Stratificational Grammar

Stratificational grammar -- called stratificational because one of its chief features is its treatment of linguistic structure as comprising several structural layers or strata -- aims to provide an account of the structure of language, the relationship between meaning and speech. Its earlier form, in the late fifties and early sixties, followed the tradition of structural linguistics in treating the structure as composed of linguistic elements and their relationships. In the mid-sixties, work on the relationships among linguistic units revealed that when the relationships are fully plotted, the units actually disappear, so that the entire structure consists of a network of relationships. In keeping with the idea of stratification, the network as a whole can be considered to consist of multiple subnetworks, called stratal systems. Different versions of the theory recognized different numbers of such stratal systems, but these differences amount to variations on a general theme of three major systems, phonological, lexico-grammatical, and semantic-conceptual. Relations between stratal systems are called realizational. Every stratal system includes a tactic pattern, controlling the combinations appropriate to that system; for example, phonotactics covers syllable structure and the structures of phonological words. The types of combinations generally known as syntax are treated in the tactics of the lexicogrammatical system. Operation of the system, for speaking and understanding, takes the form of activation passing through the network. Multiple pathways are invariably active in parallel at any time. By the end of the twentieth century, stratification and the relationship of realization had become widely recognized, and the theory's distinctiveness lay in its focus on the conception of linguistic structure as a network of relationships. Accordingly, it increasingly became referred to as relationl network theory rather than stratificational theory. Beginning in 1971 it was also called cognitive linguistics, but when that term became more widely used for a variety of other theories during the eighties and nineties, the more distinctive term neurocognitive linguistics began to be used. This latter term is in keeping with the hypothesis that relational networks are related to neural networks of the brain. This hypothesis was explored in Sydney Lamb's "Pathways of the Brain: The Neurocognitive Basis of Language" (Benjamins,1999).

Related Terms

• neurocognitive linguistics
• relational network grammar

References

• Christie Jr, William M. 1977. A Stratificational View of Linguistic Change. Lake Bluff IL: Jupiter Press.
• Lamb, Sydney M. 1966. Outline of Stratificational Grammar. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.
• Lamb, Sydney M. 1999. "Pathways of the Brain: The Neurocognitive Basis of Language". Amsterdam: John Benjamins.