nusvm OR ellapsleonis.nus.sgEditor for this issue: <>
carina.unm.edu>As a graduate student, I have found the current discussion on the acceptance of psycholinguistics by linguists to be a very interesting one. But Vicki Fromkin's (4.903) mention of a separation between "representation (competence) and processing (performance)," leads me to wonder about the current view of semiotics among linguists. Has the field moved away from Saussurian principles (i.e., language as a system of signs)? And what about the works of C.S. Peirce? How are they considered?Mail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
NUSVM.bitnet>The ongoing discussion about the growing significance of psycholinguistics is very interesting. On the one hand, even as a borderline psycholinguist who often finds himself suspended between psychological and linguistic reasoning, I'm extremely pleased that the change that is supposed to (and should) be happening is indeed taking place. On the other hand, I'm puzzled why this has started to happen only in the last couple of years (re Marantz's message), and not earlier, and in general why it has EVER been otherwise, considering that at least according to some (very influential) points of view linguistics is merely a branch of psychology. In fact, it seems to me that in these terms the term "psycholinguistics" is somewhat tautological (that is, if linguistics IS actually taken to be a part of psychology). My point, put somewhat radically, is this: inspite of some major conceptual shifts, the field has remained fairly structural in practice; at the level of methodology, the focus has overwhelmingly been on the formal (read=notational) study of language, with intuitive judgements about grammaticality (for example) being the major (usualy the ONLY) determinants of the validity of a particular hypothesis. Although my own practice has not been too far removed from this methodological orthodoxy, I've often wondered about other types of evidence that are actually or potentially accessible. Take the case of intuitive judgements of grammaticality: these are admittedly an extremely good FIRST approximation to reliable data, but clearly they aren't good enough to justify basing hypotheses and theories entirely on them. Aren't such judgements obtained under conditions which are only remotely comparable to those prevailing in even the crudest experiments? Also, with the recent theoretical advances, it is probably going to be more and more the case that hypotheses may have to be accepted or rejected the basis of very subtle evidence. (Can I just point out that physical scientists spend a LOT of time in designing techniques which would help them get the best relevant evidence.) Surprisingly, though, the notational-structural style of argumentation is still dominant, although I hope that the changes reported by Marantz in the MIT graduate programme (among other factors pointed out by Fromkin and others) will make a difference, eventually. I do not by any means object to the importance of abstract model building, but only wish to point out that this sort of work doesn't have a privileged status, and that important insights can come from virtually any direction. In short, I believe that linguistics is a discipline which is very likely to lead to several empirically significant consequences; however, whether it'll develop into a empirical science aiming at unravelling a particular aspect of human psycho-biological reality, or become a discipline largely devoted to abtract reasoning for its own sake, is something which remains to be seen. I'd be grateful for any comments about this line of reasoning, which has been bothering me a great deal lately and hopefully isn't entirely alien to the thinking of many other members of the field either. Anjum Saleemi National University of Singapore ellapsMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue