De la grammaire générative à la Grammaire Cognitive : origines et formation de la théorie de Ronald Langacker

摘要

This paper is an account of Langacker’s evolution from transformational grammar to a theory which he describes as its antithesis, namely, Cognitive Grammar. It is foccussed on the years 1965-1982. In the first stage of this evolution, Langacker progressively restricts the use of formal rules and operators and increasingly resorts to a descriptive apparatus borrowed from generative semantics. This first stage is also marked by an attempt to offer a functional explanation of transformational movement rules. Langacker’s move away from the Chomskyan brand of transformational grammar culminates in a new model, functional stratigraphy, which, however, still retains some key features of generative semantics. In its turn, this model evolves toward a new theory based on the notions of sign and dependency, at the expense of constituency, for which it does not really provide an adequate account. Shortly after, Langacker proposes a spatial representation of the functional strata which had been hypothesized in his stratigraphic model, and submits a localist analysis of modal verbs. This is followed by the introduction of gestaltist notions into his account of grammatical relations and lexical semantics. This localist and gestaltist framework progessively permeates all levels of analysis, and contributes to reintegrate constituency and the notion of head into the theory. In his sign-and construction-based theory, grammar is reduced to an inventory of more or less schematic units and structures. Further, by claiming that schematic units or structures are constructed and abstracted from the manifold of linguistic experience, he adopts a stance that may be characterized as empiricist. This continuous remodeling of the theory ushers into the initial version, and largely unaltered ever since, of Cognitive Grammar, a version which Langacker baptizes Space Grammar.