Discussion Details
| Title: | A Challenge to the Minimalist Community |
| Submitter: | Anjum Saleemi |
| Description: | Much of the recent discussion about Minimalism reminds me of a
prevalent trend witnessed many times before on the LINGUIST list in the course of other similar discussions. As linguists we seem to be far too much driven by some supposedly significant methodological and computational imperatives, or even by mere notational determinants. My recollection of most past debates of this nature is that eventually they often deteriorate into sterile argumentation. While issues bearing on methodology, computational tractability, and so forth, should remain important, surely none of them can be considered to constitute a decisive testing ground for what is or isn't a good theory. Usually we come to know that a theory is good only after the fact, that is, after it has been formulated and found to be successful (and, therefore, true). As John Framptom and others have implied in some of the recent postings, a good parser is primarily just that: a good parser. How exactly to anticipate the success (or otherwise) of a linguistic theory even before it has been fleshed out is a question that's not only unfair but misguided: if we already knew what a good theory in a relatively unexplored domain was supposed to look like, we wouldn't be in the business of striving for one in the first place! In the end, the generative paradigm may indeed turn out to be wrong, but over the decades it has provided most of the leading ideas in our field, and has in addition helped us dig up a lot of new data. To the extent that this is any indication of eventual success, I believe it wouldn't be wise to let its fate be judged by any programming sleights of hand. Anjum Saleemi National Chi Nan University Taiwan |
| Date Posted: | 11-May-2005 |
| Linguistic Field(s): |
Computational Linguistics
Linguistic Theories Discipline of Linguistics |
| LL Issue: | 16.1505 |
| Posted: | 11-May-2005 |
