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Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>
cogs.susx.ac.uk>Peter Menzel writes: > Dear Fellow Linguists, > > concerning the present discussion about 'phonemic analysis', it seems to me > that one major point is being ignored; namely, that of the implications of > philosophy of science (or perhaps I ought to say: what we should learn from > it). Now, while I'm going to take Larry Trask's (LT) latest contribution to > this discussion as my point of departure, I don't want this to be > (mis)construed as an attack upon him. OK. I won't take it as an attack. But I *will* be disagreeing fundamentally with much of what Peter says. Since this discussion is going to be about science, maybe I should put a few cards on the table. I was originally trained as a scientist. I did my first two degrees in chemistry, and I did a lot of chemistry, physics, and math, as well as some biology, geology, biochemistry, and history of science. I worked for a while as a research chemist, and then for several years as a teacher of chemistry and physics, before moving into linguistics. Since it will be relevant below, I might comment on my experience of teaching physics to beginners. The chief problems I faced were not in getting the students to understand the theory, but rather in getting them to do the basics right. For example, surprising as this may seem, it is not obvious to all beginners that an equation should have a quantity on each side of the equal sign, and that those two quantities should moreover be equal. This has to be learned. Also, beginners have to learn the importance of units, which very many of them regard as so much window-dressing. They tend to insert the data in whatever units they have been given, and to assume that the answer will automatically come out in whatever units they would like. In fact, of course, they get gibberish. Beginning students have to learn this stuff, so well that it becomes second nature, before they are ready to tackle theory. The most profound understanding of the most powerful and beautiful theory is useless to you if you can't write and solve an equation correctly. > In fact, I have noticed in this whole > discussion (and in a number of others, not only before this forum), a > certain tendency among us linguists to "backslide into Logical Positivism". > Thus, e.g., when LT says things like > "I don't present it as a theory, but only as a useful way of getting to > grips with the data. As always, I prefer to teach students to look at > linguistic data, and to see terminology, notational devices and theoretical > concepts as tools that can aid them in this. In my experience, a heavily > theoretical approach can all too easily lead to a state of mind in which > the theory becomes paramount, and the data become little more than grist > for a theoretical mill. I have seen the consequences of this for myself, > and I don't like them." Indeed I have, and I don't. > I get worried. This sounds to me very much like the position Logical > Positivism held; namely, that there are data 'out there' *independent of any > theory*, and that 'scientists generalize upon these data' and thus 'slowly, > step by step, as it were, build up their theories'. I had thought that this > naive view of what science is all about went out with empiricism. Oh, no: far from it. See below. > What > philosophy of science (POS) has been telling us for at least *twenty-five* > years, is that there are no data without theory (the theory tells us what > 'out there' counts as data); Sorry; I can't accept this. The view just described has indeed been prominent in POS for quite a while now. But Peter seems to be telling us that this position is now universally accepted, that all philosophers firmly believe it, that the issue is closed and beyond discussion. Not so. The "no data without theory" idea has been pursued, in various directions and to varying degrees, by quite a number of philosophers. But it has been a conspicuous failure. Its proponents, after increasingly desperate maneuvers, have signally failed to come up with an adequate account of how science proceeds. In fact, no version of it has yet been able to explain how scientists ever make any progress at all. And this is hardly surprising. While the view obviously contains some truth, as a general statement of how science works, it is simply false. Consider thermionic emission, one of the most important (in the real world) scientific discoveries of the last century or so. Thermionic emission was discovered by Thomas Edison -- the only significant scientific discovery ever made by that distinguished inventor -- and it was at first called 'the Edison effect', until people had figured it out. Now, Edison was not even a scientist. He had *no* theory to guide him in his discovery. He wasn't looking for it; he wasn't expecting it; he had no reason to suppose that such a thing might exist. He stumbled across it entirely by accident, while fooling around. Having discovered it, he didn't understand it. He had no theory within which to base any account, and he had no idea what was going on. Puzzled, he put it aside as a curiosity, and forgot about it. It was left for the theorists to make sense of this novel and unanticipated phenomenon -- which they did, after which the engineers were able to start building radio tubes (valves), and thus to lay the foundations of the entire electronics industry. It is cases like this -- which are not rare -- that cause the greatest difficulty for the "no data without theory" crowd, though there are many other problems with this approach. Given the failure of this view, the doubtless inevitable reaction has now set in. A number of philosophers of science are now challenging the "no data without theory" view by trying to develop a clearer understanding of the role of data, observation and experiment in science. Most prominent here, perhaps, is the philosopher Deborah Mayo, who has developed a vigorous interpretation of the role of experiments and data collection in science, *independent* of the part played by theories. This view now commands a good deal of support in the field. Accordingly, the "no data without theories" view is just that: a view. It is not a piece of truth; it has failed to work in practice; and it is now being superseded by more sophisticated interpretations which expressly *do* allow significant data to be obtained without the guidance of theory. Hence Peter's stance must be rejected. I close this section with a quote from the latest (1999) edition of Alan Chalmers's well-known textbook of the philosophy of science: "I reaffirm that there is no general account of science and scientific method to be had that applies to all sciences at all historical stages in their development. Certainly philosophy does not have the resources to provide such an account." In other words, we linguists have our own agenda and our own problems, and it is up to us to figure out how best to deal with them. We cannot slavishly ape what we think the physicists (or anybody else) might be doing, and we cannot allow ourselves to be hypnotized by the ever-so- magisterial pronouncements of some group of philosophers who happen to be in fashion at the moment. Nobody is going to tell us how to do linguistics, or how to teach it, and we shouldn't let them try. > what philosophy of psychology (POP) has been > telling us for the last *ten* years (or more) is that even perceptions are > 'theory laden' (our theories about the world around us tell us what possible > and likely perceptions are/can be). I know little about POP. But, even given the essential truth of the view described, I cannot see that it denies the possibility of obtaining useful data without theory. Take a linguistic example: ergativity. When European linguists first stumbled across ergative languages, they were dumbfounded. They had no reason to suspect such a thing, and no theoretical framework within which it could be accommodated. But they still noticed that there was an issue there, something that needed to be accounted for. And, after a good deal of fumbling around with inadequate Latin-based views of what languages were supposed to be like, they eventually managed to come up with tolerably adequate descriptive accounts. Even today, we still don't have a good general theory of ergativity, but that doesn't stop us from working on the problem. Isn't this a good example of data preceding theory? > There is an important point that needs to be made here: Regardless of > whether LT holds this position or not, if he teaches the course the way he > describes, (as data quasi independent from *later* theorizing) his students > will *think* he does, and will most likely conclude that this is the correct > way of approaching scientific (or other) explanations. > Given the insights into the workings of the human mind I presented above, it > seems to me that approaches like that of classical phonemics, which BTW > sprang from Logical Positivism, I confess I am astonished to read this. The phoneme principle was known to the ancient Indian grammarian Patanjali, and to the 12th-century Icelandic First Grammarian. In Europe, it was slowly worked out during the 19th century. More or less explicit understandings of the phoneme principle can be found, for example, in Odell (1806), Whitney (1843), M�ller (1843), Ellis (1844), Pitman (1846), Winteler (1876), and Sweet (1877). By most accounts, the first fully explicit statement of the phoneme principle was developed by Baudouin de Courtenay and Kruszewski at Kazan in the late 19th century. From Kazan, the principle was carried west to Britain by Shcherba, reaching Daniel Jones in 1911. Jones and his colleagues began regularly teaching phoneme theory in London in 1915 (by Jones's own account), and Jones made use of the idea in his subsequent publications, and published an explicit account in 1929. Meanwhile, the Prague School linguists were developing their own view of the phoneme, and the Americans were developing theirs. Sapir's 1925 paper is usually considered the classic American presentation, and Bloomfield adopted phonemes unhesitatingly in his 1933 book. By 1934 Twaddell was writing that the phoneme principle was generally accepted. And I'm not aware that *any* of these people were significantly influenced by Logical Positivism. Most of them had never even heard of it. Logical Positivism was invented by the Vienna Circle, which didn't begin meeting before the 1920s, which hadn't really formulated its LP doctrines before the late 1920s, and which didn't become influential outside a small circle before the 1930s. LP was really only introduced to the English- speaking world when its first British disciple, Freddie Ayer, published his famous book in 1936. So how can phonemics be viewed as having sprung from Logical Positivism? The dates are all wrong. > are seriously misguided, because they are > based on the latter's view of scientific inquiry, which, to put it bluntly, > has been proven inadequate. This last may be so, but there are two things. First, even if it *were* true that phoneme theory sprang from LP -- which I do not believe -- this is no argument against it. Concluding that LP is generally inadequate is no argument that its entire program is devoid of value, or that anything which arose out of it is therefore worthless. One might as well argue that, because Newton's alchemical investigations were worthless -- which they were -- *all* of his work was worthless -- which it certainly was not. Second, this reasoning constitutes a kind of group version of the *ad hominem* argument: your case is no good because you are not fit people to put it forward. Phoneme theory, like anything, must stand or fall on its own merits, and not on the general merits of any intellectual position from which it may (or may not) have sprung. > Can you imagine a present day college physics > course teaching a Newtonain, or even an Aristotelian view of the universe? I don't have to imagine it: I can *see* it. It is a grave error to assume that Newtonian physics is today dismissed by physicists as a laughable relic. This is the very opposite of the truth. Look at *any* current university-level textbook of physics. (There are many and they are all big.) You will find that Newtonian physics is covered. And not just in passing, out of historical respect. There is normally a whole chapter on Newtonian mechanics, and another on Newtonian gravitation, not to mention Newton's optics. Students are required to master this material, to learn to use it to solve real physical problems. Why? Because physicists still use Newton's physics today. When NASA scientists send a spacecraft off to the outer reaches of the solar system, what do they use to calculate its trajectory? Good old Newtonian physics, that's what. They use it because it works perfectly well for their purposes. There is simply no need to invoke relativistic physics, or still less quantum mechanics, in solving this kind of problem. Recently NASA lost a craft sent to Mars. (Two, actually, but I'm thinking of the first one.) What went wrong? A failure of theory? Certainly not. The mission went wrong, in spite of careful preparation and the most immaculate theory, because somebody inserted into the calculation quantities *in the wrong units*. So, millions of dollars' worth of spacecraft crashed into the planet, instead of going into orbit around it. What was I saying earlier about the need to get the basics right before you start worrying about theory? ;-) In fact, about 90% of the content of any physics textbook consists of physics which was firmly in place before 1900 -- often long before 1900. Newtonian mechanics, Newtonian gravity, electromagnetism, wave theory, classical thermodynamics, geometrical optics, and so on. The large and important body of physics done since 1900 is invariably relegated to a final section called 'modern physics'. And even this section is almost entirely devoted to work done before 1950: special and general relativity, quantum mechanics, nuclear reactions, and the like. Physics done since 1950 is generally absent. Even such important contributions of the last 30 or 40 years as the electroweak unification and GUTs are ignored, or at best receive only a brief passing mention on the last page or two of the book. And such major topics as Bell's inequality, the Aspect experiment, superstring theory, and the many-worlds interpretation are not so much as mentioned in any physics textbook I've ever seen -- even though these are among the hot theoretical issues which physicists work on and discuss eagerly every day. The exciting theoretical issues are left for later, and more advanced, courses, aimed at students who already know their way around the field. So, if the physicists have a lesson for us linguists, on the teaching of beginning students, it is this: "Learn to walk before you try to run. Learn what has already been achieved by your predecessors. Learn the basics of your craft. Learn them so well that they become second nature to you, so that you don't ruin your later work with childish blunders. In short, learn how to do physics. Then, and only then, will you be ready to tackle the hot theoretical issues of the day." I think the physicists have got it right. And their practice contrasts glaringly with what happens in linguistics departments in which students are taught, from day one, *only* the currently fashionable theoretical ideas. > (yes, I know, it's gets tiresome to always cite physics the *the* science to > be emulated, but still, this branch of science has been more successful at > explaining complex aspects of the universe than many others. It has > certainly been more successful at providing explanations in it is own field > than linguistics has been.) It has, yes, but look. First, physics has been up and running since the 16th century, at least. Linguistics is much newer, and hardly any branches of it -- apart from historical linguistics -- are even a century old. Second, the phenomena examined by linguists are arguably much more complex than those examined by physicists. They look at the behavior of electrons and crystals. We look at certain aspects of the behavior of people. There may be another reason why progress in linguistics is slower than we might wish. When I was a student, in the 1970s, the dominant theoretical approaches were classical generative phonology -- in phonology -- and the EST, just giving way to the REST -- in syntax. The theoreticians of the day were often loud in their claims that they were doing cutting-edge scientific research on language, and at times contemptuous of those linguists who declined to hop onto their theoretical bandwagons. Well, I'm a historical linguist, and recently I gave a talk to the research students at my old university. I illustrated my talk with a number of examples of phonological change, and I presented these in the notation invented by the classical generative phonologists -- you know, stuff like this: l --> r / V ___ V We historical linguists still use this notation, not for any theoretical reason, but merely because we find it convenient. But what did I discover? Many of the research students there *could not read* this notation! I was flabbergasted. But they don't get taught this stuff, because that's 1970s linguistics, and they're all busy learning the currently fashionable non-linear phonology instead. So, all that 1970s work, which at the time was cutting-edge research, is now so much wastepaper. If contemporary students can't read the notation, then they can't read the work, either, and so presumably they don't. How, then, can they possibly have any understanding of what their predecessors might have achieved? What is there to stop them, and their successors, from inventing the wheel, over and over again, in one theoretical framework after another? How can the field maintain any continuity, and how can progress ever be cumulative -- as it is in physics -- if each generation is incapable of understanding the work of the preceding generation? And what's going to happen to today's cutting-edge research, if the students twenty years from now can't even read it? Isn't there something wrong here? > The question, then, as far as I can see, comes down not to whether we want > to teach classical phonemics in intro linguistics course, but whether we > want to confront our beginning students with important questions about the > nature of scientific inquiry, and of human inquiry in general. And, if we > don't trust our beginning students to come to grips with such a complex > question, how long do we want to wait? Until grad school? Well, far be it from me to denigrate the teaching of scientific inquiry. But there are ways and ways of doing that, and teaching only the currently fashionable theories is not the only way, nor perhaps even the best way. Most of my linguistics students come to university with solid arts backgrounds. They have done no math beyond the required minimum, and they have done no science at all. Most of them are shocked by the kind of tight analytical thinking we require in linguistics, and by the use of explicit formal notations, because they've never encountered anything like that before. So, the approach I focus on is one much less ambitious than a dive straight into hot theoretical issues. I try to teach my students what I regard as the basics. Learn to spot patterns. Learn to express those patterns explicitly and accurately. Learn how to spot shortcomings in your analysis. Learn how to modify your analysis so as to overcome those shortcomings, while at the same time checking that your modified analysis doesn't bugger up things you were getting right before. (Beginners find this last point particularly difficult: they are constantly inclined to think "OK; I've got that bit right, so now I'll change my analysis to cope with these other troublesome cases, and I won't worry about the earlier parts, because I've already dealt with them.") These, I think, are among the fundamental skills which linguists must acquire early, and which they will need later in their careers *regardless* of what theoretical frameworks they may choose to use. Like the physicists, I believe that students must learn to walk before they can run. There's plenty of time for theory later, *after* they've learned the basics of their field, *after* they've learned how to do linguistics. > As LT says: "Phonemics is a theory", albeit, I say, a sorely inadequate > one. (As are most likely *all* of our present theories.) If you think that > it is an appropriate theory with which to introduce students to the > complexities of phonology (and thereby those of linguistics), then you ought > to do so with what I should call "the proper respect for theories"; that is, > with an adequate explanation of the importance of theories in our quest of > understanding the world around us. Of course, this is no easy task, and > I've often despaired at ever getting this point accross to my students. I am not surprised. > And > I have also witnessed teaching where "data become little more than grist for > a theoretical mill", and I'm not about to condone this kind of teaching. Good. > As I've said: It's certainly a difficult question to decide how much theory > to teach and how early or late to teach it. But it's one every teacher, > even a linguist, has to face. For me, personally, the theory laden aspect > of all human endeavor at explaining the world around us has always been one > of the few ways in which I could tie my introductory courses to the > interests of the (general) students: By showing them that what we were > doing here was, in essence, no different from what they (we all) were doing > every day in our attempts at explaining the world around us to ourselves. Well, at this point, I think we'll have to agree to differ. I don't avoid theoretical interpretations, when I think they're appropriate and helpful, but I think I serve the interests of my students better by teaching them data and ways of analyzing data. We might make a little bet. Of all the work done in linguistics in the last ten years or so, which has the best chance of still being regarded as important in 20 years? My bet is that the currently fashionable theories won't be there: they will have given way to other fashionable theories. Among the stuff that I think *will* stand up are the work on social networks, the work on creoles and creolization, and, perhaps most importantly of all, the work on sign languages. I rank all this stuff far, far ahead of Optimality Theory, non-linear phonology, and Minimalism. But then everybody knows I'm a tedious old grouch with his head in the sand. ;-) > Again, LT, your contribution was only what got me to thinking about this > whole question. And many thanks for giving me the chance to get a few things off my chest. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH UK larrytMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue