George W. Grace
George W. Grace | |
---|---|
Alfred L. Kroeber | |
Academic work | |
Institutions | Southern Illinois University, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa |
Doctoral students | Robert Blust |
Main interests | Austronesian languages |
George William Grace (8 September 1921 in
Biography
Grace was raised on the
He completed a Ph.D. dissertation in 1958 under
Theoretical work
Apart from his research on Austronesian languages, Grace also worked on more theoretical questions close to philosophy of language like the relationship between language and thought. In his book The Linguistic Construction of Reality, he discusses two opposed views of language that he claims are present in the linguistic research community of his time. What he means by "view" is a definition of language by linguists and also by society at large, what we think it is and how it works. He introduces his own terminology and calls them the Mapping-view and the Reality-construction-view of language, with him being a proponent of the latter. [2] Grace presumes that proponents of the Mapping-view think of different languages as dividing up the same objective world into different categories, quite like different political maps divide up the same territory in different ways. The Reality-Construction-view on the other hand says that each language embodies a different conceptual construction of reality, which is a stronger claim than the Mapping-view's. [3] One key difference between the two views is their attitude towards the postulate that "anything that can be said in one language can be said in any other language",[4] which translates as the claim that translation from one language to another is always possible. According to Grace, the Mapping-view accepts this postulate, while the Reality-Construction-view rejects it. [5] His unconventional terminology has been suggested as one reason why his theoretical work has received comparatively little attention in the scientific community. [6]
Reality-Construction
As mentioned above, Grace was an advocate of what he called the Reality-Construction-view of language. He believed that through language, we construct our own, specific realities that we live in. This happens on two levels: First, an entire language contains a certain view of the world, which he calls a Conceptual World. Second, each time we say something we construct a certain Conceptual Event that reflects how we have chosen to characterize that which we want to talk about. We do this by means of the lexical and grammatical resources a language provides. [7] To put it in another way, he says that each language has a certain number of things that can be talked about, and certain ways of talking about these things that may not exist in other languages. [8] His theory is substantially influenced by the writings of
Selected publications
- — (1959). The position of the Polynesian languages within the Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian) language family. Indiana University Publications in Anthropology and Linguistics (PhD). Vol. 16. Baltimore: Waverly Press.
- —; Kroeber, A. L. (1960). "The Sparkman Grammar of Luiseño". University of California Publications in Linguistics. 16. Berkeley: University of California Press.
- — (1966). "Austronesian lexicostatistical classification: A review article". Oceanic Linguistics. 5 (1): 13–31. JSTOR 3622788.
- — (1971). "Languages of the New Hebrides and Solomon Islands". In Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.). Current trends in linguistics, vol. 8: Linguistics in Oceania. The Hague: Mouton. pp. 341–58.
- — (1981). "Indirect inheritance and the aberrant Melanesian languages". In Hollyman, Jim; Pawley, Andrew (eds.). Studies in Pacific languages and cultures in honour of Bruce Biggs. Auckland: Linguistic Society of New Zealand. pp. 255–68.
- — (1981). An essay on language. Columbia, South Carolina: Hornbeam Press.
- — (1987). The Linguistic Construction of Reality. New York: Croom Helm. ISBN 0-7099-3886-1.
Notes
- ^ Obituary in the Honolulu Star Advertiser, 24 Jan 2015.
- ^ Grace 1987, p. 3-15.
- ^ Grace 1987, p. 6-7.
- ^ Grace 1987, p. 55.
- ^ Grace 1987, p. 55-57.
- ^ Blust 2015, p. 592.
- ^ Grace 1987, p. 28-34.
- ^ Grace 1987, p. 98-102.
- ^ Grace 1987, p. 5.
References
- Blust, Robert (1991). "George W. Grace: An appreciation". In Blust, Robert (ed.). Currents in Pacific linguistics: Papers on Austronesian languages and ethnolinguistics in honour of George W. Grace. Series C - 117. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. pp. 1–4. ISBN 0-85883-404-9. Retrieved 8 July 2019.
- Blust, Robert (December 2015). "In Memoriam, George William Grace, 1921–2015". Oceanic Linguistics. 54 (2): 589–596. S2CID 146667453.
- Grace, George W. (1987). The Linguistic Construction of Reality. New York: Croom Helm. ISBN 0-7099-3886-1.
- Grace, George W. (21 May 2008). "Vita". Internet Archive Wayback Machine. Archived from the original on 21 May 2008. Retrieved 11 July 2019.