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Perspectives on Language Structure and Language Change: Studies in honor of Henning Andersen
Edited by Lars Heltoft, Iván Igartua, Brian D. Joseph, Kirsten Jeppesen Kragh and Lene Schøsler
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 345] 2019
► pp. 35–79

Induction and tradition

“As time goes by …” – Play it again!

This contribution takes Henning Andersen’s model of linguistic change as a logical starting point. In addition to his use of Abduction and Deduction, I suggest that Induction plays an important role as well, since it represents Conventionalization. All three types of reasoning are subsumed under Tradition, which itself represents the final of three aspects simultaneously performed in each and every instance of Language Gaming, the first two being the communicative tandem of Communion and Practice. The logical inference types profiled on this meta-communicative level of Tradition are operative on all three levels of Language Gaming. The Competence targeted in Tradition occurs in three modes of being, according to the inference type: hypothetical (Result, in Abduction), procedural (Case, in Deduction), and declarative (Law, in Induction). It is the procedural-effectual variant that is applied in the communicative tandem. An idio-poietic process operationalizes the declarative Convention so that it may be applied in individual use. A triune Universal Competence is presupposed by – and functions as major premise in – communicative tandem and meta-communicative Tradition. It is procedural (genotoken) and likewise occurs in the three aspects, viz. panchronic (Communion), synchronic (Practice), and diachronic (Tradition).
Keywords: Abduction, Deduction, Induction, Communion, Practice, Tradition, Conventionalization, Universals, Evolution, Change, Semiotics, Cybersemiotics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Language acquisition and change in the context of Total Human Evolutionary Communication
    • 2.1Cognitive Consciousness and Communicative Consciousness
    • 2.2Perception vs. Communication
    • 2.3The same old story: The trivium of Communion, Practice, and Tradition
  • 3.The architectonic of languaging: Total Human Evolutionary Communication
    • 3.1The levels of Total Human Evolutionary Cognition and Communication (THECC)
    • 3.2The evolution of Languaging Semiosis into Language Gaming
    • 3.3The evolution of Language Gaming
    • 3.4Language Gaming as a teleological process: Energeia – entelechy and syntaxis
    • 3.5The social deontology of Language Gaming
    • 3.6The two peripheral phases of Language Gaming: Dynamis and ergon – paradeigma and syntagma
  • 4.Communication, meta-communication, and Universals of Language Gaming (the ‘three-in-one’)
    • 4.1Communion (panchronic)
    • 4.2Practice (synchronic)
    • 4.3Tradition (diachronic)
      • 4.3.1Abduction – discovery: Linguistic experiences as surprising facts to be explained by a linguistic competence (G1)
      • 4.3.2Deduction – experimentation: The trial and error testing of the predicted consequences of the hypothesized linguistic competence (G1) as put to Practice (G2)
      • 4.3.3Induction – confirmation: The Conventionalization of the Communicative Competence (G3)
  • 5.“As time goes by …” – Play it again! – Induction and Tradition
    • 5.1The semiotics of Tradition – the Competence and its stratal architectonic
    • 5.2The evolution of the Human Language Faculty and the deontological Linguistic Institution
    • 5.3Language change, phylo-, onto-, and glosso-genetically
  • 6.Conclusion
  • As time goes by: For HA
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 18 June 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.345.02tho
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Thomsen, Ole Nedergaard
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