The conceptual-procedural distinction is radical, if not provocative, in that it forces us to have a careful look at all linguistic forms occurring in a sequence. For example, consider (1).
(1) Tom is a brilliant linguist but yet ironically he failed all the
five crossword puzzles at the contest recently held in Cuba.
There are 22 linguistic forms in this segment: two proper names (Tom, Cuba), one pronoun (he), one determiner (all), one adjective (brilliant), two adverbs (unfortunately, recently), one number (five), two prepositions (at, in), three verbs (is, failed, held), two conjunctions (but, yet), three articles (a, the, the), and four general nouns (linguist, crossword, puzzles, contest). A proponent of the conceptual-procedural distinction has to decide which each belongs to. The adverbs, the adjective, the content verbs, and the general nouns would naturally be put into the conceptual basket. The pronoun, and the conjunctions would find themselves in the procedural basket. The rest seem to remain more or less on the fence. Is Tom conceptual or procedural or both? Is Tom conceptually/procedurally different from Cuba even though they are both proper names? Is number five conceptual or procedural or both? Is at, in conceptual or procedural or both? And so on.
As my previous posting suggest, it may seem a good idea to look into all variety of expressions to find out which one belongs to which category. I name here a few.
- pronouns such as nobody, nothing, anybody, anyone, him, it...
- wh-question words such as who, what, where, why..
- numbers such as 1, 10, first, third...
- nouns like thing stuff, sort, type...
- prepositions/adverbs: in, into, at, beyond
etc
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Received on Wed Jan 9 14:20:28 2008
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