Grammatical coherence: Scales and criteria

The concept of grammatical coherence can be applied on three scales: the small-est scale involves an e-epoch in which at least one but no more than a few ϕ-configurations are continuously attended. On this epochal scale, coherence only requires that all above-ground cs-systems participate in some stable set of ϕ-con-figurations. This entails that the cross-spectral coherence for any pair of systems will be relatively high, because frequency-locking is required for stability. We

can also apply grammatical coherence to the interpretation of an entire utterance;

on the utterance scale, grammatical coherence requires epochal coherence for all epochs in the utterance, as well as a potential for a reiterative simulation of the trajectory. The most relevant scale for analysis of grammaticality/acceptability intuitions is the discourse scale, on which coherence requires utterance coher-ence and the condition that the attended ϕ-configurations of the interpreter cor-respond to the attended ϕ-configurations of the producer. Note that we do not require that the sequence of interpreter e-epochs be the same as those of the producer. Hence the following criteria give rise to a grammatical coherence hi-erarchy:

i. All excited cs-systems participate in some stable, coherent set of ϕ-confi-gurations.

ii. A sequence of stable, coherent ϕ-configurations can be reiterated.

iii. Each ϕ-configuration in the potentially reiterative interpretation tory corresponds to a ϕ-configuration in an associated production trajec-tory.

Table 6.1: The grammatical coherence hierarchy.

(i) (ii) (iii)

epoch coherence y

utterance coherence y y

discourse coherence y y y

The epoch coherence criterion is that all of the above-ground systems in an e-epoch must participate in at least one stable ϕ-configuration. The states in Fig-ure 6.5(A–D) below fail to meet this criterion. In (A), imagine that an interpreter hears the nameAl. Without any other cs-system to couple with, [Al]{N} does not participate in a stable ϕ-configuration. When an unstable state such as (A) arises, we can anticipate two possible continuations of the trajectory. In one, [Al]{N} be-comes grounded; in the other, additional cs-resonances become excited and a co-herent configuration stabilizes. Many pragmatic phenomena can be understood as trajectories in which an utterance evokes an unstable configuration which evolves to a stable configuration when other cs-systems become excited. Often

we can construct analyses in which other systems are excited for contextual rea-sons. Consider the utteranceAl coffeein (B); excitation of these two cs-systems in unstable. However, if we imagine that [drink]{V} is also above-ground because the producer and interpreter are discussing who drinks what (e.g.Al coffee, Bo tea, Cam whisky, Dee beer…), then the epoch coherence criterion would be met.

Figure 6.5: Examples of non-coherent epochs. The configurations in C^′ and D^′are coherent versions of the configurations in C and D.

In (C) we imagine that an interpreter hearsAl drinks coffee, and that all cs-sys-tems are above-ground but occupy the same e-level. Because there is no stable ϕ-configuration, the state is non-coherent. However, we do not know whether or not a stable ϕ-configurationcouldevolve from the e configuration in (C), and so it is not the e-organization which makes the configuration unstable, but rather, the absence of a stable ϕ-configuration. In the absence of other forces, we expect that a reorganization to the coherent state in (C^′) occurs in conjunction with the emergence of stable ϕ and e-configurations. This example illustrates that coher-ence derives from a system state, and does not depend on the path taken to arrive at that system state (of course, many paths may not lead to coherence).

Example (D) is non-coherent because [tea]{−N} is above-ground but does not participate in a stable ϕ-configuration. We note that the underlying cause of the instability is differentiation interference: {−N} cannot differentiate into stable [tea]{−N} and [coffee]{−N} cs-resonances in this configuration. The instability in (D) is typically resolved by grounding the less highly excited system as in (D^′).

Indeed, we note that the grounding from (D) to (D^′) is not necessarily a distinct mechanism from the one which governs e-organization in early production: cs-resonances compete for excitation.

The utterance coherence criterion specifies that there is apotentiallyperiodic sequence of epochs (i.e. reiterative trajectory), each of which meets the epochal coherence criterion. It is not required that all epochs which arise in the inter-pretation of an utterance are coherent, only that an uninterrupted sequence of epochs occurs, through the same re-organization operations which are available for production. It is also not required that the sequenceactuallyrepeats. We only require that the interpreter system evolves to a state from which re-organization can return the system to the first state in the sequence. Consider an utterance with a parenthetical, such asAl, Bo knows, drinks coffee, shown in Figure 6.6.¹

Figure 6.6: Utterance coherence is achived when a trajectory of coher-ent epochs can be reiterated.

For utterance coherence, a potentially periodic trajectory of individually co-herent epochs must occur for the interpreter. In epoch (e*), a non-coco-herent state, coherence has not been achieved. However, if subsequently the trajectory (e₁), (e^′₁) arises, then coherence is achieved: (e^′₁) can evolve to (e₁) through selective reorganization, and vice versa, in effect shifting attention between two ϕ-con-figurations. Note that the reorganization from (e*) to (e1) involves a grounding demotion of [Al]{N}, which would be the first active cs-system in the canonical trajectory. In the above example, the reiteration that arises does not necessarily match the initial e-organization of the producer, nor does it match the trajectory which occurred for the producer during execution.

As with epoch coherence, the interpretation trajectory that leads to an utter-ance-coherent trajectory is not relevant to assessment of coherence: a trajectory in which non-coherent states such as (e*) in Figure 6.6 occur before the poten-tially reiterative trajectory. However, coherence intuitions may derive not only

1Note that for the sake of providing more compact representations of trajectories which in-volve multiple ϕ-epochs, we sometimes represent excited systems on the same e-level, but we nonetheless imagine those systems to occupy distinct e-levels. Note also that we do not require that any systems have selection-level excitation, and therefore canonical reorganizations are unnecessary; thus only selective reorganizations are shown in this figure.

from whether a coherent trajectory is ultimately achieved, but also from experi-ence of incoherent states prior to coherexperi-ence. Thus we should think of utterance coherence intuitions as determined by a trajectory of experiences of states.

Because utterance coherence does not require any correspondence between producer and interpreter states, it is not very useful for conceptualizing grammat-icality intuitions relative to a producer trajectory. Indeed, utterance coherence oc-curs when the interpreter reaches any coherent reiterative trajectory, regardless of what the producer intended. Thus from the initial state in (e₀) below, where we assume the speaker intended |Bo knows| and |Al drinks coffee| configurations, if the interpreter attends to |Al knows| and |Bo drinks coffee| configurations in state (e1) and state (e2), coherence is achieved, despite the producer-interpreter mismatch in ϕ-configurations.

Figure 6.7: Utterance coherent interpretation trajectory which does not correspond to the producer trajectory.

It is important to emphasize that we cannot precisely say “an utterance is co-herent”, because coherence is not a property of utterances. Utterance coherence is coherence associated with the timescale of utterances, which can span multi-ple epochs of attention. We can only say that a coherent, potentially reiterative trajectory occurs in the interpretation of an utterance. Moreover, this does not imply that the trajectory remains coherent: reorganizations might occur, for a number of reasons, which prevent the trajectory from being potentially reiter-ated.

Discourse coherence requires the additional condition that ϕ-configurations in the interpreter reiteration correspond to ones that arose during the cs-/gm-selective phase of a production trajectory. Thus unlike epoch and utterance co-herence, discourse coherence requires consideration of both interpreter and pro-ducer trajectories. Specifically, for each excited ϕ-configuration in the selectional regime of a production trajectory, that same ϕ-configuration arises in the in-terpretation trajectory. Only ϕ-configurations which are excited in selectional epochs of the production trajectory are relevant to discourse coherence, because

it is possible for a noncanonical production trajectory to visit arbitrary states before and after the states which govern cs-system selection.

One important aspect of the correspondence criterion for discourse coherence is that the specific sequence of ϕ-configurations an interpreter experiences need not match the specific sequence of ϕ-configurations which a producer experi-ences. Imposing this condition results in a stricter version of discourse coherence, but may be hard to apply because producer e-state trajectories can be highly un-derdetermined for relatively complicated utterances. One possible solution to this problem is to require ϕ/e reiteration correspondence between producer and interpreter, but this requires us to stipulate that a reiterative producer trajectory always occurs, which is far from obvious.

Another issue with the discourse coherence criterion is that we have no well-defined notion of “the same” cs-system between a producer and interpreter, at least not when the producer and interpreter are different people. We can ignore this problem or circumvent it by imagining that the interpreter and producer are the same person. This is the case for self-reflective grammaticality/acceptability intuitions that are often used in syntactic theory construction. However, in the more general situation where producer and interpreter are not the same person, the concept of discourse coherence requires further assumptions regarding sim-ilarity of cs-systems between different individuals.