A connectionist approach to functional-cognitive linguistics: Spanish pronominal clitics and verb endings in relational-network terms

Abstract

espanolLos sistemas de cliticos pronominales y desinencias verbales del espanol han sido ampliamente abordados en la linguistica funcionalista y cognitivista. Sin embargo, rara vez se los ha modelizado conjuntamente desde una perspectiva reticular. A su vez, el unico antecedente en la literatura presenta diversas limitaciones. En este articulo se recurre a la teoria de redes relacionales para esbozar un modelo superador de los principales aspectos semanticos, morfologicos y morfotacticos de ambos sistemas. Especificamente, se distingue entre varios tipos de relaciones cognitivas que operan en diferentes niveles, a saber: (i) las relaciones entre las categorias semanticas pertinentes y sus rasgos asociados son disyuntivas, de modo que involucran nodos ‘o’ descendentes; (ii) mientras que los significados explicitos (independientes del contexto) implican nodos ‘o’ descendentes individuales, los mensajes implicitos (dependientes del contexto) involucran relaciones disyuntivas complejas en las que un nodo ‘o’ ascendente se conecta con un nodo ‘o’ descendente; (iii) las relaciones que representan patrones morfotacticos constituyen conjunciones secuenciales, de modo que suponen nodos ‘y’ ordenados; y (iv) las relaciones establecidas entre una constelacion de rasgos semanticos y la representacion morfologica que la realiza en un contexto de uso determinado son conjunciones simultaneas, o sea que involucran nodos ‘y’ no ordenados. El modelo supone la primera caracterizacion basada en redes relacionales de las conexiones cognitivas que sustentan a los sistemas de cliticos pronominales y desinencias verbales del espanol EnglishThe Spanish pronominal clitic and verb-ending systems have been widely treated in the functional and cognitive linguistics literature. However, they have rarely been jointly modeled from a network-based perspective. Moreover, the only previous attempt to characterize the systems’ architecture in network terms presents a number of limitations. This paper presents a preliminary relational-network-based model of the main semantic, morphological, and morphotactic aspects of both systems. An explicit distinction is introduced among several types of cognitive relationships operating at different levels of the systems, as follows: (i) the relationships between the relevant semantic categories and their associated features are disjunctive, thus involving downward ‘or’ nodes; (ii) whereas explicit, context-independent meanings involve simple downward ‘or’ nodes, implicit, context-dependent messages call for complex disjunctive relationships in which an upward ‘or’ node is then connected to downward ‘or’ node; (iii) the relationships representing morphotactic patterns are sequential conjunctions, thus involving ordered ‘and’ nodes; and (iv) the relationships established between a constellation of semantic features and the morphological representation realizing it in a specific context of use are simultaneous conjunctions, thus involving unordered ‘and’ nodes. The model constitutes the first relational-network account of the cognitive relationships holding together the Spanish pronominal clitic and verbending systems