tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Aug 22 12:29:38 1994

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing



[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Re: Duj pIm



> 
> 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



Back to archive top level