RE: [xmca] last on concepts

[David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>]

I want to address one very narrow issue: the question of whether the psychological structure of a sentence can be distinguished from its grammatical structure by atemporal, and even non-linear, means.
 
In English, and also, I think, in Russian, the psychological subject (what is called "theme" in Hallidayan grammar) marked in a temporal, linear manner: it's the first thing you hear or see. 
 
Because form follows function rather than the other way around, our grammar has learnt to be rather flexible, and to allow things that really, on purely syntactic grounds, ought to come later in the sentence, to bubble up first. Instead of "I like apples" we encounter sentences like:
 
(I dislike pears, but...) Apples, I like.
Now, apples, THERE's something I like.
(Shakespearian): Apples like me. (i.e. "Apples please me").
 
But this isn't the only way of marking the psychological subject in English, and even in these examples fronting doesn't operate alone but only alongside stress and intonation, as a kind of "inner form" of the outer supra-segmental forms.
 
Furthermore, temporal and spatial marking of the psychological subject really isn't the rule in many other languages. In Korean, we use a special particle "eun/neun" to mark the psychological subject (the same thing is true in Japanese) and therefore the theme can appear either really appear almost anywhere in the sentence.  
 
And finally there are languages such as sign language that really DO operate on the principle of having a "screen" rather than a mouth, as Martin speculated. So we can easily see that the distinction between psychological and grammatical subject does not require a linear or spatial processing of different "planes".
 
I think there is no reason to consider the "planes" in Vygotsky's discussion two dimensional; we can easily imagine, for example, a "more thought" side to inner speech (e.g. "How do you feel about...?") and a "more speech" side as well ("What do you think of...?"). 
 
Allowing the planes to touch and mingle, as well as differentiate, would allow the model to be three dimensional (so long as we do not confuse the map with the territory, or the model with the phenomenon modeled) without the Charybdis like plug-holes we see in Professor Mack's diagramme.  
 
So where does the idea of non-touching, non-differentiated, flat, two dimensional "planes" come from? Well, of course, partly it is a translation problem: the sentence that we are arguing about really goes like this:
 
Это течение мысли совершается как внутреннее движение через целый ряд планов, как переход мысли в слово и слова в мысль. 
 
"The flow of thought is accomplished as an internal motion through a whole series of plans, as the passage of thought into word and words into thought." 
 
The word планов can mean a map, a target, a curriculum, a timetable, a model, a foreground, a background, etc. But it doesn't usually mean a two-dimensional geometrical plane, though. For that, Vygotsky uses the term плоскость (mostly in the chapter on Piaget).
 
However, I think it's not simply a translation problem. I think we non-Russians have, almost hard-wired into the way we think about language, the idea of modularity, of compartments, of black boxes that have inputs and outputs (e.g. Levelt's model of a language "processor").
 
Veresov is right on this. It's MUCH more likely that Vygotsky had in mind the foreplane and the backstage of a studio theatre, quite like the Moscow Arts Theatre, where he attended performances of Chekhov produced by Stanislavsky or the Vakhtangov Theatre, whre he saw Turandot.
 
David Kellogg
Seoul National of Education
 
--- On Sun, 5/8/11, C Barker <C.Barker@mmu.ac.uk> wrote:


From: C Barker <C.Barker@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: [xmca] last on concepts
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Sunday, May 8, 2011, 1:11 PM


Dear Nancy,

I rather like your diagram.

One thing that strikes me is that the top and the bottom planes are where the thinking/ speaking person connects with their social relations: most of our significant motives derive from our social relations, and external speech is addressed (mostly) to others....

Colin Barker

________________________________
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] on behalf of Nancy Mack [nancy.mack@wright.edu]
Sent: 08 May 2011 19:27
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] last on concepts

Hi,
I am not sure if this will come through.
I have attached my diagram of Vygotsky's planes of inner speech.
I imagine thoughts moving around like a pinball machine.

Nancy




----- Original Message -----
From: Steve Gabosch <stevegabosch@me.com>
Date: Saturday, May 7, 2011 12:09 am
Subject: Re: [xmca] last on concepts
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>

> Martin, David,
>
> My computer is in the shop for repairs - a bottle of water got
> away from me - so I have not been able to participate or keep up
> with this discussion, which has an interesting center question -
> how did Vygotsky explain the relationship between word meaning,
> concept, and generalization?
>
> Martin lists the five planes Vygotsky uses to describe the
> complex transformations from word to thought (or thought to
> word).  In Ch 7 sections 7.2 thorugh 7.5 (end) he analyzes the
> five planes in the order from exterior toward the interior - (1)
> the plane of the external aspects of speech, (2) the semantic
> plane, (3) the plane of inner speech, (4) the plane of thought
> itself, and (5) the plane of motivation.
>
> Vygotsky used a memorable metaphor at the end of Ch 7, which
> fits into some of the points both Martin and David make -
> Vygotsky likened thoughts (the fourth plane) to a cloud which
> showers words, and motivation (the fifth plane) to the wind that
> sets the cloud in motion.
>
> A question I've been pondering is: which of these five planes
> correspond to the notions 'word meanings', 'concepts', and
> 'generalizations'?  Martin brings this very question up.
>
> It seems reasonable to eliminate the first and last planes as
> candidates for "planes" within that which the three notions
> represent exist.
>
> Vygotsky makes it very clear that the first plane, the external
> aspects of words, (such as sounds), are quite different from
> word meanings.  Likewise, he differentiates the "first" plane
> from all the "inner" planes of thinking and speech.  He explains
> that the semantic plane is the first of the inner planes (making
> it the second plane overall, going from out to in).
>
> And it also seems reasonable to eliminate the last or fifth
> plane, motivation.  Vygotsky saw motivation as affect and
> volition, and other processes that set the cloud of words into
> motion.
>
> It does not appear that Vygotsky viewed word meaning, concept or
> the generalization as existing on the first or fifth "planes."
>  Do others also see it this way?
>
> This leaves us the second, third and fourth planes (the semantic
> plane, inner speech, thoughts themselves) to sort out how
> Vygotsky conceived them in relationship to the three terms we've
> been pondering - word meanings, concepts and generalizations.
>
> One possibility is that Vygotsky saw these three terms as not
> corresponding to the same planes.  For example, perhaps his use
> of the term 'word meanings' corresponded to processes that occur
> in all three of these planes, but used the terms concepts and
> generalizations to refer to only one or two of the planes.  If
> this is so, we need to find places where he says something like
> this.  This would be a strong argument in favor of
> differentiating 'word meaning' from 'concept' and 'generalization'.
>
> Another possibility is that Vygotsky believed that all three
> terms relate to processes found in all three planes, but do so
> in qualitatively different ways.  If that is the case, we need
> to find places where Vygotsky explains how concepts,
> generalizations and word meanings refer to **different aspects**
> of what he called the (2) semantic plane, (3) inner speech, and
> (4) thoughts themselves.  This would provide an interesting
> argument for differentiating the 'concept' from 'word meaning'.
>
> Still another possibility is that Vygotsky saw the relationships
> between the planes and the processes these terms refer to
> differently depending on the **direction** of the movement
> between thought and word - from out to in (understanding) or
> from in to out (speaking).  Again, evidence would need to be
> found to support this.  If it is indeed found that it was
> Vygotsky's intention, for example, to think of the concept,
> generalization and word meaning as "synonymous" going from
> thought to word, but **not** synonymous when going from word to
> thought ... that would be an interesting twist, wouldn't it?
>
> There are undoubtedly other possible combinations.  I'll mention
> one more - the most obvious, because Vygotsky explicitly says
> this - that he saw the three terms as referring to essentially
> the same process, going both directions, and therefore saw these
> terms, insofar as they are referring to processes taking place
> in "inner" planes (as psychological processes related to verbal
> thinking), as "synonymous."  There is pretty solid evidence for
> this interpretation, but that does not mean we should not
> carefully consider other possibilities, such as the above or others.
>
> ********
>
> I think Martin's point about word meanings are progressively
> "replaced" by sense needs to be closely examined.  Vygotsky
> explains that sense is a particular form of word meaning.  It is
> not the opposite of word meaning, it is not a process that
> replaces word-meaning altogether.  It is an extremely important
> aspect of meaning.  And he does emphasize that sense becomes
> more predominant over external, social meanings as we go further
> inside
> But do we want to say that sense entirely **replaces** social
> meaning in plane 3, inner speech, or thought, plane 4?
>
> Also, the idea that word-meanings altogether completely
> disappear at the level of thought is not one I have so far seen
> Vygotsky suggesting.  Please point me to what I am missing.  He
> uses the example of observing a boy on a street  His point is to
> compare how different his observation is within the third plane
> (inner speech, with details) from the thought plane, which took
> in the scene as a whole.  But is Vygotsky actually saying that
> word meaning - and therefore verbal thinking - disappears
> entirely in the fourth plane, the plane of thought, (or did not
> yet appear in any way), that words are now altogether not at all
> involved in the process of thinking?
>
> Sorry if this message is rambling - I've run out of time on this
> store computer - no time to edit ... LOL
>
> - Steve
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Martin,
>
> On May 06, 2011, at 04:54 PM, David Kellogg
> <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Vygotsky uses the word "moment" a lot, even when he is talking
> about space or logic. For example, he says that there are three
> "moments" in a particular data set in Tool and Sign, even though
> they clearly overlap.
>
> Vygotsky also uses "stage" and "step" a lot, even when he is
> talking about temporally overlapping processes. For example, he
> differentiates the association, the collection, the chain, the
> diffuse complex, and the pseudoconcept as stages of a particular
> step, even though in many of his examples (e.g. his gloss of
> Idelberger and the first words of Charles Darwin's grandson)
> they are superimposed.
>
> In Chapter Seven, Vygotsky uses the rather obvious remark that
> an expression like "the victor at Jena" means the same person as
> "the vanquished of Waterloo" to point out that object reference
> and meaning do not coincide. But what he means is exactly what
> Halliday and Jay Lemke mean: they are in fact simultaneously.
> But they are logically separate.
>
> Now, how does all this work out in PRACTICE? Of course, you are
> right. It all takes time in the real world. I think that's why
> Vygotsky is always distinguishing between the phasal aspects of
> language (in which he includes lexicogrammar and even object
> reference) and the semantic aspects (which are hierarchical and
> choice driven rather than linear and time driven)
>
> David Kellogg
> Seoul National University of Education
> --- On Fri, 5/6/11, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:
>
>
> From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
> Subject: Re: [xmca] last on concepts
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Date: Friday, May 6, 2011, 4:24 PM
>
>
> That's an interesting proposal, David. How do you deal, though,
> with the way LSV writes of "the complex flow from the first,
> vaguest moment of the origins of a thought until its final
> completion in a verbal formulation" (#27), and the "motion from
> thought to word and vice versa, from the word to the thought.
> This relation is represented in light of psychological analysis
> as a developing process, which traverses a number of phases and
> stages"; "This flow of thought is accomplished as internal
> motion through a whole series of planes, the passage from
> thoughts in words to words in thought" (#29)?
>
> This sounds to me like passage in time. When he insists that to
> put a thought into words is to transform it, reorganize it, and
> embody it - "In transforming itself into language, the thought
> is reorganized and modified; the idea is not expressed, but
> finalized in the word" (#32) - this sounds to me not merely a
> logical realization, but a temporal process - a "motion from
> thought to speech" (#41).
>
> Indeed, he emphasizes that speech itself necessarily unfolds in
> time because thought has to mark the words of an utterance with
> emphasis in order to make them comprehensible: " it is obvious
> that the speech utterance cannot immediately emerge in its
> entirety" (#45); "Thought impresses logical stress down on the
> words of the phrase, marking in this way the psychological
> predicate, without which any phrase becomes incomprehensible.
> Speaking requires a passage from the internal plane to the
> external, while understanding assumes reverse motion, from the
> external plane of speech to the internal" (#52).
>
> Whereas a Chomskian grammar has all the words of an utterance
> prepared simultaneously, and the fact that they are emitted in
> sequence is merely an artifact of performance (if we had screens
> instead of mouths one could imagine the whole grammatical
> structure being displayed at once), in LSV's account of the
> microgenesis of speaking from thinking the words need to unfold
> in time in order that pacing and emphasis can distinguish what
> he calls the "psychological structure" of the sentence from its
> "grammatical structure" (#35).
>
> Martin
>
> On May 6, 2011, at 3:17 AM, David Kellogg wrote:
>
> > I think that the "five planes" are not modular in the Fodor
> sense. I think they represent non-reducible options rather than
> discrete moments of time or planes in space.
> >
> > When Halliday talks about the "stratification" of gesture into
> language proper, he speaks of three planes: soundings (roughly,
> phonology), wordings (roughly, lexicogrammar), and meanings
> (pragmatics, semantics, thinking).
> >
> > I have some problems with collapsing semantics and pragmatics
> like this. But I have no problem with Halliday's basic argument,
> which is that the relationship between sounding, wording, and
> meaning is not causality: it's REDUNDANCY.
> >
> > It's not the case that a sound 'causes" a word or that a word
> 'causes" a meaning. Instead, the relationship of a sound and a
> word is REALIZED in meaning; it REDOUNDS in an ideal form we
> call meaning.
> >
> > Jay Lemke points out that there is no one to one
> correspondence between any two planes, because if there was the
> existence of that separate plane would be entirely unnecessary.
> That means that a sounding does not correspond to a particular
> wording which in turn corresponds to a specific meaning.
> >
> > What happens instead is that a sounding realizes a particular
> correspondance of wording and meaning. Or, if you like, a
> correspondence of sounding and wording realizes a particular meaning.
> >
> > I think that's why Vygotsky emphasizes, not the kind of "time"
> or "space" dimension we would normally associate with his use of
> planes, but instead that, for instance, a particular motive does
> NOT correspond to a specific thought, but can be differently
> realized in different thoughts, a particular thought does NOT
> correspond to a particular inner speech form, but can be
> differently realized in different inner speech forms, a
> particular inner speech form does NOT correspond to a particular
> word but can be differently realized by different words.
> >
> > It's not that the planes are really separated in either time
> or space; it's that they they are LOGICALLY separated because
> each plane involves some choice and because previous choices
> enter into that plane as a done deal; the process of redundancy
> is now realized in a product. Motive and thought are joined and
> then realized in inner speech, and then motive, thought, and
> inner speech are joined and realized as the word.
> >
> > That's how I understand it, anyway! And that's why it seems
> right to me to see a concept as a historical extension of this
> process. The invention of concepts is the sociocultural
> continuation of the same process of psychological
> stratification, abstraction, and selection that precipitates
> "meaning" out of "sense",and the learning of concepts is the
> reverse movement in psychology.
> >
> > David Kellogg
> > Seoul National University of Education
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >  A word does not stand for a meaning; instead, a meaning it
> stands for "a wording standing for a meaning". A meaning is not
> represented by a
> >
> >  at ANY level, because if there was that  l in the A separate
> comment on the five planes. I
> >
> > --- On Thu, 5/5/11, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:
> >
> >
> > From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
> > Subject: Re: [xmca] last on concepts
> > To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> > Date: Thursday, May 5, 2011, 7:25 PM
> >
> >
> > This whole concepts thing is still nagging at me, and making
> me grumpy with my students!
> >
> > LSV describes the microgenesis of thinking in two places in
> T&S: chapter 7, and sections 6 and 7 of chapter 6. And he does
> so in apparently completely different ways! Chapter 7 is all
> about movement among the five planes from thought to word or
> vice versa, with concepts not mentioned even once, I believe.
> Chapter 6 is about acts of thought, concepts in relations of
> generality, and words are mentioned in only one or two
> paragraphs, of such grammatical complexity that I am currently
> looking for a native Russian speaker to disambiguate them for me.
> >
> > So what is the relationship between the two passages? The key,
> I believe, is that in both chapters LSV makes the claim that
> thinking is always relating two things (in chapter 7 he writes:
> “all thinking tends to unite one thing and another”; in chapter
> 6 it is: “every thought establishes a link between parts of
> reality, represented [представленным] in some way in
> consciousness”). In chapter 7 it's clear when he says this that
> he's talking about the penultimate plane, that of "thought
> itself." (The five planes are as follows: (1) outer form of the
> word; (2) inner form of the word; (3) inner speech; (4) thought
> itself; (5) motivation.) So it seems to me the way to interpret
> the sections in chapter 6 is that they too are dealing with this
> plane. And that means that concepts operate on the plane of
> thought itself (or that thinking itself operates with concepts),
> at a point where words have "disappeared" or "died," depending
> on ones
> > translation (or not yet been born, if one is moving in the
> opposite direction, from thought to speech).
> >
> > This is more evidence, in my view, that concepts are not word-
> meanings. Natalia asked me in a side message if I did not think
> that words in inner speech have inner form. It's a good and a
> tricky question, and on reviewing the text I would say that I
> think LSV considered inner speech to contain 'inner form,' but
> that this 'meaning' is progressively replaced by sense - which
> can, he argued, become separated from words. By the time we get
> to thought itself words are no longer involved in the processes
> of thinking.
> >
> > Of course, that still leaves a lot of details to be worked out
> about concepts and the relations of generality they form.
> >
> > Martin
> >
> > By the way, there are five difficult paragraphs that I would
> welcome help on. Perhaps the most opaque to me is this one:
> >
> > 316. Если самое значение слова принадлежит к определенному
> типу структуры, то только определенный круг операций становится
> возможным в пределах данной структуры, а другой круг операций
> становится возможным в пределах другой структуры. В развитии
> мышления мы имеем дело с некоторыми очень сложными процессами
> внутреннего характера, изменяющими внутреннюю структуру самой
> ткани мысли. Есть две стороны, с которыми мы всегда сталкиваемся
> в конкретном изучении мышления, и обе имеют первостепенное значение.
> >
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