By M. Styer
Are all grammars the same? Most linguists (in the modern university) and most teachers of literature (nearly everywhere) are avowed anti-realists. The idea that you can interpret the authors intention from written speech is outdated, surprising as this may be for someone whose religion depends on interpretation of scripture, so-called ‘people of the book’. Grammar should be a core part of a sound religious education, but also a liberal arts education. It should boldly teach how a particular language (e.g. Arabic, English, etc) serves as a bridge from words to meaning, and from meanings (or concepts) to realities. In the sense that all languages refer to the same realities (but in different ways), there is what is called a general grammar. In this blog entry, the idea of a general grammar will be introduced, distinguishing it from the universal grammar of Noam Chomsky. Then, an ontological argument for a general grammar will be introduced through the writings of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, rahima-hu Allah (d. 1111).
A general grammar focusses on the fact that everything that exists falls under one of ten categories, and all languages refer (though in a different manner) to these same realities. Universal grammar—particularly Noam Chomsky’s generative grammar—claims that there are universal features to all languages. However, Chomsky built his grammar on structuralism which is inevitably linked to linguistic relativism (as explained at the end of this blog entry). Chomsky attempted to avoid the relativistic consequences of structuralist linguistics by joining it with an incompatible referential theory of meaning. Referential theories of meaning have their own problems. For instance, words such as bashar, insan, bani Adam, and even natiq (rational) all have the same referent, but they all have different meanings: the concept differs (or intension, as opposed to extension, and connotation, as opposed to denotation).
The notion of a general grammar is well expressed in the classic The Trivium by Miriam Joseph. Joseph’s notion is very different from Chomsky’s and they should not be confused. Joseph holds that there are certain categories of being which comprise all contingent things. Everything we know comes from this menu, except Allah most high and His attributes. So, the things in the world are either substances (like bird and chair) or accidents (such as red or soft). Some accidents are relations between things. Some of these relations include actions, and hence we find the basis in the world of what we call the verb in language or grammar. As we will see, the prominent theologian al-Ghazali describes how thought is an effect of being, and language is an effect (or imprint) of thought. This topic, addressed in a future LIFE course, in sha’ Allah, can be used to straighten certain mistakes in English grammar. For instance, the parts of speech in English contain no less than three different, incompatible ways of dividing the parts of speech. (They are not one coherent set of things.) The ‘part of speech’ interjection is not really a part of speech, but more of a syntactic role achieved by extremely different types of words (such as, ‘Oh my God’ or ‘Yippee!’). General grammar can also be used to clarify categories in grammar in a way that makes much more sense. For instance, the idea of the abstract noun suffers in most grammars because the notion ‘abstract’ is ill-formed. In Miriam Joseph, as in Arabic grammarians, abstract does not mean an accident (or what modern people call an attribute or quality) like cold, nor even necessarily love or justice, but rather the idea as separated from individual concrete occurrences. After all, love as it occurs in the world is an accident of the body and has feelings which are hardly abstract. As an idea it is abstract, but then again so are all the ideas we have in our language. So, a noun is abstract when and only when it refers to the universal idea, not the individual occurrences.
In the passage translated below, al-Ghazali explains the nature and existence of speech. He talks about four levels which repeat in the writings of Muslim theologians we may explain in the following example:
1. The bird exists in the real world.
2. I perceive the bird, and it imprints (eventually) as a concept in my mind.
3. I wish to express ‘bird’ (or birdness) to someone else, so we agree on a sound for it (and hence language is born).
4. We further agree for how to write this sound (and writing is born).
The ability to explain (al-bayān) which Allah taught humans is not merely to utter sounds, but to understand meanings which is the basis of language.
Al-Ghazali puts these levels into a logical argument:
1a. If there were no realities in the world, we would not have concepts.
1b. But we do, so those concepts are caused by the things we apprehend.
2a. If there were no concepts, there would be no terms in our language (because we would have no concepts we wished or needed to express).
2b. But we do have terms, so these terms are the effect and imprint of our concepts (including concepts which express the relationship between two or more things).
3a. If we had no terms, we would not have written script to express those terms.
3b. But we do have terms. Therefore, the words in this written script are none other than an imprint of those terms.
Below is a translation from al-Ghazali’s Mi’yar al-‘Ilm (The Criterion of Knowledge) in which he explains the four levels of existence and how language must come from thought and thought must come from things in the real world.
Mi’yar al-‘Ilm (al-qisma al-thalitha):
“Know that, for our purposes, the levels (of existence) are four and that terms are the third level.
This is because things have an existence extra-mentally, mentally, linguistically (i.e. in terms), and in writing.
Writing signifies terms. Terms signify meanings in the soul.
That (meaning) which is in the soul is a semblance (mithal) of what exists extra-mentally.
So, whatever does not exist in the soul, its semblance (mithal) has not impressed in the soul.
The semblance which impresses in the soul is the knowledge of that (thing). This is because there is no meaning to knowledge except for a semblance to occur in the soul which is adequate (mutabiq) to that of which it is a semblance in sensory (existence), and which is ‘the known’ (i.e. the object of knowledge).
Without this effect appearing in the soul, a term would not be composed to signify this effect. And, so long as a term is not composed of sounds and letters, no impression (of these sounds and letters) is made through writing which may signify them.
Extra-mental and mental existence do not differ according to country or nation as opposed to terms and writing. This is because they refer (to meanings and things) via linguistic convention and establishing terminology.”
Al-Ghazali thus argues that the meanings a language expresses are objective and eternal. It is only the assignment of words and syntax to these meanings that changes from culture to culture. So, grammars only differ in how they express the meanings in the world, but the relationships themselves are the same between languages. So, the meanings grammar expresses are the same: actions (referred to by verbs), essences (referred to by nouns), and relations (such as the action of one essence falling upon another essence), etc. But, the way these are expressed differs. Pointing out shared features of how languages refer to realities is what we refer to as a general grammar. The existence of a general grammar presupposes some argument in the form of al-Ghazali's which establishes that realities and concepts are prior to language (and therefore also prior to script).
Let us return, as promised, to elaborate on the difference between a universal, general, and relativist grammar mentioned above. The idea of a universal grammar received the most renown in the form developed by Noam Chomsky. Chomsky’s universal grammar—called a generative grammar—is sometimes contrasted with the linguistic relativity of Whorf and Sapir, two highly influential linguists. Chomsky held the core concepts of structuralism (such as the opposition between synchrony-diachrony known to students of literary theory), which some say leads to relativism. (This link between structuralism and relativism is described as follows, ‘Relativism is an inevitable consequence of structuralism. The more strictly one is a structuralist, the more one must insist on the equation of language and thought, and thus of each language with the set of thoughts that can be thought in it,’ Chatterjee, ‘Reading Whorf through Wittgenstein: A solution to the linguistic relativity problem’, p. 42.) Chomsky tried to avoid these consequences inherited from perhaps the most influential modern linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure—such as the opposition between synchrony-diachrony mentioned above—through attempting to introduce an incongruous element: a referential view of meaning. A referential view of meaning holds that the meaning of a word or phrase is understood as what it denotes (a thing or quality, etc), such as explaining the meaning of the term ‘chair’ by referring to existing chairs. But referential theories of meaning break down because words have two different elements: a) extension (chair denotes or extends to all chairs) and b) intension (when two words for the same thing have different concepts or denotation).
The problem of relativism is not peripheral, but rather returns to the thought of the most influential modern philosopher, Immanuel Kant. His ‘Copernican Revolution’ in modern philosophy was to claim that humans, or more specifically the thinking subject, construct the world and its categories rather than receive them. Kant was not a linguistic relativist, nor a structuralist, but he laid the ground for them, and many of his statements point in their general direction. The single, greatest step in moving from Kant’s thought to structuralism was made by von Humboldt. Though von Humboldt rejected Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, he and many others carried on with the general approach to knowledge, and his structuralism was built on many Kantian assumptions. Now, modern linguistics is largely the product of the thought of de Saussure, von Humboldt, Whorf and Sapir, and ultimately Kant. And while modern philosophy departments claim to be merely making a rigorous philosophical analysis of reality, the thought of Kant and linguistic relativism is part-and-parcel of what they do.