tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Aug 22 22:42:13 1994
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Re: Duj pIm
Nickvo':
=>My use of the term stemmed from someone's
=>claim that language "instincts" are based on experience, a rather
impossible
=>situation no matter what linguistic theories you subscribe to.
>Um, you wouldn't be a functionalist then?
I'm glad you defined your terms below; I'm not familiar with your labels for
the major linguistic camps.
>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.
Well, don't leave out the structuralists, who don't even share the same goals
of
linguistic description. Still going strong....
>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.
I'm not familiar with this approach, but it sounds something like a syntactic
version of Sperber and Wilson's "Relevance."
>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.
This, I think, is where you and I will disagree most, then. I can't see how
language
could possibly fit into other patterns of cognition. How is it possible that
a baby
learning language can start with nothing, and end up with near-fluency in a
language by the age of 4 or so? Observation? (They receive no formal
instruction; even if some do, that can't be why, becuase there are those who
don't and still learn language). And, babies are so bad at other cognitive
tasks
while they're learning language.
>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.
Do you mean linguistic change, or linguistic variation? That is, change
over time in the syntax of a single language, or variations between two or
more languages at any given time?
>These functionalist instincts are partly gut feelings, and partly
intellectual.
>Experience with other languages helps. But what ultimately divides Proechel
>and others, or me and others, or charghwI' and others, is conscious
>intellectual, linguistics-motivated decision.
While I agree that knowledge about language affects matters of interpretation
like you discussed, I think you're being misleading by calling the
decisions "linguistics-motivated." Linguistic knowledge is unconcsious; a
layman can't explain why "which cars were the hoods of damaged" is
ungrammatical, or why "herself" in "Mary believes that Martha likes herself"
can refer to "Martha" but not "Mary." Now, if some astute observer, like
charghwI', notices patterns in the languages he knows, and applies this
to a language he's learning, like tlhIngan Hol, I would not claim that
he's employing his linguistic knowledge in his analysis of tlhIngan Hol,
but more general powers of cognition. (A distinction lost in functionalist
linguistics, if I understood your description above.)
--Holtej