Human speech and writing reveal our powers both to generalize and
to criticize our own procedures. For this we must use words
non-mechanically and with a freedom without definite limits, but
still allowing mutual intelligibility. Such powers cannot be
simulated by any possible physical mechanism, and this shows that
human beings in our acts of judgment and understanding transcend
the body. Philosopher, psychologist and linguist are all concerned
with natural language. Accordingly, in seeking a unified view,
Braine draws on insights from all these fields, sifting through the
discordant schools of linguists. He concludes that one extended
logic or "integrated semantic syntax" shapes grammar, but without
constricting languages to being of one grammatical type. Language
as learnt and speech are both essentially public, geared to a
community of language-users. Therefore, psycholinguists should
imitate Gibson's treatment of our perceptual system and treat
learning and use of language as arising by adaptation to our social
and natural environment. Through taking the malleability of the
functioning of the brain and its parts to an extreme, grammar has
become unrestricted by neurology, limited only by logical and
pragmatic constraints. For Braine, a language is a living thing,
both in the development of thought and in conversation. Chomsky has
entrenched a static, building-block, model of a language as a code,
each lexical item with just one meaning. Yet in our learning and
use of language each word develops an indefinite spread of uses or
senses adapted to the realities and questions which we have to
confront. The idea ""one lexical item, one meaning"" applies only
to formal languages, not to the natural language which extends
beyond social life to embrace mathematics, physics and all the
sciences, religion and literature. In rewriting the philosophy of
grammar, Braine restores the dynamic conception of language,
reuniting structure and communicative function. Grammar, typically
through the verb, gives the sentence its ""saying"" function, the
verb being what brings the sentence to life, giving the sentence's
other elements their role and force.
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