Language Learning In Later Wittgenstein's Works

Wittegenstein's later work deals with many subjects,such as the concepts of meaning, of understanding, of a proposition, of logic, the foundations of mathematics, states of consciousness, and other things. Wittgenstein maintained that certain problems have arisen in philosophy, problems connected with the subjects mentioned above, because of a failure to understand language. The philosophical perplexities accompanying these problems may be compared to an illness and the aim of philosophy, as he came to see it, is to treat this illness. Thus, the task of philosophy is therapeutic.Since the source of the illness is due to a misunderstanding of language, the cure lies in coming to a clearer understanding of the functioning of language, or as Wittgenstein put it, to gain 'a clear view' of our language. In his attempt to gain a clear view of language, he investigated many inappropriate uses or misuses of language. Although his primary interest was in solving or dissolving various philosophical puzzles, his remarks about language, which deviate far from the boundaries of his special interest, have significant implications. Just like other language researchers, his constructive contributions are very impressive and outstanding in that it gives us a clear view of language.To solve philosophical puzzles, Wittgenstein made a close research on language learning and put forward many pioneering thoughts, such as "the meaning of a word is its use"; "language game"; family resemblances"; "form of life". To a large extent, these concepts dissolved "referential theory of meaning" and opened a new field of the study of pragmatics, but on any account, he is not a linguist or a psychologist, nor a sociologist, he is not very interested in any of the above-mentioned fields. Compared with Wittgenstein, linguists, psychologists and sociologists make a more specific study of language from different perspectives and their research results or conclusions are much more specific than those demonstrated in Wittgenstein's works. Then, what's the relationship between Wittgenstein's study and the study of other related experts on the nature of language? In other words, what's the difference between their respective research results on the nature of language? These questions are exactly the focus of the present thesis.The thesis makes several comparisons between Wittgenstein and other experts' research on the nature of language from different aspects. For example, Wittgenstein's view of language is similar to the pragmatic conception of language developed by such pragmatists as George Herbert Mead and John Dewey. Both Mead and Dewey saw language as an outgrowth of man's interaction with their environment. They saw language as a tool; its primary function being the realization of cooperative activity. They focus on the biological and sociological nature of language. This suggests a parallel to that of later Wittgenstein's two central doctrines: 1) "the meaning of a word is its use in language", we can use words to do things and the same word has different meaning in different contexts; 2) his notion that language is "a form of life". We can doubt all things but the "form of life", for it is the foundation of all our language activities. Malinowiski put forward a similar point of view in his The Problems of Meaning in Primitive Language: language is an integral part of human activities. Context and activities add up together to determine the meaning of a word.Repeatedly in his later work Wittgenstein asked the question: "How do we first learn this or that word?" His use of this question is, in one sense, a therapeutic device. In asking how we first learn words, he wanted to show us that there are many kinds of occasions from which we can learn this or that word—that there are various contexts and situations which might have prompted our first correct use of the word. Hence, according to Wittgenstein, it is a metaphysical impulse to try to find an abstract object of meaning. Of course, not all linguists or philologists hold the same view. For example, internalists like Chomsky have a different point of view. Chomsky maintains that there is a language faculty in human mind, and that universal grammar exists in all human languages. Though language environment is indispensable in language acquisition, it is merely a triggering factor. It is the human language faculty that determines language acquisition. Thus, the target of language research should focus on the study of this human language faculty.Chomsky's universal grammar theory brought about a linguistic revolution. But from the very beginning, generative grammar enterprise was questioned by many philosophers and linguists. According to Trevor Pateman, most of the different voices come from those philosophers who follow Wittgenstein. Being faced with so many challenges, Chomsky's theory have to change constantly, and some linguists even think it is quite different from what it used to be. So far, the generativists have not found a universal grammar that all human languages possess. We try to analyze and explain this phenomenon in the light of Wittgenstein's later philosophy. We focus on the comparisons between Wittgenstein's concepts and those of Chomsky's, namely, "absolute universals" and "family resemblance"; "universal grammar" and "philosophical grammar"; "language mystery" and "form of life"; "internal language" and "external language".Though Wittgenstein's notion of "meaning is use" efficiently dissolved metaphysical meaning theory, it cannot satisfy the demands of the study of linguistics as an independent linguistic discipline, because the concept of "use" is too broad. Being too broad means that Wittgenstein didn't mark the difference between the use of signs and the use of other things, in other words, he didn't give prominence to "meaning".(CHEN Jiaying, 2003:190) The notion of "meaning is use" also tends to remind us of the limitations of the purely descriptive method in the study of language because we cannot even list all the uses of one word. Another related problem is that we cannot use a word as we would like to, as Wittgenstein's notion indicated. Hjelmslev says: "The structure of language is stable, while the use of a word is changeable. Thus, we can say that it is the structure rather than the use that determines the identity of a language. It is the structure that specifies one language different from another." The study of language structures or linguistic rules is exactly what the linguists are interested in, for, above all, language use is a rule-governed activity, so we must follow rules in our language activity.In his later work, Wittgenstein made a close research on language learning, but he didn't distinguish between some important linguistic concepts, namely, the difference between "language" and "speech" as Saussure did, or the differnce between "language competence " and "language performance" as Chomsky did. The task of linguists is to find "language" or "language competence " through the study of language activity. We think the distinction is necessary in the study of language, especially in linguistic study, because only in this way can we specify the task of language research and make sure it can be carried out appropriately.Of course we shouldn't request Wittgenstein to do as a linguist because he was never interested in the construction of any theory. What he tried to do was to dissolve philosophical puzzles. As one of the leading figures in philosophy, Wittgenstein's ideas had great penetrating power. A series of his philosophical concepts has exercised a profound influence on humanities. It is impossible for us to make strict demands on him as an expert in a specific field, making a distinction between some terms for the sake of theory construction as an a linguist does. As an independent subject, language study shouldn't rest upon the broad slogan "meaning is use". Linguists should go beyond the concrete uses of the words to find the rules behind that govern these different uses, whether they are an innate property in Chomsky's sense or a social construction in pragmatist Mead's sense.We agree and accept Wittgenstein's point of view: it is indispensable for us to study the primitive language use to study complex language form or the nature of language. Through the study of the children's language learning, we can better understand Wittgenstein's related concept of language and his whole therapeutic program, which is one of the main goals the thesis aims to achieve.