spontaneously re-established by the subjects. In the opposite case, we will speak of evolution” (Frei 2004 [1929], p. 31). To illustrate what we call “syntactic feeling,” in addition to the example of Wackernagel cited at the beginning of this chapter, we will comment on a quotation from Wittgenstein (1967, p. 39): “Imagine someone not understanding our past tense: ‘he has had it.’—He says ‘he has’— that’s present, so the proposition says that in some sense past is present.” The essence of Wittgenstein's initial suggestion is to raise our doubts about what the propositions actually say. His question is: does a proposition that seems to tell us something about the past really do so? But in order to do so, Wittgenstein relies on a particularity of English that is also found in French and German, namely the existence of formally composed tenses. And it is true that these tenses can be understood in several ways. Thus, for speakers of classical Latin, domus aedificata est (literally, word for word, “the house is built”) expressed that the fact was clearly situated in the past, since the present process was said to be domus aedificatur. The synthetic reading was not initially common. It started to become so at a certain point, so that in today’s French, out of context, a construction such as l’église est construite can be interpreted in two ways, one referring

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to the construction in the past (“the church has finished being built”), the other in the present (“the church is built by company X:” let us specify here that, in accordance with Saussure's suggestions, we consider here learned grammatical analyses—in terms of tense, aspect, and voice—to be out of the picture).

4 Conclusive Remarks In this chapter, we started from a comparison between the first conceptualizations of reanalysis and some of the first insights given on Sprachgefühl, or linguistic feeling. We found that the main thinkers of linguistic feeling often took as a starting point for their reflections examples where morpho-­ syntactic analysis (or not) is involved. These examples have since often been described in terms of grammaticalization and reanalysis, terms that have come to dominate at the expense of linguistic feeling and Sprachgefühl. We have then situated our reflection in the wake of the perspectives opened by Saussure. However, we have marked our differences on two essential points: the relation to the norm and the identity of linguistic feeling. For us, linguistic feeling cannot define a norm of use insofar as it is essentially exercised on forms that can be discussed or interpreted in several ways. We have thus tried to propose another, broader conception of linguistic feeling, and to articulate it with the problem of linguistic change, which is absent in Saussure. Finally, the objective of the third part was to open up avenues leading to a more precise definition of what could be called “linguistic feeling,” and to a possible renewal of its operative character. In order to do so, we have sketched a typology of what could be classified under the too general expression of sentiment linguistique. We have distinguished and defined what could be called lexical feeling, morphological feeling and syntactic feeling. In all three cases, we have stressed that the two main mechanisms at work (or not) are analysis and analogy. In the cases of morpho-­syntactic analysis examined by Paul or Saussure, we have shown how, in the handling of certain linguistic units, the speaking subject can navigate between synthetic and analytical reading, opening the way to divergent interpretations as to the value of the forms and constructions. Considered in

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synchronicity, these divergences show all the difference there is between a linguistic feeling based on conventionalization (the one, finally, to which Saussure attached himself ), and a linguistic feeling worked by different forms of analysis. Considered diachronically, they can give rise to a linguistic change.

References Béguelin, Marie-José, Corminboeuf Gilles, and Laure Anne Johnsen. 2014. Réanalyse et changement linguistique: présentation. Langages 4 (196): 3–11. Combettes, Bernard. 2012. Réanalyse et discursivité. In Diachroniques 2, Sentiment de la langue et diachronie, ed. Gilles Siouffi, 131–152. Fadda, Emanuele. 2009. La morphologie dans la tête. “Parallélie” dans “De l’essence double du langage”. Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure 61: 101–112. ———. 2017. Sentimento della lingua. Per un’antropologia linguistica saussuriana. Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso. Frei, Henri. 2004. La grammaire des fautes. Paris: Ennoïa (book first published 1929). Gauger, Hans-Martin, and Wulf Oesterreicher. 1982. Sprachgefühl und Sprachsinn. In Sprachgefühl? Vier Antworte auf eine Preisfrage, ed. HansMartin Gauger, Wulf Oesterreicher, Helmut Henne, Manfred Geier, and Wolfgang Müller, 8–90. Heidelberg: L. Schneider. Gipper, Helmut. 1976. “Sprachgefühl,” “Introspektion” und “Intuition.” Zur Rehabilitierung umstrittener Begriffe in der Sprachwissenschaft. Wirkendes Wort 26: 240–245. Godel, Robert. 1957. Les sources manuscrites du Cours de linguistique générale. Genève: Droz. Haspelmath, Martin. 1998. Does grammaticalization need reanalysis ? Studies in Language 22: 315–351. ———. 1999. Why is grammaticalization irreversible? Linguistics 37 (6): 1043–1068. Hopper, Paul J., and Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 1993. Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jespersen, Otto. 1922. Language, its nature, development and origin. London: Allen & Unwin. Kainz, Friedrich. 1956. Psychologie der Sprache. Vol. 4. Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke.

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Koerner, Ernst Frideryk Konrad. 2020. Last Papers in Linguistic Historiography. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lindström, Therese. 2004. The history of the concept of grammaticalisation. Doctoral dissertation, University of Sheffield. Littré, Emile. 1863. Histoire de la langue française. Vol. 1. 3rd ed. Paris: Didier. Meillet, Antoine. 1982. L’évolution des formes grammaticales. In Linguistique générale et linguistique française, 131–148. Paris/Genève: Champion-Slatkine (text first published 1912). Paul, Hermann. 1888. Principles of the history of language. Trans. from the German second edition by H.A. Strong. London: Swan, Sonnenschein, Lowrey, & Co. (book originally published 1886 for the first edition). Romand, David. 2019. More on formal feeling/form-feeling in language sciences. Heinrich Gomperz’s concept of “formal logical feeling” (logisches Formalgefühl) revisited. Histoire Épistémologie Langage 41 (1): 131–157. Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1967. Cours de linguistique générale, ed. Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye. Paris: Payot (book first published 1916). ———. 1968. Cours de linguistique générale, ed. Rufolf Engler. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. ———. 2002. Écrits de linguistique générale, ed. Simon Bouquet and Rudolf Engler, in collaboration with Antoinette Weil. Paris: Gallimard. Sciullo, Di, Anna Maria, and Williams Edwin. 1987. On the definition of word. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Siouffi, Gilles, ed. 2021. Le sentiment linguistique chez Saussure. Lyon: ENS Editions. ———. 2019. Sentiment linguistique et sens commun. In Le partage du sens. Approches linguistiques du sens commun, ed. Georgeta Cislaru and Vincent Nyckees, 97–112. London: ISTE Editions. Wackernagel, Jakob. 1926. Vorlesungen über Syntax. Basel: E. Birkhaüser. Whitney, William Dwight. 1875. The life and growth of language. London: Henry S. King and Co. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1967. Remarks on the foundations of mathematics. Cambridge: MIT Press.

12 Linguistic Feeling: A Relational Approach Incorporating Epistemology, Theories of Language, and Human-­Machine Interaction Ulrike M. Lüdtke and Hanna Ehlert

The emotional turn in linguistics (e.g., Schwarz-Friesel, 2007; Lüdtke, 2015) raises the enticing possibility of welcoming back classic, almost-­ forgotten concepts such as linguistic feeling, sentiment de la langue, or Sprachgefühl. One easy-to-access web source, the Collins Dictionary ([Sprachgefühl]. n.d.-a), defines linguistic feeling in British English as a “natural ability with, or instinct for using a language” and in American English as “a seemingly innate understanding of what is idiomatic or grammatical in a given language” as well as a “sensitivity to language, esp. for what is grammatically or idiomatically acceptable in a given language.” The German version of Wikipedia ([Sprachgefühl] n.d.-b) defines Sprachgefühl as the intuitive, unreflective, and unconscious recognition of In honor of Wolfgang Jantzen, Hans-Joachim Scholz, and Colwyn Trevarthen.

U. M. Lüdtke (*) • H. Ehlert Department of Speech and Language Therapy and Inclusive Education, Institute for Special Education, Leibniz University Hannover, Hannover, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Romand, M. Le Du (eds.), Emotions, Metacognition, and the Intuition of Language Normativity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17913-6_12

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what is linguistically correct in terms of word choice and grammar, adequate in terms of context and situation, inappropriate, or simply wrong. The entry further elaborates that scientific discourse on linguistic feeling overlaps with sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics: the two main perspectives on linguistic feeling are related to these two sub-disciplines. The entry continues to explain that linguistic feeling develops as the mother tongue is acquired. Background, social context, and education as well as the child’s related language experiences play a major role. Linguistic feeling is embedded in a process of socialization, wherein the child transforms relevant experiences and communicative interactions into language while unconsciously constructing the rules of its mother tongue. In linguistics, the results of this process are referred to as “communicative competence,” and the speaker’s intuitive awareness of what is right/wrong, “linguistic feeling.” Finally, it is claimed that a speaker’s ability to spontaneously make correct grammatical and lexical choices results from the evolution of humankind over the past four thousand years and beyond. By clustering the main attributes (see Chap. 1) of these preliminary definitions of linguistic feeling, we can identify the following major conceptual themes: • • • • • • •

Nature and innateness, Sensitivity and awareness, Instinct, intuition, and unconsciousness, Language norms and rules, Social context and socialization, Correct and adequate versus incorrect and inadequate language use, Children’s language acquisition and the evolution of mankind.

In the following section, we will examine whether and to what extent these first glimpses of a conceptual framework are part of a more elaborated scientific discourse. Therefore, our larger claim is that an encompassing paradigm shift is required, one that sidesteps the reigning rationalistic concept of language

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as logos (which leaves no conceptual space for linguistic feeling) to embrace instead the emotion-integrating concept of language as an intersubjective corporeal dialogue. This novel paradigm will be elaborated further under the umbrella of a relational perspective that weaves the various theoretical threads together (see, e.g., the reflections on the polysemous use of the expression “Sprachgefühl” in Langlotz et al. 2014).

1 The Relational Epistemological Basis for Linguistic Feeling: From Objectivism to Intersubjectivity 1.1 Integrating Emotion into Linguistic Epistemology: From Rationalism to Constructivism 1.1.1 Emotion Integration in the Epistemological Paradigm: From Rationalism to Its Critique Linguistic discourse cannot embrace the concept of linguistic feeling as long as it is grounded in an epistemological paradigm of rationalism. Descartes’ cogito (1641) famously reflects such pure rationality, which leaves no space for the integration of emotional aspects. Indeed, this rationalistic paradigm was the dominant epistemological approach in the Western world for about two thousand years. In this paradigm, “ideal” language is equivalent to “objective truth”—the foundation of the Aristotelian logic of a reasoning scientist from the first-person-­ epistemological perspective—one that is neutral and objective. Therefore, Western thought has repeatedly neglected the importance of emotion in language, which underpins the concept of linguistic feeling. This is despite periods when a “psychoaffective” account of language had developed, especially around the turn of the twentieth century (see Romand, 2021), long predating the “affective turn” of the later twentieth century.

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Because universal truth was the ultimate epistemological aim of the rationalistic paradigm, all understandings of language involving emotion—as in linguistic feeling—were accompanied by a sense of falsity and unworthiness. The latter sense in particular can be explained by the socio-historical context of modernity, which maintained the unassailable status that rationalism had enjoyed since the Enlightenment. However, the tremendous shift in the socio-historical context from modernity to postmodernity may also have altered the basic epistemological paradigm in linguistics, paving the way to the emotional realm via an understanding of language which is not purely rational but involves linguistic feeling and other more subtle and intuitive avenues. It may also be the case that the emergence of constructivism supported various other schools of thought in their attempts to deconstruct logocentrism beneath the overarching concept of truth as plurality, in a shared epistemological aim. The critique of rationalism and rational epistemology was expressed by multiple theorists: postmodern sociologists, for example, Adorno (1972), and latterly, Bourdieu (e.g., 1979, 1993, 1994), who argued for the contextual and therefore historical determination of any epistemological process; and poststructuralists such as Foucault (1966), and Derrida (1967), who often focused their anti-rationalist perspectives on the reigning logocentrism, for example, Derrida’s (1967) attack on the “imperialism of logos.” Often neglected is the feminist critique of rationality undertaken by theorists such as Chodorow (1999), and Irigaray (1987), whose feminist standpoint epistemologies turned the critique of logocentrism into a deconstruction of androcentrism. It should be emphasized that the feminist epistemological standpoint was open to all, as postulated in Deleuze and Guattari’s (1976) devenir femme. From our point of view this manifold critique of rationalism—from postmodern philosophy to poststructuralist linguistics to feminist perspectives—culminated in the anti-rational linguistic epistemology of Kristeva (e.g., 1974, 1980, 1998, 2002), who not only elaborated at length on the emotion-integrating concept of “anti-logos,” but enriched the discourse by integrating psychoanalytic perspectives.

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1.1.2 Integrating Emotion into Linguistic Ontology: From Realism to Relationalism These critiques of rationalism provide a framework for integrating emotion into the epistemological linguistic paradigm but must be accompanied by reflections on linguistic ontology. In a nutshell, the ontological consequence of rationalism is realism, as represented by Descartes’ (1641) ontological split into the entities of res cogitans and res extensa, two realities (essentially, mind and matter) exist separately alongside each other. Other relevant representations include Locke’s (1975 [1690]) ontological foundation of empiricism and Popper’s (1934) ontological Drei-Welten-­ Modell, in which World 1 is conceptualized as Körperwelt, as the world of the material “realia.” One major conceptualization supporting a paradigmatic ontological shift away from the res cogitans is provided by Bourdieu’s (1994) theory of relationalism, which holds that “the real is relational.” In fact, Bourdieu’s constructivist epistemology was not the first critique of realism: many approaches in the Western epistemological tradition have pointed out that “reality” is inseparable from consciousness—including emotion—or have noted the impact of the epistemological “subject” on the epistemological “object.” Well-known critiques of mainstream realism from the perspectives of immaterialism, relativism, and idealism—each with different arguments—include Berkeley´s (1949) esse est percipi [to be is to be perceived], Schopenhauer´s (2009 [1859]) Die Welt ist meine Vorstellung [the world is my imagination] and of course, Plato’s cave metaphor in the Republic. Alongside this criticism of realism as a naïve ontology, in which the “map” is mistaken for the “territory” (Bateson, 1979) the ontological conceptualization of language must also shift to a relational paradigm to allow linguistic feeling to enter the intersubjective space of language. Therefore, in line with Bourdieu’s constructivist ontology, the ontological features of language are no longer viewed as intrinsic but relational, or relationally co-constructed. Consequently, language variation itself is conceptualized not as intrinsic deviation but as relational difference, which intuitively aligns with the concept of linguistic feeling (Table 12.1).

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Table 12.1  The relational epistemological basis for linguistic feeling: from objectivism to intersubjectivity

From Objectivism to Intersubjectivity Emotion Denial Logos

Emotion Integration Sprachgefühl

Linguistic Epistemology: From rationalism to constructivism Epistemological paradigm Linguistic ontology

Rationalism

Critique of rationalism

Realism

Relationalism

Linguistic Methodology: From objectivity to co-construction Methodological paradigm Conceptualisation of the researcher

Objective analysis of others

Intersubjective co-construction of “reality”

Solipsism

Reciprocity

1.2 Integrating Emotion into Linguistic Methodology: From Objectivity to Co-construction 1.2.1 Integrating Emotion into the Methodological Paradigm: From Objective Analysis of Others to Intersubjective Co-construction of “Reality” Scientists and linguists must reflect on both the epistemological and ontological tradition in which they place themselves and the central question of how they acquire knowledge about language—a methodological positioning that the concept of linguistic feeling has already established as a methodological means in itself. Instead of bluntly asking how to gain linguistic knowledge, it is important to consider how the overall epistemological modus operandi is conceptualized. The rationalistic epistemology that denies emotion leads to a methodology of objectivity, wherein

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knowledge is produced via the neutral, value-free recognition and analysis of objects, uninfluenced by any individual, subjective aspects (such as emotion) that may distort or bias results. The methodological primacy of objectivity is closely aligned with the rationalistic paradigm. For instance, the Cartesian split permits the res cogitans to reason on the res extensa and in realism, allows consciousness to recognize the world via isomorphic reflection. In cognitivist, structuralist (e.g., Saussure, 1916), and nativist (e.g., Chomsky, 1966) linguistics, this objective analysis of language from the outside is the dominant epistemological mode—although the empirical tools used to build knowledge range from the verification or falsification of hypotheses using field data to the inductive abstraction of models, systems, and structures based on generalized rules. On this basis, the second methodological question concerns where to locate objectivity within the epistemological processes of realization. The methodological answer must lie within the pure emotion-free Cartesian rationality of Popper’s first-person perspective. In contrast to the objective-rationalist paradigm, where the res extensa is analyzed in absolute neutrality, knowledge of linguistic feeling relies on the intersubjective co-construction of “reality” (Foester, 1981; Bouwmeister et al. 2000). This major reconceptualization has been elaborated at length by numerous theorists (see, e.g., Bourdieu’s La Misère du monde [The Misery of the World], 1993) and implies a huge paradigm shift replacing the primacy of objectivity with intersubjectivity, isomorphism with polyphony, the first-person perspective with co-construction, and reality with “reality.” Simultaneously, the epistemological processes of realization are no longer confined to a specific “place” but unfold in a vast, open, epistemological space in time and culture. This intersubjective space is the realm where the relational processes of linguistic feeling can unfold—a space variously referred to as “potential space” (Winnicott, 1965), the “analytic third” (Ogden, 1994), and the “anthropological third” (Chodorow, 1999). This space is occupied by a complex “mosaic of narratives” (Briggs, 1998) permeated and processed by emotion. And it is here that a huge range of emotion-integrating, relational methods can be applied from, for example, hermeneutics, phenomenology, (e.g. Husserl, 1913) ethnomethodology (e.g., Devereux 1967), psychoanalysis, or feminism (e.g., Ogden 1994; Briggs, 1998).

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1.2.2 Integrating Emotions into the Conceptualizations of the Researcher: From Solipsism to Reciprocity This paradigm shift in linguistic methodology also implies a major reconceptualization of the researcher as the node from which insight and understanding spring. In brief, the rationalist conceptualization of Cartesian solipsism means that researchers are isolated not only from their own bodies, histories, and emotions, but also from those of others, as well as from the socio-historic context and culture. The necessary replacement is the constructivist conceptualization of reciprocity (von Foerster, 1981) based on structural coupling (Maturana and Varela, 1992), grounded in corporeality (Ruthrof, 2000), and achieved by affective tuning (Schore, 1994). Linguistic feeling requires such reciprocity to be dialogically validated (Table 12.1).

2 The Relational Basis in Linguistic Theory for Linguistic Feeling: From Monologue to Dialogue 2.1 Integrating Emotion in the Conceptual Dimension of the Body: From Mentalist Denial to Material Existence 2.1.1 Integrating Emotion into the Conceptualization of the Overall Linguistic Paradigm: From Emotion-­Free Mentalist Monologue to Emotionally Permeated and Intersubjective Corporeal Dialogue For over 2000 years, the dominant paradigm of language has been logos, which conceptualizes language as equivalent to logic, pure reason, truth, and—according to Kristeva (1981)—even God. However, the concept of linguistic feeling occupies an area of language whose validity has been repeatedly denied. This denial has been maintained by a combination of different scientific positions, many of which cluster around the idea of

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mentalism. The well-known mentalist tenet that “language mirrors the mind” (Chomsky, 1966) pushes emotion aside and indeed denies the entire material sphere, including the body and affective states. According to the organicist theory of semiotics (Leo and Mandelker, 1994), this broadly rationalistic and mentalistic conceptualization goes hand in hand with another position that dismisses emotion: the atomistic linguistic approach, in which language is defined as a system of distinctive units, such as phonemes or morphemes, which can be combined into complex patterns according to rational rules such as those governing syntax. By micro-analyzing this mental language system, the linguist can map out the logical architecture, structures, and constitutive abstract mechanisms of language. This approach fatally occludes efforts to apprehend the holistic epistemological quality of linguistic feeling (Lotman, 1989). Thus, an “emotional turn” from language as a mentalist monologue to a dialogic conceptualization integrating emotion is required to establish the concept of linguistic feeling. To begin this transition, the language divide must be overcome and the wholeness of this complex phenomenon reinstalled—a concept described as “anti-logos” (Kristeva, 2002) or “dialogue” (e.g., Bakhtin, 1981). This process was also conceptualized by linguists such as the “second” Saussure in his Anagrammes (1916), or Jakobson in “Linguistics and Poetics” (1960), (Jakobson & Pomorska, 1982)—works that are normally associated with the logos. A huge variety of emotionally permeated linguistic phenomena—including linguistic feeling—must be acknowledged, including the artistic language of poetry, music, and comedy, the rhetoric of politics and commercials, the imaginary, playful language of children and loved ones, the magical language of prayer or witchcraft, the affect-driven iconic language of the unconscious or dreams, or even the distorted, fragmented, pathologic language of psychiatric states such as schizophrenia. A broad heterogeneous range of linguistic correlates needs to be considered anew: from the construction of new individual norms represented by neologisms, the transgression, deconstruction, and destruction of rules explored in identity loss or the “death of the author,” to polyphony and even loss of meaning. The second step thus requires the reductionist theoretical positions above to be replaced with emotion-integrating perspectives, generating a

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Table 12.2  The relational linguistic basis of linguistic feeling: from monologue to dialogue

From Monologue to Dialogue Emotion Denial Logos

Emotion Integration Sprachgefühl

Conceptual Dimension of Body: From mentalist denial to material existence Linguistic paradigm linguistic object Linguistic sign

Emotion-free mentalist monologue

Emotionally permeated intersubjective corporeal dialogue

Emotion-free mentalist symbol

Emotionally marked material reality

Conceptual Dimension of Time: From synchronism to being in-process Linguistic subject

Language processing

Ahistoric object

Historic subjects-in-process

Cognitively linear

Emotionally recursively

paradigm that incorporates the concept of linguistic feeling. It is therefore necessary to abandon the mentalistic perspective of language as a mirror of mind, instead viewing it as reflecting material, economic, cultural, social, and emotional relations (Lüdtke, 2012, 2015); (Lüdtke et al., 2022) (see Table 12.2). If the emotion-integrating paradigm of language is anchored in this type of socioemotional, intersubjective space—which Lotman (1989, 1994) conceptualizes as the “semiosphere,” and Bakhtin (1986), the “logosphere”—then the atomistic approach is no longer relevant. However, the micro-systemic perspective must be complemented by one that is macro-systemic and based on an understanding that the inner organization of the linguistic continuum is in constant semiosis (Peirce, 1931–1958), in which underlying meaning is constructed and regulated by emotion. It is this organicist framework (Leo and Mandelker, 1994, p. 385) that gives linguistic feeling the space to unfold.

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2.1.2 Integrating Emotion into the Conceptualization of the Linguistic Sign: From Emotion-Free Mentalist Symbols to Emotionally Marked Material Reality We now consider how the smallest unit of linguistics—the sign—has been theorized: initially as an emotion-free mentalistic symbol and latterly as an emotionally marked material reality. To position linguistic feeling within sign-based communication, we first trace this conceptual shift. Mentalism contributed much to the denial of emotion in the classic structuralist conceptualization of the sign. All dyadic conceptualizations such as that of Saussure (1916) view the whole sign as a mentalistic entity. The sign combines a purely mental signifier or signifiant (e.g., not a sound but an image acoustique) with a purely mental signified (signifié), which is not a material object but its mental concept. This mentalistic conceptualization reflects an emotion-denying theoretical position in the rationalist semiotic tradition of Descartes, a dualism of body and mind, of res extensa and res cogitans, which commentators such as Dosse (1999, p. 362) describe as the “purification of the signifier” by the elimination of materiality and affect. Looking at the same time at the other sign constituent—the significant—we see, that this mental de-materialization and disembodiment works here as well due to the structuralist intralinguistic definition of arbitrarity, where the constitutive relation of the sign as symbol is just placed between signifiant and signifié, not with any conceptualization of extra-linguistic context, especially not including affective traces. Thus, in the traditional structuralist view, emotion-free rationalistic denotation seems to be the gold standard, and Saussure’s original focus on denotation at the expense of emotionally colored connotation (Chandler, 2002, p. 25) leaves no place for the subtle communicative processes of linguistic feeling—although the “second” Saussure addressed le sentiment de la langue in depth in his Anagrammes (1916; see Fadda and Siouffi in Chaps. 4 and 11). Ultimately, however, more direct representations of emotion which might support the notion of linguistic feeling are absent from the classical structuralist account, allowing only for denotative representation in the form of a lexicon of emotion—an area that psycholinguistics, for instance, refers to as an “internal state language.”

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Therefore, only a manifold reconceptualization of the sign and signification will enable the necessary emotion-integrating paradigm shift to occur. Such a shift needs to accommodate materiality and contextuality on the one hand, and embodiment and the inscriptions of drives and affect on the other. The first (materiality and contextuality) requires replacing the sign-as-dyad with triadic conceptions devised by Peirce or Gomperz (Romand, 2019), where the signifier is materially constituted and the third element—the reference object—enters the sign to become an intralinguistic, yet physical entity. Here, Plato’s account of the classic dispute between Cratylus and Hermogenes concerning naturalistic versus conventional theory springs to mind. Pierce (1931–1958) claims that semiosis is not solely dependent on arbitrary symbols, and proposes the addition of non-arbitrary icons and indexes. The Peircean semiotic framework seems to be of the utmost importance to linguistic feeling as the three sign categories are defined by different degrees of conventionality and motivation: the icon can be emotionally marked because it may be highly motivated and not at all conventional. Therefore, a conceptualization of the signifier, which includes materiality (Peirce, 1931–1958), corporeality (Ruthrof, 2000), and the inscription of affective traces (Kristeva, 1986) is needed but must be accompanied by a new basic conceptualization of signification. Following poststructuralist thought—for example, Barthes (1985)—it becomes evident that emotion-carrying connotation must complement rational denotation. In a nutshell, poststructuralist critique of the strict artificial division between denotation and connotation (Voloshinov, 1973, p. 105), or the illusion that denotation is the primary meaning when it is merely the sum of connotations (Barthes, 1985, p. 9) helps root linguistic feeling in the subtle workings of connotation. However, simply reinstalling connotation into the process of sign-­ making would limit the processes of linguistic feeling to a great extent, as it would exclude a major part of the linguistic representation of emotion, which Konstantinidou (1997) called the “emotive” mode. Unlike the emotional lexicon, this mode carries emotions implicitly within intersubjective space. Thus, the representation of emotion is not limited to the lexicon but permeates all linguistic levels: from phonetic-phonological representations in onomatopoeia, alliteration, or exclamations to morphological representations such as diminutive suffixes to lexical

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phenomena as metaphors, hyperbole, metonymy, or euphemisms to syntactic ones such as anaphor, emphases, or inversion, enabling linguistic feeling to work across them all (Table 12.2).

2.2 Integrating Emotion in the Conceptual Dimension of Time: From Synchronism to Being In-process 2.2.1 Integrating Emotion into the Conceptualization of the Linguistic Subject: From Ahistorical Objects to Historical Subjects-in-Process Because linguistic feeling is experienced by a speaking subject, this must also be conceptualized. Time has a constitutive role in this regard, as humans use language in time and space. The historical-comparative approach of classical philology was supplanted by the structuralist dominance of synchrony over diachrony—a new perspective that gave birth to the modern scientific habitus of rationalist linguistics. This de-­ temporalization also applied to linguistic analysis, where the static perspective of langue—the timeless structure—replaced the dynamic one of parole—the performance in time and space. Martinet (cited in Dosse, 1999, p. 83) criticizes this “structural corset” and Kristeva (1986) decries the structuralist “paralysis” of language caused by focusing on the “thetic” dimension. Approaches such as Saussure’s that prioritize synchronicity are implicated in both a general loss of historicity and linguistic culture. However, they also erase individual biographies, reducing speakers to dehumanized, ahistorical linguistic objects (Deleuze, 1969). In short, the synchronic turn significantly impacted how the linguistic subject was conceived, either replacing it with excised, timeless, and objectifiable linguistic structures, or reducing it to a subject isolated from time and context—the so-called transcendental ego, a concept which Kristeva (e.g., 1974, 1998, 2002) aligns with the tradition of Husserl and Benveniste. Kristeva’s analysis of the transcendental ego, which she made based on her critique of Chomsky´s (1966) Cartesian Linguistics, has far-reaching

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implications for the concept of linguistic feeling. According to Kristeva (2002, p. 60), this subject speaks from the Cartesian cogito, from the rationalist position of the res cogitans, uninfluenced by emotions, the body, the unconscious, or the socio-historical context of the res extensa. Kristeva’s refined analysis of the speaking subject encompasses more subtle shades of psychoanalytical thought. From a poststructuralist viewpoint, she questions how word and text can transcend the spatiotemporal world as well as the mentalist conceptualization of words or texts as isolated, passive, and arbitrary “containers” for fixed meanings (see Chandler, 2002, pp. 194–195). Consequently, she also rejects the monologic concept of the speaker/listener as a fixed “unitary subject” (Kristeva, 1998, p. 133), which, in a linear 1:1 transformation, freed from drives or affect, fills in or unpacks the fixed homogenous meaning. Re-situating the speaking subject into a spatiotemporal context entails the dialectical unfolding of synchrony and diachrony. Examples of this can be seen in Peirce’s (1931–1958) processual semiosis, in Bakhtin’s (1981, 1986) dialogicity, in the context focus of social semiotics (Halliday 1978; Kress and van Leeuwen 1996; Thibault 1997), and last but not least, in Kristeva’s (1998, 2002) intertextuality and her idea of “subject-­ as-­text.” Second, linguistics must refocus from static, lifeless langue to a focus on the dynamic functions of parole, instead. In this context, Chandler (2002) points out the interesting fact that in contrast to the static Saussure model, even Bühler’s (1934) Organon or Jakobson’s (1960) classic communication model account for language usage that integrates emotion, such as the emotive, phatic, conative, and poetic functions, which together support the enfolding of linguistic feeling. Finally, the latest psychobiological and neuropsychologial perspectives on intersubjectivity (Bråten, 2002; Rizzolatti and Craighero, 2004; Trevarthen, 2015) support this intertextuality, which Lotman (1994, p. 378) called an affective “generator of meaning” and Bloom (2002) described as co-constructed “mutual representations” of meaning. Such perspectives spring from empirical research into the temporal affective attunement of neural processes that indicate potential neural correlates of linguistic feeling, which could then be grasped with measurement techniques such as PET (Positron emission tomography) or fMRI (functional Magnetic resonance imaging), as well as conceptually.

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2.2.2 Integrating Emotion into the Conceptualization of Language Processing: From Cognitive Linearity to Emotional Recursivity Just as the linguistic subject can be reconceptualized from a temporal perspective, so the role of temporality in language processing must also be considered. From our point of view, the most influential framework here is Levelt’s (1989) cognitivistic model of speech production, which excludes linguistic feeling entirely, for several reasons. First, the purely cognitive architecture of this model and its various structures and processes is based on structural and systemic linguistics. The model derives from computational linguistics and contains modules such as a “conceptualizer,” a “formulator,” and an “articulator,” so the existence of a subject, or dialogicity, is excluded. At the same time, the whole model has a purely mental and cortical construction that cannot account for individualized or contextual emotional content. Further, the processing of linguistic information is designed in a quite mechanical and static way, following principles of linear causality. Yet the nature of the linguistic information processed here must be questioned. The model’s cognitivist architecture only permits the processing of referential and propositional information, in turn reducing the intentionality of human speech production to its denotative function and leaving no place for non-referential purposes. In sum, segmentation, compartmentalization, binary selectivity, causality, and linearity build a cognitivist architecture that excludes both receptive and productive language processing related to linguistic feeling. For the linguistic feeling concept to take root, language-processing models based on cognitive linearity must be replaced by those that acknowledge emotional recursivity. This requires a paradigm where cognition and emotion are interrelated. We exemplify this using Simonov’s (1986) model of a functional system and specify it for language processing (Jantzen, 2004; Lüdtke, 2012, 2015). In Simonov’s theory (1986, 1991)—or rather, in his refinement of the classic “teleological” theory of

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emotion—emotion stems from the relationship between a need and the difference between given and necessary information, with the result being either positive or negative. This theory allows speech production and reception (i.e., the practice of signification) to be conceptualized within an overall architecture containing a functional system where information processing is emotionally regulated. The motive for communicating is constantly evaluated according to the probability of achieving the communicative aim of the signifying process. This involves constant recursive re-entry processes of adjustment and re-evaluation as well as drawing on stored memories of previous communicative means and aims, marked with either positive or negative emotional valence. The model conceptualizes dialogicity in three ways: first, in the stored memory of previous signifying processes and their communicative achievement, which is dependent on the impact and reaction of the communicative partner and the emotional valence of the memory; second, by including Bourdieu’s (1979) concept of the space of social disposition as well as Lotman’s (1994, 1989) semiosphere, so that—in contrast to Levelt’s isolated mental model—re-contextualization and re-­ historicization can occur; and third, by referring to the theory of innate intersubjectivity (Trevarthen and Aitken, 2001). This final part of the model incorporates Bråten’s (2002) concept of the “virtual other” by including not only evaluations of the communicative achievement itself but also the emotional valence of the virtual representation of the communicative other (see Lüdtke, 2012, 2015). In this theoretical context, it is important to point out that the purely cortical architecture of Levelt’s model is also enriched here, as innate intersubjectivity is grounded in the corticolimbic correlate of the “intrinsic motive formation” (IMF; Trevarthen and Aitken, 2001), where motives to speak and communicate are initiated and regulated by relational emotions (Lüdtke, 2012). At the same time, a shift in the conceptualization of the kind of linguistic information which is processed takes place as the denotative function of sending purely referential content is complemented by an acknowledgment of the existence of various emotive communicative functions and their multi-faceted processing of various emotional content (see Sect. 2.2.1). Overall, an exclusively linguistic sphere is replaced by an intersemiotic,

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corporeal one (Lotman, 1989, 1994; Ruthrof, 2000), as these two quotations illustrate: “Only as an intersemiotic event language can mean” (Ruthrof, 2000, p. 65). “Infant semiosis is emotional, not just representational or referential. It is fundamentally ‘self-with-other-­ referred’” (Trevarthen and Aitken, 2001, p. 16) (Table 12.2).

3 Human-Machine Interaction—Can Machines Be Relational? Having described the changes to epistemology and linguistic theory required to accommodate linguistic feeling, we now approach the concept from an entirely different perspective: the automated recognition and processing of communication in human-machine interaction. Human-machine/computer interaction refers to communication between people and computer-based technologies via a user interface that assists in the performance of human tasks. As a field of research, human-machine interaction explores the design of usable technology that is receptive to the needs of human users (Gautam and Singh, 2015). Recent developments have focused increasingly on analyzing and synthesizing human social-emotional behavior to build technologies that are more robust, effective, and human-centered (Vinciarelli et al., 2015). For natural human-machine interaction, two technologies are crucial: automatic speech recognition and processing (ASR) as well as automatic speech emotion recognition and processing (SER). The basic construction of these two technologies will be described in the next section.

3.1 Technology for Human-Machine Interaction ASR is achieved through software that can convert speech to text by analyzing the shape of the speech wave. The software draws on probabilistic knowledge of phones, sequences of phones in words, and word combinations in specific languages. Estimated probabilities for the transcription of the audio on these two levels using an acoustic model (phones) and a language model (words) are calculated and finally, a transcript is

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compiled by combining the highest probability scores from each step. Language-dependent and universal phone sets (for multilingual speech recognition) are used to design the acoustic model and language-specific vocabularies are generated for the language model (Alharbi et al., 2021). SER describes the automated recognition of human emotion and affective states from speech. To enable machine models to represent emotions, researchers often draw on Ekman’s concept of six basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, surprise, happiness, and sadness; Ekman and Friesen, 1975); others use an axis of arousal or activation (high/low) and valence (positive/negative) to roughly quantify different emotions (Schuller, 2018). In addition, universal and culture-specific audio features that best reflect the emotional content—including both spectral and prosodic features—are compiled by researchers. Language-specific textual features are also considered by looking at individual words or sequences of these and their probabilities are used to estimate a particular emotion class or value (Schuller, 2018). ASR and SER technologies are both based on machine learning applications. Machine learning involves programming computers to optimize their performance for self-learning on a specific task via pattern recognition using example data or experience (Alpaydın, 2010). Therefore, to develop ASR systems, a large amount of manually transcribed audio samples of speech (child, adult, specific languages, or dialects) is required. Similarly, SER applications are built on large quantities of manually labeled audio samples of speech and/or video samples of nonverbal expressions of emotions, such as facial expressions. The performance of machine learning applications depends on factors such as the amount of data used to develop the software or the level of similarity between training and natural data. For example, an ASR system trained with adult speech samples may perform much worse when applied to child speech (Yeung and Alwan, 2018). Despite these technological advances and their quotidian utility, some aspects of the design and training of AI applications limit their ability to learn, process, and use human-like language. These limitations become particularly evident when focusing on emotion-related aspects of language, but exploring them may advance our understanding of linguistic feeling. Accordingly, the next section discusses three features of

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automated language and emotion processing: (a) the conversion of analog to digital signals, (b) the basis of machine “learning,” and (c) the way speech and language are processed automatically. Our discussion aims to illustrate the importance of innately human aspects to the concept of linguistic feeling.

3.2 Fragmentation and Simplification Due to Converting Analog to Digital Signals Converting analog into digital data always leads to fragmentation, reduction, and simplification of the analog signal. This is because the continuous natural signal has to be quantified and translated into a digital signal for computer processing. For example, an analog speech signal is digitalized by repeatedly measuring the amplitude (volume) of the incoming soundwave at various sample rates, transforming this into an electrical signal, and quantizing it into a list of binary values. This process converts the continuous signal into a non-continuous (discrete) form. On the one hand, it exemplifies an extreme version of the atomistic linguistic approach (Sect. 2.1.1), in which language is split up into even smaller (digital) units. On the other, the necessary fragmentation does not allow the construct and its structure to be examined more closely and obscures the coherence and unity of the bigger picture. The need for simplified translation and segmented processing thus hinders the continuous and holistic processing of human communication, including phenomena such as linguistic feeling.

3.3 The Basis of Machine “Learning” As stated at the start of this section, machine learning in ASR and SER is solely based on the processing of statistical information, whether based on human-made rules or solely extracted from labeled training data, as in so-called deep-learning. A term borrowed from the field of machine learning, statistical learning is also crucial to human development (Saffran and Kirkham, 2018). It “refers to the type of representational learning

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that is purely observational without any task or feedback, which automatically and implicitly represents repeatedly appearing spatial and temporal patterns in the sensory input” (Fiser and Lengyel, 2019, p. 219). Statistical learning helps infants to find structure as they negotiate their complex and noisy multisensory environment (Saffran and Kirkham, 2018). Despite this overlap between human and machine learning, the motive underlying the process could not be more different. Machines optimized to perform the task they were built for lack any motive or intention for “learning,” whereas humans, as innately intersubjective beings, learn in order to connect with and find meaning in each other and the shared world (Trevarthen, 2015). In addition, interaction and emotional connection with other humans is a prerequisite for (statistical) learning, as Kuhl et al.’s study (2003) of infant language learning conclusively demonstrates. Conversely, machine learning models “learn” in isolation, with their ostensible advantage being that they only require a supply of a considerable amount of data to be able to extract its structure and rules (Alpaydın, 2010).

3.4 The Absence of Context and History from Automatic Speech and Language Processing The recognition, processing, and synthesis of human behavior are often addressed in computer science by applying the same approaches used for any other type of data accessible to machines: speech, in other words, is treated like any other signal. Because speech and language technology focuses solely on the robust recognition and categorization of the immediate signal, it usually lacks an internal representation of both context and others, resulting in shallow interactions with users (Vinciarelli et al., 2015). But communication is not achieved via speech and language alone and does not consist merely of the reception and production of linguistically correct utterances. Meaningful interactions between humans take place in highly specific contexts overlapping with shared and individual histories (see Sect. 2.2.1). Adapting the polar distinction between emotion-­ free mentalist monologue and emotionally permeated and

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intersubjective corporeal dialogue discussed in Sect. 2.1.1, the way machines communicate with humans can be described as an emotionfree mentalist dialogue. Machine-human interaction is based solely on input, not reciprocal co-construction, with the human role limited to providing data whose distribution can be analyzed. Machines can predict human patterns of communication (as seen in speech technology) but only based on distributional patterns in the training data, such as co-­ occurring words (collocations). The material, economic, cultural, social, and emotional relations (Lüdtke, 2012, 2015) influencing, consciously or unconsciously, every communicative dialogue between humans cannot (yet) be modeled or processed due to its complexity.

4 Conclusion: Linguistic Feeling as the Last Refuge of Being Human? In this chapter, we have attempted to support the book’s aim to do more than simply review past and present investigations of linguistic feeling. We have taken an innovative and transdisciplinary perspective on this notion and discussed its major conceptual implications in terms of epistemology, methodology, and linguistic theory. We have traced a relational trajectory that moves from epistemology to linguistic theory to human-­machine interaction, and we now conclude by inviting the reader to reflect on the significance of linguistic feeling as a last refuge of humanism. Despite the tremendous technological advances that machine learning has brought to ASR and SER over the last few decades, it is as yet unable to capture the full complexity of human communication, such as linguistic feeling we have conceptualized here. In aspects such as statistical learning, human processing, and computer functioning may operate in parallel. However, natural human communication draws on more than structure and rules. Accordingly, we feel that linguistic feeling’s emphasis on the foundational importance of our connectivity—or better, our interrelatedness—represents a final realm of uniquely human activity. Joint transdisciplinary efforts are required to glimpse this connection and

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make human-machine interaction more natural (Schuller, 2018). Only the future will tell if technological progress will allow computers to move beyond simply imitating this profoundly human behavior.

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Index1

A

Acceptability judgment, 10n14, 14, 15, 225, 226, 255–258, 261, 275, 277 Acceptable/Acceptability, 10n14, 11n15, 14, 30, 39, 49, 50, 159, 225, 226, 243, 245, 247, 249–251, 255, 257–261, 264, 277, 317 Accountability, 285 Act, 46, 103, 105–107, 107n8, 109, 109n11, 112–114, 119, 120, 129, 131, 141, 142, 201n6, 206, 207, 282, 283, 291 Activity, 1, 13, 14, 17, 18, 20, 21, 23–25, 36, 41, 42, 48, 53, 54, 56, 57, 92, 108, 112, 124n3, 133, 136, 153, 174, 176, 179,

198, 199, 210, 280, 283, 285, 307 Activity of the speaker, 92, 124 Adelung, Johann Christoph, 43, 79, 80, 80n6, 86, 269 Adherence, 84, 103, 108, 142 Adjective, 86, 109–111, 126, 165, 200n4, 202, 305 Adorno, Theodor W., 320 Aesthetic feeling, 18, 60n51, 79, 159, 166 Aesthetics, 3, 9, 38, 152–155, 157n10, 164, 165, 176n3, 277 feeling, 18, 60n51, 79, 159, 166 value, 148 Affective, 31, 42–45, 44n42, 51–53, 57, 103, 119, 120, 157, 159, 160, 166, 167, 175, 176, 319, 324, 327, 328, 330

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Romand, M. Le Du (eds.), Emotions, Metacognition, and the Intuition of Language Normativity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17913-6

345

346 Index

Affective (cont.) affective evaluation, 50, 52 affective phenomenon, 52, 53, 60n51 affective process, 47, 160 affective science, 1–64 affective state, 4, 42–45, 49–55, 55n47, 57–59, 60n51, 115, 263, 325, 334 affective valence, 53 Affectivity, 3, 42–49, 51, 52, 61, 105, 159 American, 12n17, 62, 117n28, 149, 176, 178, 184–186, 187n12, 191, 216, 217, 228, 233 Analogy, 15, 15n21, 33, 91, 93, 130, 130n17, 140, 302, 303, 305–307, 309, 313 Analytic reasoning, 24 Analytic skills, 24 Anthropological/Anthropology, 90, 149, 174–179, 186, 191, 290, 323 Anti-mentalist, 244 Anti-rationalist, 320 Apperception, 103, 106, 107, 109, 111, 174 Applied linguistics, 7 Apollonius Dyscolus, 215–217 Appraisal, 3, 18, 20, 20n26, 111, 285 Appreciation, 79, 87, 106, 108, 111, 113, 120, 183, 185n8, 307 Appropriate/Appropriateness, 2, 19, 30, 38, 47, 123n1, 124, 206, 206n13, 244, 255, 257, 270, 271, 285–287, 289, 291, 293, 305, 308

Arbitrary/Arbitrariness, 112, 136, 328, 330 Aristotelian, 215, 319 Aristotle, 219, 220 Art/Artistic, 9, 43, 125, 152–156, 155n8, 159, 162–165, 175–177, 179, 180, 184, 185, 185n8, 187, 222, 274, 325 Artistic activity, 152, 177 Assent, 45, 61, 103–120 Association/Associational, 33, 108, 151 Attitude, 26, 34, 135, 142, 154, 163, 187, 217, 223, 247, 288–289 B

Bach, Emmon, 75 Bacon, Francis, 219, 220 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 325, 326, 330 Bally, Charles, 306 Baroque, 155n8, 156 Barthes, Roland, 328 Baz, Avner, 204n10, 205 Béguelin, Marie-José, 127n13, 303, 305, 306 Behavior, 37, 38, 132, 137, 137n23, 148, 152n5, 156, 160, 161, 177, 179, 181, 190, 202, 205, 216, 227, 229, 229n19, 231, 253, 261–264, 276, 278–282, 286, 288, 289, 333, 336, 338 Behaviorism/Behaviorist, 163, 227–228, 228n18, 282 Benedict, Ruth, 157, 176 Benveniste, Emile, 137, 329 Berkeley, George, 321 Bernhardi, August Ferdinand, 104

 Index 

Bloom, Lois, 330 Boas, Franz/Boasian, 62, 149, 163, 174–179, 176n2, 176n3, 181, 182, 184, 191 Bogen, James, 248 Bolzano, Bernard, 162, 162n15 Bopp, Franz, 6, 13, 28, 61, 77, 87–88, 92, 302 Boppian, 87, 91 Botha, Rudolf P., 225, 234 Bourdieu, Pierre, 141, 142, 320, 321, 323, 332 Bråten, Stein, 330, 332 Bréal, Michel, 125n6, 301, 303 Brentano, Franz, 104 Brinton, Daniel, 176 Brøcker, Karen, 11, 14, 16n23, 21, 29, 35, 39, 233, 233n22, 234 Broekhuis, Hans, 233, 276, 277 Brugmann, Karl, 92 Bühler, Karl, 6, 109n11, 330 C

Campe, Joachim Heinrich, 43, 44, 60, 76, 77, 80, 82–86, 95, 268, 269 Carroll, Lewis, 254 Cartesian/Descartes, René, 147, 158, 220, 319, 321, 323, 324, 327, 330 Caruana, Fausto, 282 Central system, 40, 41 Chandler, Daniel, 327, 330 Chapman, Don, 288 Child, 89, 159, 200, 216, 230, 271, 273, 282, 289, 302, 311, 318, 325, 334

347

Chodorow, Nancy, 320, 323 Chomsky, Noam/Chomskyan, 10–12, 10n14, 11n15, 21, 75, 124, 131n20, 217–219, 217n3, 223–228, 228n17, 228n18, 234–236, 236n26, 243, 244, 248, 249, 255, 258, 259, 262, 264, 277, 282, 323, 325, 329 Co-construction, 64, 322, 337 Cognitio, 148 Cognition, 85, 95, 113, 119, 120, 331 Cognitive, 61, 84, 113, 116, 124, 126, 127, 130, 131, 134, 138, 139, 157, 160, 161, 209, 210, 222, 229, 282, 308, 331 cognitive emotion, 54 cognitive feeling, 54 cognitive linguistics, 63, 232, 237, 282, 285, 286 cognitive process, 48, 49, 53, 159 Cognitivist, 131, 323, 331 Cognizance, 19, 26, 37, 46, 47, 54, 55, 147, 148, 153 Collective language, 133, 141 Collectivity, 125 Collins, John, 16 Combettes, Bernard, 301 Communication, 106, 140, 165, 209, 271 Community, 1, 8n12, 20, 25–27, 27n32, 29, 54, 57, 61, 89, 124, 125, 133, 135–138, 141, 280, 283, 285–290

348 Index

Competence/Competent, 10, 10n14, 11n15, 26, 26n31, 29, 35, 36, 39, 40, 63, 224–226, 229–231, 233, 235, 243, 244, 248–255, 262–264, 270, 277, 280, 282, 286, 293, 318 Competence-based view, 35 Compliance/Compliant, 1, 16, 18, 20, 25, 29, 30, 38, 58, 149, 156, 162 Comprehension, 36, 37, 39–41, 105, 201n6, 263, 308 Conceptualization, 64, 207, 313, 321, 324–331 Condillac, Etienne Bonnet de, 302 Connotation/Connotative, 28, 106n5, 115, 118, 119, 270, 327, 328 Conscious/Consciousness, 13, 17, 18, 21, 25, 26, 28–32, 34, 36, 41, 44, 46, 49, 50, 52–60, 64, 80–82, 84–86, 90, 93, 95, 103–105, 107–109, 111, 112, 115, 118, 124, 124n3, 129–131, 131n19, 133–135, 138, 141, 142, 147, 148, 152, 153, 156, 158, 159, 161, 162, 177, 181, 187, 205, 205n11, 221, 226, 246, 253, 274, 274n3, 281, 283, 284, 290, 291, 293, 305, 307, 308, 321, 323 degrees of consciousness, 129, 131 half-consciousness, 293 knowledge, 81, 86 preconscious, 77, 90, 94, 94n11, 95

self-consciousness, 105, 106, 106n3, 107n8, 108, 111, 131 semi-consciousness, 132, 141 Constructivism/Constructivist, 64, 319–321, 324 Convention/Conventional, 26, 27n32, 125, 153, 184, 224, 225, 279, 285, 328 Conventionality, 328 Conventionalization, 285, 286, 311, 314 Conventionalized, 286, 287 Correct/Correctness, 1, 15, 19, 22, 25, 27, 28, 30, 32, 36, 38, 39, 47, 58, 78–81, 84, 89n9, 90, 115, 119n34, 159, 198, 201, 226, 230, 233, 244, 251, 256, 260, 271, 284, 288, 308, 318, 336 Coseriu, Eugenio, 283, 293 Croce, Benedetto, 151–153, 151n4, 155, 161, 163, 179, 219n7 Cuffari, Elena Clare, 280–282 Culbertson, Jennifer, 257, 258, 261, 262 Culioli, Antoine, 12–13, 24, 124n3 Cultural/Culture, 2, 9, 43, 62, 79, 82, 111, 125, 148–150, 156, 157n10, 161–163, 166, 173–191, 186n11, 280, 281, 290, 292, 304, 323, 324, 326, 329, 337 Curtius, Georg, 77 D

Darnell, Regna, 148n1, 176, 185n6, 186n11, 274, 280

 Index 

Darstellung, 104, 109n11 Davidson, Andrew, 291 Deception, 55 Declarative knowledge, 229 Degree of consciousness, 29, 30, 60, 131n19 Deleuze, Gilles, 320, 329 Derrida, Jacques, 320 Development of language, 79, 142, 287 Devitt, Michael/Devittian, 11, 14, 26, 32, 34, 35, 49, 63, 221, 222, 224, 226, 229, 231n21, 232, 235, 244, 249–256, 252n4, 261 Di Sciullo, Anna Maria, 311 Diachronic/Diachrony, 21, 115, 129, 130, 132, 136, 273, 303, 309, 329, 330 Diachronicity, 307 Dialogic, 325 Dickinson, Emily, 187, 188, 188n13 Diderot, Denis, 164 Diltheyan, 143n27 Discourse, 178, 190, 267–272, 276, 279, 280, 285, 292, 311, 312, 318–320 Displeasurable/Displeasure, 44, 53–55, 57, 59, 60, 60n51, 84, 115, 116, 157, 161 Displeasurable coloration, 30, 59, 60, 60n51 Dosse, François, 327, 329 Drożdżowicz, Anna, 11, 16, 16n23, 26, 32, 34, 35, 38–40 Dutch, 4n4, 61, 63, 106n5, 267–272, 292

349

E

Einfühlung, 154, 156 Ekman, Paul, 334 Elffers, Els, 22, 63, 103, 224n15, 236, 276, 278 Eliot, Thomas Stearns, 185–187, 185n7, 185n8 Emonds, Joseph, 223 Emotion, 3, 42, 48–51, 51n44, 53–55, 55n47, 64, 95, 105, 109n11, 115, 116, 118, 119, 185, 280, 288, 319–322, 324–329, 332–335 Emotional, 38, 41, 46, 116n23, 139, 157n10, 272, 280, 290, 319, 320, 326, 328, 331, 334, 336, 337 emotional turn, 317, 325 emotional valence, 332 Emotive, 328, 330, 332 Empathy/Empathetic, 154–156 Empfindung, 44, 80n6, 81, 158n12 Empiricism/Empiricist, 219, 220, 321 Enfield, Nick J., 284, 285 English, 1, 2, 2n1, 2n2, 60, 63, 76n1, 116n22, 118, 123n1, 125n5, 137n24, 140, 148n1, 150, 151, 160, 165, 166, 178, 180, 188, 217, 217n3, 236, 260, 267–272, 292, 301, 312 Enlightenment, 79, 82, 83, 320 Epilinguistic, 24, 105, 124n3 epilinguistic activity, 12–13, 24, 124, 124n3 epilinguistic consciousness, 124 epilinguistic gloss, 13

350 Index

Epistemic, 25, 43, 111 epistemic emotion, 54, 55n47 epistemic feeling, 3, 43, 45, 48–51, 54–60, 55n47, 55n48, 115, 116 epistemic process, 23, 54 epistemic quality, 55 epistemic value, 40 Epistemological/Epistemology, 1, 3, 4, 6, 11, 20, 34, 51, 64, 126, 134, 141, 218–221, 225, 305, 307, 310, 317–338 Erlebnis, 209, 210 Error signal, 30, 39–41, 262, 263 Ethnographic, 176, 181 Etiological/Etiology, 3, 11, 32–36, 39, 40, 230, 230n20, 231, 252 Euclid, 235n25 Evaluation, 25, 34, 37, 38, 49, 50, 158, 256, 263, 288, 312, 332 Evaluative, 18, 46, 49, 50, 115, 164 evaluative activity, 25, 54 evaluative factor, 55 evaluative function, 52 evaluative power, 25, 25n30, 52, 53 evaluative response, 48, 51, 52 Expectation, 29, 36–38, 48, 49, 55, 56, 59, 59n50, 230, 288, 291 Experience, 13, 18, 24, 26, 30–32, 34, 36, 39, 46–48, 50, 55–57, 62, 109–111, 114, 120, 139, 141, 151, 156, 157, 163, 174–177, 176n3, 180, 181, 183, 184, 188, 189, 191, 198, 201–210, 202n7, 206n13, 255, 256, 271, 274, 281, 291, 318, 334

Experience of meaning, 62, 197–210 Experiential, 28–30, 49, 52, 54, 56, 59, 60, 60n51, 161 experiential coloration, 52, 53 experiential opposite, 57 experiential phenomenon, 27, 30–31, 54 Expert intuitions, 63, 221, 222, 222n11, 232–234 Externalist, 32, 278–280, 282, 292 F

Faculty of language, 132 Fadda, Emanuele, 2, 8, 26, 61, 124n4, 127n12, 131n20, 305, 306, 308, 327 Feeling feeling for form, 9, 153, 166, 174, 177, 178, 180, 191, 274 feeling for linguistic form, 161 feeling for patterning, 9, 180 feeling for relation, 9, 153, 180 feeling of delusion, 59 feeling of expectation, 56, 58 feeling of familiarity/familiarity-­ related feeling/feeling of unfamiliarity, 56–59, 59n50 feeling of novelty, 57 feeling of satisfaction, 58 feeling of wrongness, 50 Fiehler, Reinhard, 23, 26–28, 31, 32, 37, 38, 41, 48, 49, 51, 51n44, 52, 57, 59, 76, 78 Fiengo, Robert, 11, 16, 19, 23, 29, 49 Fitzgerald, Gareth, 35 Folk-linguistic, 35, 231

 Index 

Foolen, Ad, 2n1, 2n2, 4n4, 22n27, 25, 26, 28n34, 63, 103, 106, 110–113, 113n20, 115 Formal feeling, 159, 160 Formalism/Formalist, 62, 157n10, 164–166, 174, 182–190 Form-feeling, 9, 9n13, 12n17, 18n25, 20n26, 45, 62, 119, 147–167, 173–191, 274 Formgefühl, 9, 62, 153–157, 165n19, 166, 274 Fortis, Jean-Michel, 2, 9, 9n13, 12n17, 18n25, 20n26, 45, 47, 62, 119, 152, 153, 162, 173, 179, 219n7, 274, 280 Foucault, Michel, 320 Frege, Gottlob, 201 Frei, Henri, 312 French, 4, 8, 12, 15, 104, 116, 116n22, 123n1, 125n5, 133, 147, 156n9, 157n10, 160, 163, 209, 210, 267, 270, 273, 279, 304, 307, 311, 312 Frevert, Ute, 79, 84 Fries, Jacob Friedrich, 158 G

Gabelentz, Georg von der, 6, 15, 77, 94n11, 162, 163 Gauger, Hans-Martin, 4, 7, 8, 11n15, 19–21, 23, 25, 27, 28, 31, 47, 76, 78, 95, 308 Gefühl, 43, 62, 79, 80n6, 84, 105, 147, 154, 157, 158, 158n12, 270, 304 Gefühlskultur, 43, 79, 82 Geier, Manfred, 14, 16n23, 31, 78 General linguistics, 87, 90, 124, 126, 126n10, 128, 133, 224, 270

351

Generative grammar, 9–11, 21, 22, 63, 217, 236, 237, 246, 268, 272, 275–278, 285 Generative linguistics, 62, 217, 229, 235, 236, 244, 255, 260, 261 Generativism, 217, 237n27 Geographical linguistics, 124, 132, 138, 139 German, 2, 4–6, 22, 23, 43, 44, 60, 63, 76, 76n1, 78–83, 85, 88, 89, 89n9, 104, 104n1, 109, 147, 153, 155, 159, 160, 166, 174, 176, 180, 219, 219n6, 267–272, 274, 292, 302, 312, 317 linguistics, 6, 9, 61, 75–95 philosophy, 158, 158n12, 191 psychology, 44, 105, 158, 158n12, 178 Gestalt, 148n1 Gestaltism/Gestaltist, 148 Gestalttheorie, 167 Gipper, Helmut, 78, 86, 87, 90 Glock, Hans-Johann, 203, 204n10, 207 Godel, Robert, 127n12, 127n14, 129n15, 306 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 141 Goldenweiser, Alexander A., 149 Gomperz, Henrich, 44, 44n42, 159, 160, 167, 173, 303, 328 Goodall, Grant, 276, 277 Gothic, 156 Grammar, 10, 10n14, 19, 21, 78, 87, 88, 109, 119, 130n18, 174, 175, 178, 181, 201, 217, 232, 235–237, 237n27, 248, 249, 258, 259, 262, 271, 272, 278, 286, 318

352 Index

Grammatical, 10n14, 14, 16–18, 30, 50, 58, 90, 111, 116n22, 130n18, 191, 204n10, 216, 223, 223n13, 224, 234, 236, 245, 247, 248, 257, 275, 277, 285, 302, 304, 308, 313, 317, 318 grammatical category, 109 grammatical feeling, 17, 18 grammatical form, 88, 91, 115, 180, 182, 302 grammatical intuition, 276 grammatical rules, 35, 198, 201, 248, 264 Grammaticality, 10, 10n14, 11n15, 14, 15, 223, 225, 226, 228, 230, 234, 235, 249, 251, 255–257, 259, 261, 262, 264, 275–278, 285, 290 Grammaticalization, 301–314 Grammaticalness, 224, 225, 277 Grant, Madison, 177 Grasp, 9, 23, 108, 138, 148, 151, 156–158, 166, 167, 178, 190, 201n6, 254, 271, 308 Greek, 80, 87, 138, 155, 215, 216, 222 Grimm, Jacob, 6, 61, 76, 77, 88–89, 89n9, 268 Grimm, Wilhelm, 268 Gross, Steven, 14, 19, 23, 30, 31n36, 32–35, 38–40, 50, 176n2, 230n20, 233n22, 234n24, 257, 258, 261–263 Guattari, Félix, 320 Guillaume, Gustave, 12n20

H

Habit, 26, 64, 138, 185, 268, 278–287, 290, 292, 293, 302, 329 Habitus, 329 Hacker, Peter, 200n3, 207 Half-consciousness, 293 Handler, Richard, 152, 153n6, 179, 182 Hartung, August, 22, 77, 81 Haspelmath, Martin, 303 Hawkins, Robert X. D., 278, 288 Hearer, 10, 27, 84, 210 Hegelian, 154 Hegelianism, 154 Held, Barbara S., 218 Henne, Helmut, 31, 47, 76, 78, 83 Herbart, Johann Friedrich/ Herbartian/Herbartianism, 104, 131n19, 150, 151, 158, 159, 162, 164–166 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 43, 60, 76, 79, 80, 158 Heyne, Moritz, 268 Heyse, Karl Wilhelm Ludwig, 77, 94n11 Higginson, Thomas W., 188, 188n13, 188n14 Hildebrand, Rudolf, 22, 77, 94n11, 269 Hill, Archibald, 228, 229 Historical comparative linguistics, 87, 89, 92 History of language, 2, 93, 95 Hohm, Michael, 77n2, 269 Hoogvliet, Jan Marius, 112n19 Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 188, 188n15, 189, 189n16

 Index 

Hopper, Paul J., 302, 303 Hufendiek, Rebekka, 280 Human-machine interaction, 64, 317–338 Humboldt, Alexander von, 61, 175, 178 Humboldt, Wilhelm von/ Humboldtian, 6, 77, 89–91, 104, 107n7, 162, 162n16, 178 Husserl, Edmund, 329 I

Idealism/Idealist/idealistic, 87, 91, 155, 163, 321 Idiolect, 160, 247–249, 256, 258, 259 Idiom/Idiomatic, 17, 58, 111, 132, 133n22, 136, 138, 139n25, 317 Ill-formed/Ill-formedness, 17, 54, 58 Imagination, 83, 181, 205, 207, 208, 321 Immediacy/Immediate, 23, 34, 37, 42, 46, 48, 51, 52, 94n11, 108, 112, 141, 142, 158, 178, 188n15, 219, 219n5, 221, 222, 230, 249, 250, 255, 287, 336 Implicit knowledge, 259 Implicit norm, 287 Incorrect, 1, 19, 30, 58, 79, 115, 226, 244, 260, 271, 288, 318 Individual, 17, 18, 24–29, 27n32, 35, 37, 38, 52, 54, 56, 57, 92, 93, 94n11, 108, 111, 114, 118, 125, 133–135, 133n22, 137, 137n24, 149, 151, 153,

353

162, 177, 179, 184–186, 186n11, 187n12, 188, 191, 198, 210, 281–283, 289, 290, 310, 323, 325, 329, 334, 336 individual language, 93, 133, 137n24, 310 individual speaker, 198, 244 Indo-European/Indo-Germanic, 87, 91, 166, 175, 180, 181 Inflectional category, 111 Information, 24, 30, 31, 36, 39, 54, 57, 115, 116, 220n8, 226, 246, 248, 250, 289 Innate/Innateness, 64, 152n5, 153, 163, 220, 224, 286, 317, 318, 332 Inner experience, 48, 51 Inner form, 178 Inner striving, 182–190 Instinct/Instinctive, 6n7, 26, 94n11, 128, 131–134, 131n20, 153, 178, 180, 185, 268, 269, 274, 288, 310, 317, 318 Institution/Institutional, 26, 61, 124–126, 134–137, 156, 197, 210 Institutionalized, 209, 210 Intellectual process, 120, 225 Intelligence, 125, 125n6, 126, 282 Internalist, 32, 278 Interpretation, 16, 85, 105, 110n15, 166, 174, 181, 206, 207, 220, 224–226, 231, 244, 255, 257, 260, 264, 283, 301, 303, 313 Intersubjective/Intersubjectivity, 64, 210, 319–323, 326, 328, 330, 332, 336

354 Index

Intersubjective corporeal dialogue, 64, 319, 324–326, 337 Introspection/Introspective, 31, 216, 219 Introspective judgment, 226 Intuition, 3, 5n6, 10–12, 10n14, 11n15, 12n17, 12n18, 14–16, 16n22, 19–24, 29–40, 75, 147, 148, 190, 216–219, 226, 243–264, 269–271, 275, 284, 289, 301, 305, 318 Intuitive, 9, 14, 23–24, 29, 33, 53, 64, 104, 105, 108, 151, 156, 188, 201, 217, 219n6, 220–222, 224, 233, 235, 236, 245, 246, 262, 270, 271, 308, 317, 318, 320 intuitive apprehension, 20, 36, 41, 44, 55, 57 intuitive capacity, 17, 152 intuitive experience, 3, 29, 52, 53 intuitive feeling, 177, 271, 280 intuitive judgment, 16, 32, 34, 40, 216, 222–224, 227, 229n19, 233, 233n22, 248, 253, 256, 259, 276, 293 intuitive knowledge, 10, 115, 152, 158, 236 intuitive phenomenon, 23–24 intuitive process, 12, 152n5 Irigaray, Luce, 320 Irreflective/Irreflectiveness/ Non-­reflective/Unreflective, 9, 23, 37, 42, 47, 52, 63, 92, 218, 219, 221, 231, 237, 249, 250, 254, 271, 308, 317 Irvine, Judith, 186

Ising, Erika, 8, 77n2, 79 Itkonen, Esa, 33, 226, 226n16, 244, 260, 262, 264, 276 J

Jakobson, Roman, 325, 330 James, William, 117, 117n28, 160, 167 Jespersen, Otto, 110n15, 282, 283, 292, 301, 302 Jones, Sir William, 87 Joseph, John, 137n24 Josten, Dirk, 79 Judgment/Judgmental, 10, 10n14, 14–16, 19, 20, 24, 33–35, 39, 40, 84, 86, 88, 95, 147, 148, 158, 164, 184, 199, 216, 220–226, 222n11, 223n13, 228–230, 231n21, 232–236, 245–247, 249, 250, 252–264, 256n5, 270, 272, 275–277 Judgment-like, 47 Judgment of grammaticality/ Grammaticality judgment, 14, 225, 230, 255, 256, 276–278 Jung, Carl Gustav, 151, 219n7 Justification, 21, 63, 128, 220, 245–255 Justificationism/Justificationist, 63, 220, 222, 225–227, 233–237 Justified, 10, 78, 220, 252 K

Kabatek, Johannes, 283 Kainz, Friedrich, 6n8, 7, 7n10, 15, 21, 23, 25–27, 30–33, 45, 46, 54, 60, 76, 77, 85, 308

 Index 

Kant, Immanuel, 83, 85, 157, 158 Katz, Jerrold, 226, 226n16 Kinzler, Katherine, 270, 289 Klein, Wolf Peter, 43, 76–78, 77n2, 80, 90, 270 Knobloch, Johann, 6n8, 7, 18, 47 Knowledge, 1, 3, 5, 12n18, 13, 19, 20, 23–27, 27n32, 29, 35, 36, 41, 43, 45, 48, 54, 55, 77–79, 81, 84, 86, 88, 90, 93–95, 94n11, 107, 110, 111, 117, 118, 123n1, 124n3, 132, 147, 152, 153, 158–160, 177, 181, 185, 199, 216, 218–220, 219n6, 224, 226, 226n16, 228, 229, 257, 260–262, 278, 284, 286, 289, 291, 293, 322, 323, 333 Knowledge of language, 35, 130, 272, 286 Koerner, Ernst Frideryk Konrad, 305 Koffka, Kurt, 148, 148n1 Konstantinidou, Magdalene, 328 Kristeva, Julia, 320, 324, 325, 328–330 Kroeber, Alfred, 186, 186n9, 186n10 L

Labov, William, 230 Lakoff, George, 223 Lamm, Ehud, 283, 284 Language language activity, 21 language awareness, 78, 90, 94, 94n11, 95, 269 language evolution, 6, 283

355

language faculty, 139, 251, 254, 257, 263, 264 language norm, 79, 269, 277, 287, 318 language normativity, 1, 3, 4, 12, 16, 20, 20n26, 24–26, 27n32, 29n35, 35, 36, 41, 44, 49, 51–53, 55–57 language organism, 87, 88, 91, 93 language process, 3, 13–22, 24, 29, 41, 45, 160, 331, 336–337 language rule, 20, 197 language sciences, 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 19, 22, 32, 33, 42, 44, 45, 60, 62, 105, 131n19 language structure, 87, 113n20 language system, 162, 293, 325 language use, 10n14, 85, 86, 93, 94n11, 113n20, 197, 198, 255, 267, 268, 270, 283, 285, 286, 288, 290, 318 Langue, 26, 26n31, 29, 133, 133n22, 137, 137n24, 138, 283, 327, 329, 330 Latin, 87, 135, 137, 178, 312 Lawrenz, Maria Johanna, 8, 77n2, 87n8, 88 Learning, 27n32, 140, 223, 272, 292, 334–337 Lebensgefühl, 155, 155n8, 156, 158 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 117, 147, 157n11 Leibnizian, 117 Leumann, Ernst, 117, 117n27 Levelt, Willem, 36n40, 37, 39, 227, 229, 230, 232, 331, 332 Lewandowski, Theodor, 269 Lewis, David, 279

356 Index

Lexical, 16–18, 20, 27, 36, 58, 60n51, 118, 119, 132, 150, 150n3, 302, 311, 318 lexical feeling, 58, 304, 310, 311, 313 lexical knowledge, 16, 17 lexical norm, 58 Lexicality, 311 Lexicographic, 272 Lexicon, 17, 35, 58, 125, 127, 135, 139, 290, 327, 328 Li, Leon, 278, 279 Lindroth, Hjalmar, 6, 6n9, 7n10, 15, 18, 23, 26, 29n35, 30, 31, 60 Lindström Tiedemann, Åsa Margaretha Therese, 302, 305 Linguistics, 1–64, 75–95, 104, 116n22, 124–128, 124n3, 126n10, 130, 130n17, 133, 167, 173, 174, 176–178, 191, 215–237, 244–255, 259–262, 264, 267–293, 301–314, 317–338 linguistic activity, 13, 112, 153, 198 linguistic apprehension, 147 linguistic awareness, 95, 290–292 linguistic beauty, 84 linguistic behavior, 229n19, 261–263 linguistic category, 104, 109 linguistic community, 1, 8n12, 20, 25, 26, 27n32, 29, 54, 57, 135, 289, 293 linguistic consciousness, 17, 21, 29, 31–32, 54, 124 linguistic correctness, 19, 38, 78, 79

linguistic elements, 110, 112, 115, 190 linguistic feeling, 1–64, 78, 103–120, 123–143, 147, 156, 166, 173, 191, 197–210, 243, 244, 267–293, 301–314, 317–338 linguistic form, 3, 6n8, 12n18, 14, 18–20, 24, 25, 27n32, 40, 47, 52–54, 57, 58, 61, 91–93, 103, 114, 116, 161, 163, 303, 310 linguistic information, 30, 31, 36, 57, 331, 332 linguistic instinct, 2, 6n7, 94n11, 132, 302 linguistic intuition, 2, 5n6, 9–12, 10n14, 11n15, 12n17, 12n18, 14, 15, 16n22, 19, 21–24, 29, 30, 31n36, 32–40, 42, 47–50, 58, 62, 63, 75, 215n1, 216–218, 216n2, 222–235, 224n15, 233n23, 234n24, 237, 244–246, 248–257, 259–264 linguistic knowledge, 3, 12n18, 24–27, 27n32, 29, 35, 41, 45, 78, 94, 124n3, 224, 322 linguistic meaning, 17, 20, 285 linguistic norm, 27, 30, 77, 78 linguistic pattern, 62, 148, 150, 156, 161, 162 linguistic phenomenon, 110, 125 linguistic process, 38, 56, 159 linguistic production, 39, 244, 253, 256, 263 linguistic rule, 81, 246, 250–252, 264

 Index 

linguistic seemings, 247 linguistic sign, 91, 135, 138 speech comprehension, 36, 39, 41 linguistic system, 17, 18, 25, 27, 28, 57, 58, 262, 268, 273–278, 293 linguistic unit, 17, 112, 114, 147, 148, 166, 313 Lipps, Theodor, 106, 107, 155–157 Literacy, 290–292 Littré, Emile, 15, 304 Locke, John, 321 Locution, 17, 58, 119n34 Logic/Logical, 46, 111–113, 112n19, 118n32, 120, 140, 160, 165, 167, 201, 216, 258, 319, 324, 325 Logocentrism, 320 Logos, 64, 319, 320, 324, 325 Lotman, Yuri, 325, 326, 330, 332, 333 Lowell, Amy, 189 Ludlow, Peter, 246, 247 Luka, Barbara, 10n14, 11, 23, 24, 49, 50, 58, 58n49 Lycan, William, 247 M

Machine, 86, 189, 190, 210, 317–338 Mäkilähde, Aleksi, 25, 284 Malcolm, Norman, 199, 200 Malković, Martina, 279 Matthews, Peter H., 215, 233, 270, 271 Maynes, Jeffrey, 11n16, 14, 22n27, 23, 30, 32–35, 39, 50, 63, 246, 276

357

Mead, Margaret, 148n1, 176 Meaning, 12n18, 14, 16, 19, 32, 35, 40, 58, 62, 83, 85, 88, 91, 109, 111, 113, 113n20, 115–119, 116n22, 130, 130n18, 132, 138, 160, 166, 177, 185, 190, 191, 197–210, 247, 254, 268, 270, 280, 285, 287, 311, 312 Meaning-blindness, 62, 197–210, 203 Meaning-blind speaker, 62, 202, 209 Meaning of word(s), 83, 85, 201, 208, 268 Meillet, Antoine, 302 Meinong, Alexius, 104 Memory, 33, 108, 262, 332 Mental activity, 1, 56, 57, 108 Mental faculty, 5, 41 Mental interiority, 52 Mentalism, 252, 325, 327 Mentalist/mentalistic, 32, 56, 227, 244, 249, 252, 253, 255, 257, 261–263, 324–330, 336, 337 Mental state, 42, 44, 51–53, 56, 157, 160, 279 Metacognition, 3, 24, 25 Metacognitive, 19, 25, 25n30, 31, 50, 53 metacognitive activity, 14, 17, 18, 20, 24, 54 metacognitive factor, 55, 111 metacognitive phenomenon, 14, 19, 25 metacognitive power, 25n30 metacognitive property, 53

358 Index

Metalinguistic, 8, 16, 24, 115, 119, 229, 229n19, 231, 249, 252, 256, 276, 289, 290, 293 metalinguistic activity, 13, 24–25 metalinguistic intuition, 2, 24 metalinguistic judgment, 2, 24, 249, 263 Method, 21, 132, 186, 190, 216, 220, 232, 255, 276, 277, 323 Methodology, 21, 112n19, 217, 229, 243–264, 275, 276, 322, 337 Mind, 3, 11, 26–29, 40, 41, 43, 55, 59, 61, 90, 109, 112n19, 116, 118, 120, 129, 140, 147, 151, 162, 162n15, 178, 179, 181, 183, 201, 210, 220, 244, 250, 264, 279, 281–283, 308, 321, 325–328 Modest view, 32, 250 Monitoring, 37–39, 256, 262 monitoring activity, 53 monitoring-based model, 37–42, 48, 59 monitoring behavior, 263 monitoring process, 3, 26n31, 35–42, 48, 50 monitoring system, 39, 262 Monneret, Philippe, 9, 12n20, 305 Monologue, 64, 324–326, 336 Mood, 53 Morais, José, 291, 291n4 Morpheme, 15, 19, 275, 308, 311, 312, 325 Morphological, 16–18, 27, 36, 58, 59, 128, 130n18, 253, 307, 308, 328 morphological category, 111 morphological features, 17

morphological feeling, 17, 18, 58, 59, 60n51, 304, 310–313 morphological knowledge, 20 morphological pattern, 58, 150 Morphology, 6, 17, 19, 61, 64, 117, 124, 127–130, 130n18, 141, 205, 245, 303, 304, 306, 310–313 Morphosyntactic, 110 morphosyntactic form, 112 morphosyntactic property, 59 Morphosyntax, 59, 110, 112 Mother tongue, 8n12, 27, 81, 157n10, 216, 224, 271, 318 Motivational force, 39, 50, 63, 256, 259, 263 N

Nahlowsky, Joseph Wilhelm, 158, 159 Naïve speaker, 153, 261 Native speaker, 10, 63, 75, 216, 217, 219, 224, 225, 227–229, 231, 232, 236, 257, 258, 270, 271, 273, 275, 276, 278, 280, 286, 292, 293 Native speakers’ intuition, 217, 224–226, 228–229, 231, 232, 236n26 Naturalism/naturalist, 175, 222, 224, 237 Naturalized, 221–224, 221n9, 231–233, 235, 237 Negative valence, 30, 39, 50, 63, 256, 263 Neogrammarians, 87, 92 Neuland, Eva, 7, 48, 78

 Index 

Newmeyer, Frederick J., 216, 217, 223n13 Noë, Alva, 280 Noncompliance/noncompliant, 1, 17, 20, 24, 29, 30, 38, 58 Non-conceptual, 153, 253 Non-hedonic, 53 Non-representational, 61, 106 Non-sensory, 55 Norm, 25–28, 30, 32, 37–39, 58, 64, 77–79, 93, 95, 137, 137n23, 139, 260, 268, 269, 276–287, 292, 293, 308, 309, 313, 318, 325 Norm violation, 50, 263, 284 Normative, 25–28, 28n34, 61, 63, 64, 77, 78, 113, 123–143, 244, 258–264, 278, 279, 284, 287, 288, 304, 308, 309 normative behavior, 280 normative discourse, 280 normative intuition, 255–264 normative judgment, 255, 256n5 normative knowledge, 25, 26 Normativity, 1, 3, 4, 12, 16, 20, 20n26, 24–26, 27n32, 29n35, 31, 35–37, 41, 44, 49, 51–53, 55–57, 63, 105, 134, 137, 141, 244, 260–264, 309 North American, 174, 178, 180, 181, 191 Notker the Stammerer, 117, 117n26 Noun, 109, 165, 180, 215, 245, 254, 270, 305, 310 Nyckees, Vincent, 8n12, 28, 305, 307

359

O

Objective/objectivity, 3, 45, 60, 61, 90, 107, 107n6, 108, 111, 113n20, 116, 116n22, 119n34, 147, 154, 161, 164, 189–191, 204, 205, 210, 273, 313, 319, 322–323 Oesterreicher, Wulf, 4, 19, 20, 23, 25, 27, 28, 31, 47, 76, 78, 308 Ontogenetic/ontogeny, 61, 138–140 Ontological/ontology, 38n41, 42, 51, 52n45, 54, 137, 137n23, 219, 321, 322 Organism of language, 88 Origin of language, 113n20 Osbeck, Lisa, 218 Osthoff, Hermann, 92 P

Panofsky, Erwin, 162 Parole, 26, 26n31, 36, 133n22, 137n24, 273, 283, 329, 330 Passerine Glazel, Lorenzo, 137n23 Pattern, 9, 33, 41, 58, 59, 62, 88, 95, 147–153, 155, 156, 158, 160–163, 166, 180, 181, 183, 190, 281, 308, 312, 325, 334, 336, 337 Patterning, 147, 163, 166, 180, 280, 281 Paul, Hermann, 6, 28, 33, 61, 64, 77, 92–95, 130n17, 150, 150n3, 151, 162, 163, 303, 305, 309, 310, 313

360 Index

Perception, 17, 46, 56, 64, 81, 84, 94, 94n11, 106–108, 114, 154, 155, 185n7, 190, 200, 204, 204n10, 208, 209, 219, 219n5, 222, 223, 253, 254, 280, 291, 304, 309, 311 Perception-like, 35, 47 Perceptual, 17, 20, 32, 34, 35, 49, 53, 56, 155n8, 204, 206n13, 207–209, 252, 253, 280 perceptual judgment, 34 perceptual seemings, 34, 49 perceptual view, 34 Performance, 10n14, 11n15, 26, 26n31, 35, 36, 40, 159, 225, 247, 249, 262, 263, 276, 277, 290, 329, 333, 334 Personality, 151, 152, 156, 184–187, 187n12 Phenomenological/phenomenology, 31, 31n36, 50, 52, 53, 55, 57, 247, 256, 259, 263, 274, 323 Philological/philology, 125n5, 268, 329 Philosophical, 20–22, 54, 60, 90, 141–143, 218, 219, 246, 254, 268, 278, 279 Philosophy, 143n27, 152n5, 158, 158n12, 167, 191, 219, 220, 222–225, 246, 320 philosophy of emotions, 54, 55n47 philosophy of language, 1–64, 90, 260 philosophy of mind, 3 Phoneme/phonemic, 15, 18, 152, 190, 275, 291, 291n4, 325 Phonetic change, 6, 151

Phonetic intuition, 16 Phonetic phenomenon, 190 Phonetics, 15, 19, 91, 112, 126, 127, 127n13, 130, 130n18, 148, 150, 174, 180, 182, 189, 189n16, 190, 274, 275 Phonological, 9, 14, 16n23, 20n26, 27, 34, 40, 182, 191, 236n26, 275 phonological feeling, 18, 60n51 phonological intuition, 15 phonological knowledge, 20 Phonology, 14, 127, 245, 275 Phrase, 112n17, 117n28, 199, 209, 210, 246, 254, 269, 271, 272, 285, 286, 302 Pierce, Charles Sanders, 328 Pinker, Steven, 270, 288 Plato/Platonic/un-Platonic, 157, 162, 219, 220, 226, 226n16, 235n25, 321, 328 Pleasurable/pleasure, 44, 53–55, 57, 59, 60, 60n51, 84, 115, 116, 118, 157, 161, 164, 166 Pleasurable coloration, 30, 59 Poetic/poetry, 62, 173–191, 256, 325, 330 Popper, Karl, 219, 220, 235n25, 321, 323 Port-Royal grammar, 109 Positive valence, 63, 256 Pott, August Friedrich, 77 Practice, 8n12, 13, 32, 129, 161, 177, 178, 181, 191, 198, 200n4, 210, 216, 218, 221, 222, 224, 231, 233–237, 243, 246, 247, 249, 261, 278, 280, 286, 288, 290, 291, 310, 332

 Index 

Pragmatics, 14, 16n23, 40, 223, 245, 248 Preconscious, 77, 90, 94, 94n11, 95 Pre-judgmental, 34, 35, 50 Prescriptive linguistics, 264 Prescriptive rules, 264, 288 Private language, 140, 197 Procedural knowledge, 229 Propositional knowledge, 24, 228, 229 Psyche/psychic/psychical, 92, 93, 104–112, 116n22, 120, 153, 225 Psychic act, 109, 112, 113, 119 Psychic function, 109, 112, 113 Psychoaffective, 3, 25n30, 35, 42–60, 62, 105, 157–161, 319 Psycholinguistics, 32, 61, 103–120, 216, 248, 318, 327 Psychological, 3, 6, 9, 17, 18, 32–35, 41, 43, 44, 47, 50–57, 92, 105, 125, 126, 151, 153–156, 158, 159, 161, 165, 175, 178, 179, 182, 190, 198, 229, 230, 247, 262 psychological activity, 56 psychological function, 56 psychological mechanism, 35, 40, 249 psychological phenomenon, 16, 38, 41, 42, 51, 53, 219 psychological process, 31, 151, 158 Psychology, 3, 43–45, 44n42, 104, 105, 131n19, 150, 153, 154, 158, 158n12, 167, 173, 178, 191, 216, 219, 227, 229, 277, 289 Psychology of language, 76, 118

361

R

Rath, Rainer, 7, 37, 78 Rationalist/rationalism, 64, 219, 220, 220n8, 319–321, 324, 327, 329, 330 Rawlins, Jacob D., 288 Rawls, John, 222n12, 224 Reader, 106n3, 115, 118, 133n22, 155, 288, 289, 337 Reading, 22, 31, 32, 59, 114, 117, 190, 201, 244, 269, 271–273, 277, 311–313 Reality, 31, 41, 56, 64, 90, 91, 106, 107, 113, 114, 128, 141, 175, 180, 190, 219, 226, 226n16, 250, 321–323, 327–329 Reanalysis, 64, 301–307, 313 Reason, 10, 15, 17, 27n32, 31, 32, 42, 51, 55, 59, 79, 83–85, 95, 113, 118n32, 119n34, 123n1, 127n12, 128, 141, 150, 184, 209, 233, 235, 247, 259, 261, 273, 283, 288–290, 302, 305, 306, 323, 324, 331 Reasoning, 49, 64, 158, 184, 246, 308, 309, 319 Reflection/reflective, 11, 13, 28, 28n34, 33, 43, 62, 63, 80, 81, 83, 85, 89, 124, 126, 138, 141, 143n27, 153, 158, 161, 174, 176, 177, 180, 182–185, 191, 221, 222n12, 223n13, 224, 224n15, 246, 276, 280, 284, 285, 292, 304, 306, 311, 313, 319, 321, 323 Relational feeling, 9, 18, 18n25, 160 Relationalism, 321–322 Reliabilist, 40

362 Index

Renaissance, 154, 155n8 Representation/representational, 33, 34, 37, 38, 40, 44, 46, 53, 92, 93, 103–109, 104n2, 106n3, 107n8, 108n10, 114, 117, 120, 157–159, 161, 162, 162n15, 166, 177, 201, 251–253, 286, 291n4, 335, 336 Rey, Georges, 34, 35, 63, 244, 245, 252–255, 262 Rhythm/rhythmic, 56, 155, 176, 188–190 Ribot, Théodule, 108 Riedlinger, Albert, 127, 127n14, 128, 273n2, 274n3, 306 Riegl, Alois, 154n7, 163, 165, 176n2 Romand, David, 8, 43–45, 44n42, 49, 50, 54–57, 59, 103, 105, 109, 110, 113, 113n20, 114, 119, 124n3, 158–160, 158n12, 173, 303, 319, 328 Romantic/Romanticism, 86, 87, 89, 91, 155 Romanticism, 86, 87 Ross, John R., 223n13 Roth, Georg Michael, 104, 109, 109n11 Rutten, Gijsbert, 287, 288 Ryle, Gilbert, 229 S

Sampson, Geoffrey, 217, 229, 236 Sandbüchler, Aloys, 77, 80, 81 Sanskrit, 87, 216 Sanskritist, 126n9, 134 Santana, Carlos, 32, 35, 230–232, 230n20

Sapir, Edward/Sapirian, 9, 9n13, 12n17, 18n25, 20n26, 45, 62, 118, 119, 147–167, 173–191, 219n7, 274, 275, 280, 281, 292, 303 Saussure, Ferdinand de/Saussurean, 8, 8n12, 9, 12n20, 15, 26, 28, 29, 32, 33, 45, 61, 64, 123–143, 124n2, 131n20, 143n27, 156n9, 173, 217n4, 273–275, 273n2, 303–314, 323, 325, 327, 329, 330 Saussurean, 8, 61, 124, 124n2, 126, 131, 131n20, 133, 137, 140, 143n27, 273, 307 Scheffler, Israel, 204, 224, 225 Schiller, Friedrich von, 162 Schindler, Samuel, 2n1, 5n6, 11, 16n23, 21, 24n29, 39, 276 Schlegel, Friedrich von, 80n5 Schleicher, August, 6, 6n8, 18, 19, 28, 28n33, 57, 61, 77, 91–92 Schmid, Hans-Jörg, 77n2, 80n6, 87, 88, 95, 286, 287, 293 Schmitter, Peter, 86, 87, 90 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 321 Schrodt, Richard, 78 Schütze, Carson T., 257, 258, 276, 277 Searle, John, 137 Sechehaye, Albert, 306 Self-consciousness, 105, 106, 106n3, 107n8, 108, 111, 131 Self (the), 107, 109–111, 114, 158, 166 Semantic intuition, 16 Semantics, 12, 12n18, 14–16, 16n23, 16n24, 19, 40, 44,

 Index 

44n42, 110, 112, 116n22, 137, 159, 164, 183, 198, 210, 223, 245, 249, 254, 256, 308 Semi-conscious, 132, 141 Semiology, 134, 140 Semiotics, 17, 44n42, 325, 327, 328, 330 Semper, Gottfried, 163, 176n2 Sensation, 44, 48, 49, 80–82, 84, 110, 111, 114, 116n22, 120, 151, 153, 159, 188, 202 Sens de la langue, 4n3 Sense of wrongness, 39, 50 Sentence, 16, 19, 20, 29, 34, 49, 114, 116n22, 117, 118n32, 132n21, 151, 160, 164, 187n12, 201, 202, 204, 207, 209, 220, 223, 223n13, 226, 228, 229n19, 230, 233, 235–237, 236n26, 237n27, 243, 245–250, 254–261, 264, 274–277, 305 Sentiment, 45, 61, 103–120, 123n1, 126, 133, 140, 147, 184, 304 Sentiment de la langue, 4, 8, 12n20, 15, 28–29, 33, 44, 45, 64, 104, 123n1, 124n2, 156n9, 173, 317 Sentiment linguistique, 4, 8, 8n12, 9, 12n20, 44, 104, 117, 123n1, 273, 274, 302–310, 313 Shakespeare, William, 118 Sidnell, Jack, 284, 285 Siebenborn, Elmar, 78, 79 Sign, 133–136, 137n24, 185, 310, 327, 328 Signifiant/signifier (the), 20, 135, 273, 327, 328

363

Signifié/signified (the), 20, 273, 327 Signifier (the), 20, 135, 328 Simonov, Pavel, 331 Siouffi, Gilles, 2, 2n1, 4, 8, 8n11, 9, 15, 15n21, 16, 21, 32, 33, 45, 47, 64, 104, 105, 124n2, 130n17, 156n9, 173, 217n4, 273, 274, 304, 305, 308 Smalle, Eleonore, 292 Social, 9, 27n32, 63, 92, 125, 130, 134, 135, 137, 137n23, 140, 174, 177–179, 181, 191, 197, 210, 216, 227, 244, 255, 271, 278–281, 283–287, 289, 290, 293, 318, 326, 330, 332, 337 social behavior, 152n5, 181, 281–283 social language, 133 social pattern, 281 social rule, 260 Society, 43, 136, 137, 180, 181, 187, 280, 281, 283 Sociolinguistics, 14, 230, 254, 287, 289, 318 Speaker, 8n12, 10, 27, 29, 34, 37, 39, 40, 61–63, 75, 78, 79n4, 80, 88, 90–94, 103, 105, 114–116, 118, 120, 124, 124n3, 128, 132, 133n22, 136, 138, 140, 148, 153, 161, 162, 174, 180, 182, 197–199, 202, 209, 210, 216, 217, 219, 224–229, 231, 232, 235, 236, 236n26, 243, 244, 247, 249, 250, 254, 256–261, 264, 268–271, 273, 274, 274n3, 277, 283–286, 288–290, 302–304, 307, 309, 310, 312, 318, 329, 330

364 Index

Speaker’s intuitions, 10, 217, 226 Speaking individual, 92, 210, 309 Speaking subject, 26, 29, 123n1, 124, 125, 128–130, 132, 133, 135–139, 141, 273, 293, 305–307, 309, 313, 329, 330 Speech, 26, 37, 76, 81–83, 86, 92, 93, 129, 142, 156, 175, 182, 190, 253, 270, 283, 287, 288, 290–292, 302, 307, 312, 333–337 speech community, 89, 286, 288 speech comprehension, 36, 39, 41 speech production, 36, 37, 39, 41, 331, 332 Spinoza, Baruch/Spinozist, 155 Spirit, 6n8, 18, 80, 88, 91, 117, 117n28, 140, 149, 152n5, 157n10, 159, 163, 166, 183, 185, 188, 190, 277 Spoken language, 92 Sprachengefühl, 6n7, 8, 43, 76, 80 Sprachgefühl, 2, 2n2, 4–8, 10, 11, 11n15, 14, 16n23, 21–23, 26, 28, 28n34, 29n35, 31, 33, 36–40, 42–44, 47–50, 60, 64, 75–95, 104, 116, 130n17, 156, 156n9, 159, 173, 219, 267–274, 288, 292, 302–308, 313, 317, 319 Sprachinstinkt, 6n7, 94n11 Sprachsinn, 6n7 Sprouse, Jon, 231, 257, 258, 276 Standardization, 26, 287–288 Standardized, 27, 184, 287 Steinthal, Heymann, 178 Stich, Stephen P., 229 Strässler, Jürg, 5, 76, 78

Stross, Brian, 290 Structural, 109, 152, 225, 253, 293, 324, 329 structural linguistics, 58, 331 structural pattern, 59 Structuralism/structuralist, 32, 63, 124, 216, 217, 233, 268, 272–276, 323, 327, 329 Structure, 17, 18, 20, 38–40, 87, 92, 107, 108, 113, 113n20, 118, 148, 154, 156, 157, 160–162, 167, 180, 182, 236, 236n26, 237, 237n27, 245, 253, 271, 274, 291, 301, 323, 325, 329, 331, 335–337 Strunk Jr., William, 264 Stumpf, Carl, 148 Style/stylistic, 27, 38, 60n51, 115, 152n5, 154–157, 154n7, 162, 164, 166, 176, 183, 199, 264, 272, 286, 287 Stylistic feeling, 15, 18 Subconscious, 105 Subject, 1, 4, 6–8, 6n9, 13, 16, 17, 19, 21, 24–26, 27n32, 29, 30, 40, 41, 52, 54, 56, 59, 77, 79, 106, 110, 115, 116, 120, 123n1, 124, 124n2, 125, 128–130, 132, 133, 135–139, 141, 154n7, 160, 162, 164, 174–176, 181, 184, 190, 191, 199, 206, 210, 228, 230–232, 233n23, 248, 252, 273, 274, 280, 281, 293, 301, 306, 307, 309, 312, 313, 321, 329–331 Subjective/subjectivity, 1, 30, 36, 47, 52, 55, 61, 62, 90, 93, 107, 110–112, 116, 116n22, 119,

 Index 

135, 147, 154, 175, 176, 184, 190, 210, 260, 273, 280, 288, 323 Substantive, 109, 149, 310 Surprisal, 39, 50 Surprise, 55, 57, 59, 59n50, 118, 204, 280, 334 Synchronic/synchrony, 21, 28, 127, 128, 130, 133, 149, 273, 303, 304, 306, 307, 311, 329, 330 Synchronicity, 307, 314, 329 Synonym/synonymous, 2, 118, 136, 223, 303, 311 Syntactic, 14, 16n23, 17, 18, 27, 36, 40, 58, 59, 115, 165, 217, 233, 249, 254, 276, 277, 302, 308, 329 syntactic category, 59 syntactic feeling, 15–18, 58, 59, 60n51, 304, 310, 312, 313 syntactic function, 59 syntactic intuition, 15, 16, 20, 254 syntactic knowledge, 20 syntactic pattern, 58 syntactic rule, 39, 245 syntactic structure, 50, 58n49, 248, 254 Syntax, 14, 17, 19, 64, 112, 127, 189, 217, 245, 277, 303–305, 310–313, 325 T

Taalgevoel, 4n4, 271, 272, 275, 292 Tacit tacit competence, 10 tacit knowledge, 10, 35, 54 Terminology/terminological, 2, 4–5, 14, 105, 123n1, 226, 267, 273

365

Testa, Italo, 282 Textor, Mark, 23, 34, 49, 247 Theoretical linguistics, 7 Thinking, 9, 19, 81, 83, 85, 87, 90, 93, 95, 126, 148, 151, 152, 177, 178, 183, 186n11, 189, 208, 209, 222n11, 273–275, 282, 285, 307 Thought, 8, 34, 43, 61, 84, 90, 91, 110, 113, 120, 124, 125n5, 129, 175, 176, 182, 183, 186, 186n11, 198, 201, 207, 208, 219, 224, 233, 235, 279, 302, 303, 319, 320, 328, 330 Tomasello, Michael, 278, 279 Tooke, John Horne, 302 Totemic/totemism, 149 Trad, Rafik Ahmed, 7, 8, 22, 76, 77n2, 78 Traugott, Elizabeth C., 302, 303 Truth, 19, 84, 90, 118, 218, 220, 221, 234, 263, 320, 324 Tugendhat, Ernst, 131 Typology of feelings, 110 U

Unacceptability, 39, 256, 264 Unconscious/unconscious (the)/ unconsciousness, 28–30, 62, 64, 89, 92, 93, 95, 129, 131, 133, 138, 141, 148, 150–153, 157, 163, 166, 174, 177–179, 181, 231, 233, 271, 274, 275, 280, 281, 284, 290–293, 308, 317, 325, 330 knowledge, 77, 93 pattern, 148 Unconsciousness, 29, 129, 181, 281

366 Index

Understanding, 16, 24, 34, 62, 75–95, 105, 116, 132, 157, 176, 179, 197–203, 229, 247, 254, 263, 264, 272, 285, 292, 308, 312, 317, 320, 324, 326, 334 Unfamiliarity-like feeling, 58 Ungrammatical, 30, 245, 248–250, 277, 285 Unterberg, Frank, 2, 4–8, 6n8, 11n15, 13, 15n21, 19, 21–23, 28, 28n33, 33, 43, 44, 60, 75, 77n2, 78–81, 78n3, 83, 88–92, 94, 94n12, 105, 130n17, 244, 268n1 Usage, 25, 26, 32, 77, 93, 111, 115, 118, 180, 285, 288, 308, 309, 330 Usage-based linguistics, 227, 232, 268, 278, 285, 286, 293 Use of language, 79, 80, 92, 93, 202, 210, 232, 272, 308 Use of words, 198, 199, 210 Utterance, 10n14, 17, 18, 34, 37, 40, 79, 115, 132, 188n15, 225, 244, 246, 249–251, 253–255, 257–259, 264, 272, 277, 286, 287, 293, 336 V

Valence/valenced, 30–31, 51n44, 53, 55, 55n48, 57, 60, 63, 160, 243–264, 332, 334 affective valence, 53 negative valence, 30, 39, 50, 63, 256, 263

positive valence, 63, 256 valenced, 30–31, 53, 55, 57, 60, 243–264 Value, 11, 22, 27, 28, 32, 40, 111, 118, 128, 130n18, 137–139, 142, 147, 148, 153, 154, 175, 184, 185, 185n8, 187, 230, 262, 283, 306, 309, 311–313, 334, 335 Van der Meulen, Marten, 288 Van Ginneken SJ, Jacques, 44, 45, 61, 103–120, 160, 167 Van Wijk, Nicolaas, 275 Verb/verbal, 88, 104n2, 109, 110, 160, 187n12, 199, 203, 209, 215, 236n26, 272, 311 Verhagen, Arie, 279 Verse, 174, 182, 187, 189, 190 Vischer, Friedrich Theodor, 154, 155 Vischer, Robert, 154–156 Voice of Competence (VoC), 26, 32, 35, 226, 227, 231, 233, 235, 249–252 Voice of performance, 26, 40 Volition, 46, 54, 106, 108, 111, 113, 114, 119, 120 Voluntary/voluntariness, 48, 134, 206 Vorstellung, 44, 104n2, 109n11, 321 Vossler, Karl, 163 Vosters, Rik, 287 W

Wackernagel, Jakob, 301, 312 Waitz, Theodor, 159 Weisgerber, Leo, 7, 46

 Index 

Well-formed/well-formedness, 14, 16, 16n23, 20, 27, 40, 41, 54, 58, 308 White, Elwyn Brooks, 264 Whitney, William Dwight, 125, 126, 302 Wiesing, Lambert, 154n7, 164, 165 Will, 37, 91, 125–127, 130–135, 160–162, 185, 187, 206, 307, 312 Williams, Edwin, 311 Winnicott, Donald, 323 Wissler, Clark, 149 Witasek, Stephan, 108n10 Witte, Samuel Simon, 77, 81, 82 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 60, 62, 140, 197–210, 260, 312 Wittgensteinian, 62, 140 Wölfflin, Heinrich, 154n7, 155, 155n8, 156, 163 Woodward, James, 248 Word, 5, 6n8, 16–18, 22, 25, 26, 33, 45, 46, 54, 58, 62, 76, 76n1, 80, 82–84, 86, 91, 93, 94, 115, 116n22, 116n23,

367

117–119, 119n34, 123n1, 128, 129, 133, 135, 137, 138, 142, 148n1, 151, 152, 159, 162, 165, 180, 183, 188n13, 189, 197–203, 200n2, 201n6, 202n7, 205, 208–210, 215, 218, 220, 223, 228, 229n19, 232, 235, 257, 267–273, 275, 280, 282, 283, 285, 290–292, 302, 303, 305, 306, 308, 311, 312, 318, 330, 333, 334, 336, 337 Word’s meaning, 85, 200, 208 Wray, Alison, 291 Wüllner, Franz, 104 Wundt, Wilhelm, 116n22, 154, 157 Y

Yuckiness/yucky, 30, 39, 243–264 Z

Zimmermann, Robert, 162n15, 164 Zlatev, Jordan, 283