How Do I Know What to Say Next? Barenholtz’s Autogenerative Theory as an Enrichment of Harrisean Integrationism

我该如何知道接下来该说什么？巴伦霍尔茨的自生成理论对哈里斯整合主义的丰富

Abstract: Roy Harris’s Integrationist linguistics offers a compelling critique of the referentialist tradition embedded deep at the heart of computational approaches to language, arguing that language is not a code that maps onto a pre-given world but a situated, bipartite activity oriented toward prospective joint action.

摘要： 罗伊·哈里斯（Roy Harris）的整合主义语言学对深植于计算语言学核心的指称论传统提出了强有力的批判。他认为，语言并非映射于预设世界的代码，而是一种面向未来联合行动的、情境化的双边活动。

Yet Integrationism leaves certain explanatory gaps: it does not fully account for the structural mechanism by which signs sustain prospective openness, it undertheorises the continuity between linguistic and non-linguistic semiotic activity, and it offers no detailed account of the structural properties of the accumulated archive of past integrations.

然而，整合主义仍存在一些解释上的空白：它未能充分说明符号如何维持未来开放性的结构机制；它对语言活动与非语言符号活动之间的连续性理论化不足；此外，它也未对过去整合所积累的档案的结构属性提供详细说明。

This paper argues that Elan Barenholtz’s autogenerative theory of language, developed in response to the behaviour of Large Language Models (LLMs), can fill precisely these gaps, enriching Integrationism without undermining any of its core commitments.

本文认为，埃兰·巴伦霍尔茨（Elan Barenholtz）为应对大语言模型（LLM）行为而提出的语言自生成理论，恰好可以填补这些空白，在不削弱整合主义任何核心承诺的前提下对其进行丰富。

Specifically, the autogenerative account provides: a structural mechanism for the prospective openness that Harris identifies as central to bipartite communication; a computational correlate for Harris’s thesis of semiotic continuity between language and other sign-making activity; and a theory of the archive: what the accumulated residue of past integrations looks like and how new participants draw upon it.

具体而言，自生成理论提供了以下内容：为哈里斯所认定的双边交流核心——“未来开放性”提供了结构机制；为哈里斯关于语言与其他符号生成活动之间存在符号连续性的论点提供了计算对应物；以及一套档案理论：即过去整合所积累的残余物呈现何种形态，以及新的参与者如何利用这些残余物。

The synthesis preserves Harris’s ontological primacy of the situated integrative act while adding explanatory content that Integrationism itself does not supply.

这种综合在保留哈里斯关于“情境化整合行为”本体论首要地位的同时，补充了整合主义自身未能提供的解释性内容。

For practitioners and researchers in natural language processing and large language model design, the argument offers a principled account of what the statistical structure that LLMs so effectively exploit actually is, and of what it cannot, by its nature, provide.

对于自然语言处理和大语言模型设计领域的从业者和研究人员来说，这一论点提供了一个原则性的解释，阐明了LLM所有效利用的统计结构究竟是什么，以及它在本质上无法提供什么。