tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Aug 22 12:29:38 1994
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Re: Duj pIm
- From: KLI Round Table Acct <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Duj pIm
- Date: Tue, 23 Aug 1994 00:25:40 -0400 (EDT)
- In-Reply-To: <[email protected]> from "Nick NICHOLAS" at Aug 23, 94 10:30:36 am
>
> Well, that'd sort of be my point as well. To clarify: there are two major
> schools of linguistics at the moment; each school tends to think the other
> is a waste of time, and they don't communicate between each other two well,
> although I suspect ultimately they do need each other. The majority school
> (at least in the US) is the formalists; it includes the Chomskian tradition.
> These linguists seek to explain language as a formal system, and are
> sympathetic to positing a language organ genetically determined in the brain;
> languages are different, because a baby's brain selects 'switch' (parameter)
> positions when it hears a language, and works out what goes where.
>
> I'm with the functionalists, who prefer to think of language not as a formal
> system, but as a communicative resource. In particular, we seek to explain
> particular features of language, not in terms of genetics and parameters,
> but in terms of how a linguistic form best communicates a meaning. As a result,
> we tend to think less of an independent language organ, and more of how
> language fits into the patterns of cognition in general. We also
> explain linguistic change, not in terms of formal parameter alteration, but
> in terms of alternative expressions 'competing', alternative communicative
> motivations for expressions conflicting, and so on. Because they don't
> subscribe to formal theories, functionalists are more sympathetic to
> statistical linguistics, and fuzzy-logical views of grammar. (E.g. they will
> admit shades of grey between 'noun' and 'verb').
>
> Nick Nicholas. Linguistics, University of Melbourne. [email protected]
Well, despite my description of the Chomskyan model earlier, by Nick's
breakdown I come out a functionalist. I'm a cognitive psychologist
myself, and the emphasis of what I do is on cognition. Though some of
Nick's description sounds more like a behaviorist's cant (not surprising,
given the history of Chomsky and Skinner), bbut then, in a lot of ways
the apparently diametrically opposed camps of Behaviorism and Cognitivism
have more in common than they have apart (this was the topic of a nice
paper I worte for a radical behaviorist back in grad school).
Of course, pinning labels on people doesn't help all that much. But it is
good to have at least a crude sketch of the other guys.
Lawrence