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mbox.anglistik.uni-hannover.de>Dear listers, There is one criticism of generative grammar that is repeated over and over again by some functionalists, and which has now been introduced into the discussion by Marc Hamann, namely "the empirical vagueness which surrounds the notion of grammaticality judgements as a measure of competence." I once talked to a by now well-known and well-respected generativist about this problem after he had given a paper where he made an important theoretical point on the basis of what I considered extremely dubious grammaticality judgements. He openly acknowledged that the judgements were simply his own, and that he had verified them (only) by asking his colleague next door. I consider this type of procedure methodologically totally inadequate (for very good reasons for this (neither pro- nor contra-generativist) view see the references given below). However, I don't think that anyone should use the methodological errors commited by an individual researcher (even if perhaps commonly commited by many more researchers of the same theoretical persuasion) as the prime argument against the theoretical positions put forward by these researchers. There are many generative papers that provide significant results and insights without recourse to any problematic judgments. Furthermore, recent studies of the methodological problems concerning grammaticality judgments have shown that it is possible to gain significant insights in many areas of grammar using grammaticality judgments, PROVIDED IT IS PROPERLY DONE , i.e. using standardly available empirical and statistical tools. For details and recommendations how this can be achieved I refer the reader to the following books: Cowart,Wayne. 1997. Experimental Syntax: Applying Objective Methods to Sentence Judgments. Beverly Hills/London: Sage. Sch�tze,Carsten. 1996. The Empirical Base of Linguistics: Grammaticality Judgments and Linguistic Methodology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. In sum, I don't see any a priori reason why grammaticality judgments should be excluded from our data base (be it for functionalist or formalist studies), or how the problems involved with this kind of data are an argument for or against any theory or theoretical persuasion. Best regards, Ingo Plag ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Prof. Dr. Ingo Plag Englisches Seminar Universitaet Hannover Koenigsworther Platz 1 D-30167 Hannover Tel: (0511) 762-5119 Tel: Secretary Ms. Kemnitzer (0511) 762-4748 Fax: (0511) 762-2996 e-mail: plagMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
www.dci.co.ir>On Wed, 19 Jan 2000 and in reply to Andrew Carnie's review of Newmeyer's LFLF, Marc Hamann wrote: >I can't speak for functionalism, but a key concern for me is the >empirical vagueness which surrounds the notion of grammaticality >judgements as a measure of competence. The major problem is that there >are sentences which native speakers will judge unacceptable despite >being able to understand them perfectly well (a trivial example is the >double negative "I don't got nothing left."), while other sentences >which ought to be "grammatical" sound very strange if not >unintelligible (The rat that the cat that the dog bit chased ran.) I >believe that a functionalist would be more interested in the fact that >the former works and the latter doesn't rather than shunting the >examples aside a "performance issues" and focusing on an idealized >competence model. I should thank functionalists from the bottom of my heart for whatever they do to discover why 'the former works and the latter doesn't '. But after all someone MUST take care of such issues as why the former is not grammatical but the latter is! And that 'someone' is the formalist. Then as Newmeyer insists, these two approaches can complement each other. >This is I think where the real divergence happens >between the Chomsky School and a more functionalist one. If this is really the case, then the whole thing is a misunderstanding! But I have my own doubts in this respect. Noonan in his functionalist syntax position paper in 'Functionalism and Formalism in Linguistics' (1998), that I happened to review for Linguist (Vol-11-3. Mon Jan 10 2000), criticises formalism for issues following from (1) below rather than those associated with (2): (1) a. self-containedness b. systematicity c. arbitrariness (relational rather than substantive definitions for categories, e.g. an ADJ is not-Noun and not-VERB) d. discrete categories e. a static, synchronic system as the object of description f. distinction between abstract knowledge and use (2) a. the rationalist/empiricist continuum b. the absence of functional analyses of aspects of grammar c. innateness d. the universalist/relativist continuum e. intuitions as the source of data > >AC expresses amazement that GPSG, HPSG and Categorial Grammar are more >sympathetic to functionalism than is the Chomsky School, since he sees >the former as being more formalist in many ways. I think here we must >make a distinction between formalist methodology and formalist >theory. Though GPSG, HPSG and CG are all much more rigorous and >mathematically well-defined than any of the Chomsky School theories, >at heart they are all using this formal methodology to MODEL language >as a system of effectively communicating meaning and not proposing >that the systems they are building are a real representation of some >UG or other formal system in the heads of speakers divorced from the >practical realities of performance. Then: Andrew two, Marc one! First, minimalism is more functionalist than many (but definitely not all) other formalist approaches exactly because of the nature of its current theoretical status rather than its methodology: the human language faculty as an optimal (but not perfectly optimal) solution to the legibility conditions imposed on language from 'outside'. As far as methodology is concerned, it's not so much different from its predecessors ST, EST, REST, and GB. Second, he was quite right when he said we linguists must learn to listen to each other more carefully, which Marc didn't. Let me repeat a part of my review of 'Functionalism and Formalism in linguistics' on the same theme: "The incoherent discourse between the functionalist and formalist ... seems to be mainly due to the general deficiency of both parties in formulating their positions ... . The ever-increasing number of anomalies we formalists witness day by day as theoretical tinkering is practiced more and more to 'stop the leaks'-- successive revisions of minimalist syntax, syntactic 'feats' to save the checking theory and Chomsky's thesis of movement, vaguely (if ever) defined terms that prove one after another to be 'dubious' such as strength, EPP-features, delete, erase, and ... just to name the most typical ones-- all and all suggest that linguistics today is already in the middle of a scientific crisis. ... There is still no good reason for functionalists to celebrate either! As Elizabeth Bates put it (quoted in Newmeyer, 1998), "functionalism is like Protestantism: it is a group of warring sects which agree only on the rejection of the authority of the Pope." Functionalist papers in this collection reveal that they are far from being unanimous among themselves with regard to any tenet Noonan has listed in his program- matic functionalist paper. Bybee's account of such inconsistencies -- "Obviously there was, and still is, more than one idea about what functionalism is (Vol. I, p. 212)")-- is educational in this respect. Moreover, an alternative candidate for a paradigm is expected to be definitely superior to the older theory in solving problems. It is hard- ly enough for such a candidate to solve some and 'unslove' some others as functionalists seem to do." *********************************************** Ahmad Reza Lotfi, Ph. D. Chair of English Department Graduate School, Azad University at Khorasgan, Esfahan, IRAN MailTo: lotfiMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
email.msn.com>Dear Marc and Linguists: > I can't speak for functionalism, but a key concern for me is the > empirical vagueness which surrounds the notion of grammaticality > judgements as a measure of competence. The major problem is that there > are sentences which native speakers will judge unacceptable despite > being able to understand them perfectly well (a trivial example is the > double negative "I don't got nothing left."), while other sentences > which ought to be "grammatical" sound very strange if not > unintelligible (The rat that the cat that the dog bit chased ran.) <snip> What strange kind of English would consider the sentence in the last example "grammatical"??? Although a rewording like The rat that the cat bit that the dog chased ran. is ambiguous, stylistically attrocious, it is perfectly understandable. As the sentence was written above, I doubt that any speaker of English would acknowledge it as "English", let alone "grammatical:. Pat PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGEMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue