First, as they emphasize, correctly IMO, what made the Vergnaud theory so interesting as regards explanatory adequacy was that it was not signaled by surface features of DPs in some many languages (e.g. English and Chinese). In other words, it was not WYSIWYG. If it held then it could not be reasonably acquired simply by tracking surface morphology. This is what made it a UG candidate and why it bore on issues of explanatory adequacy. In other words, it was a nice example of PoS thinking: you know it despite no PLD to motivate it, hence it is part of FL/UG. Again, it is the absence of surface reflexes of the principle that made it interesting. As B&U puts it:
Deep down, case is compelling because linguistics has become a part of the Galilean undertaking, a way of explaining what is visible by an appeal to what is not.Not being "visible" is the key here.
Second, B&U notes how P&P models were influenced by the work of Monod and Jacob on the operon. Indeed, I would go further: the kind of work that microbiologists were doing were taken to serve as good models of how work on language could proceed and Case theory as Vergnaud envisaged this was a nice example of the thinking. Here's what I mean.
The operon was discovered by research on very simple bacteria and the supposition was made that how it worked there was how it worked everywhere. It's logic extends from bacteria to butterflies, chickens, lions, whales, worms etc. In other words, reasoning based on a very simple organism was taken to illuminate how far different organisms organized their microbiology. And all of this without replicating the work on butterflies, mice, whales etc. This reasoning as applied to linguistics allows inferences from the intensive study of one language to prima facie apply to all. Indeed, the PoS argument licenses this kind of inference which is why it is such an interesting and powerful form of argument.
Why do I mention this? Because linguists nowadays don't really believe this. Evidence that we don't can be seen in our reactions to critics (like Everett, Evans, Wolfe, Tomasello, etc.). A staple of GG criticism is that it is English centric. The supposition behind this criticism is that one cannot legitimately say anything about FL/UG based on the study of a smattering of languages. To talk about FL/UG responsibly requires studying a broad swath of different languages for only in so doing is one licensed to make universal inferences. We reply to the critics by noting how much current linguistic work is typological and cross linguistic and that so many people are working on so many different kinds of languages. But why is this our only retort. Why not say that one can gain terrific insight into FL/UG by studying a single language? Why the requirement that any claim be founded on masses of cross linguistic investigation?
Note that this is exactly what Monod and Jacob did not do. Nor do microbiologists do so today. Microbiologists study a handful of model organisms and from these we infer laws of biology. That is deemed ok in biology but not linguistics. Why? Why do linguists presuppose that only the extensive study of a wide number of different languages will allow insight into FL/UG? It's not the history of the field, so far as I can tell.
B&U shows how classical case theory arose. Similar stories can be told for virtually every other non-trivial theory within linguistics. It arose not via the study of lots of languages but by trying to understand simple facts within a small number in some deep way. This is how bounding theory arose, the ECP, binding and more. So why the presupposition (visible in the replies we give to our critics that we do, really really do, study more than just English) that cross linguistic typological investigations are the only sure way to investigate FL/UG?
I think that I know one answer: we don't really know much about FL/UG. In other words, many linguists will reply that our claims are weak. I don't buy this. But if you do then it is not clear why GGs critics upset you with their claims. Is it that they are saying out loud what you believe but don't think should be shared in polite company?
"[W]hy the presupposition [...] that cross linguistic typological investigations are the only sure way to investigate FL/UG? I think that I know one answer: we don't really know much about FL/UG. In other words, many linguists will reply that our claims are weak."
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't say exactly that the problem is we don't know much. I would say that the issue is translating what we (think we) know in experimental predictions. At the moment, the principles of FL/UG we (believe we) know do not usually lead to direct experimental confirmation, but rather to conditional predictions (so not so much "A human language forms question by moving the wh-word to a high functional position" but "A human language forms question by establishing a functional relation with a high functional position, so if the wh-word doesn't move, then there are intervention effects"). Such conditional predictions more or less require cross-linguistic investigations by definition so the best we could hope for (or at least something that sounds good enough for me epistemologically speaking) is to investigate one language, isolate a general property of FL/UG (in conditional form), apply it to another language with a different initial condition, observe that the conclusion still holds (and declare victory?).
"Why not say that one can gain terrific insight into FL/UG by studying a single language?"
ReplyDeleteIt is true that biologists have gained much insight by studying in great detail a few model organisms but the analogy with biology is not completely appropriate because the nature of commonalities and differences between languages is not the same as those between species. For instance, while it is obvious that all living organisms have a shared common ancestor, it may not be the case for languages (and even such a common ancestor did exist, there is no way to prove it using linguistic data).
I'm with Olivier on this. Although Norbert is careful to say that one can gain great insight into UG by looking at one language, which is true (as opposed to saying you only need to look at one language), I definitely think we've found out a lot more about it by applying theories across many languages. It would be quite difficult to imagine we could have a principles and parameters theory, as opposed to an Aspects type theory, in the absence of any evidence from cross-linguistic variation. So then we wouldn't have a real understanding of the architecture of the faculty of language (assuming something like P&P to be closer to correct than something like Aspects).
ReplyDelete"Nor do microbiologists do so today. Microbiologists study a handful of model organisms and from these we infer laws of biology. That is deemed ok in biology but not linguistics. Why? Why do linguists presuppose that only the extensive study of a wide number of different languages will allow insight into FL/UG? It's not the history of the field, so far as I can tell."
ReplyDeleteI'd say this is somewhat misleading. biologists study model organisms because of the properties they posses (first among them being the property of not being human). Take C. elegans for instance.. It is studied as it shares large parts of it's genetic material with humans. It is also cheap to produce and keep, unlike say, primates. All of it's [transparent] cells are mapped (finished in 1998) and visible to a researcher and as it does not produce new ones, these can be tracked throughout its life.
Secondly, this is done for logical reasons, not because of the preference of the researcher. For instance, if we wanted to study ear development we wouldn't use C. elegans as they don't have ears. We may use mice or something like that. The anaology doens't work as Chomsky presumably chose English as English was the only language available to him. He is reported to speak French, though I'm not sure how well. This would be like a biologist chosing to study cats because he had a cat. This is not to say cats wouldn't be a useful thing to study, mind.
Thirdly, I don't think it's right to say "from these we infer laws of biology". That's a bit reductionist. The purpose of studying C. elegans is not to work out the underlying laws of biology. in fact, knowing the laws of biology are why C. elegans and other organisms may be studied. The fact they have DNA for instance, -we need to know this in order to make the link between C. elegans study and humans. We didn't learn about DNA by studying C. elegans. Though you're not wrong that we can make fundemental discoveries using model organisms. (For example, see http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0092867486900048)
So in answer to your final question "Why" I would argue two things. Firstly, you need to have the universals, or at least some important ones, before you choose your model organisms. You don't choose it because it's the only one you have. and secondly, scientists generally don't start their research with the conclusion already in hand. As far as I can tell Chomsky and others have reasoned their way to 'UG' and then use English to prove it. In biology, (to use your analogy) this would be like Kelvin suggesting the sun can only be 20 million years old because of his calcuations of how quickly hydrogen would be spent as a fuel. Empiricial testing by Rutherford actually revealed nuclear fusion and the problem was solved.
"As far as I can tell Chomsky and others have reasoned their way to 'UG' and then use English to prove it." False. Chomsky started with English because that was the only language he thought he knew well enough to do syntactic work on. Serious work on languages other than English under Chomsky's influence started in the early sixties (Paul Postal on Mohawk, Hu Matthews on Hidatsa, Haj Ross with a certain amount German, Richie Kayne on French, then they hired Ken Hale, who could learn more about a language in two hours in the back of a truck than most people would pick up in two weeks "Oh, your not quick like that Ken Hale guy!" some fieldworkers have heard ...) and has continued ever since. The term UG didn't appear until 1965 in Aspects, by which time this had already started, and the range of languages considered has been relentlessly increasing the entire time.
DeleteGoogle on Greenberg Universal 20 (no quotes), and you'll get a tiny sample of recent things (in which Guglielmo Cinque is the central contemporary figure), the publications of Mark Baker might another thing to browse. But there's much more.
@Malingual: Sorry for the delay. Yes, there are many reasons to study different organisms, many of these pragmatic. However, I don't get the impression that biologists hesitate to generalize from the basic mechanics of these to more general conclusions about how such systems work in general. So, it could have been true that how genes work in a fruitfly differs from how they work in a cat, or human. And ditto fro e-coli. But work on these were taken to sustain claims about how selection and mutation and development working and not just for fruitflies and e-coli. The similar presupposition does not hold for work on language, and I don't see why not. It's not like we don't have pretty good success from concluding that what works in a few languages works well overall. If anything IMO cross ling work has largely validated results arrived at from a small number of languages (English among them).
DeleteOne last point: "Chomsky and others have reasoned their way to 'UG' and then use English to prove it." Sorta. Chomsky reasoned his way to the conclusion that something like UG must exist. He did not reason his way to the particular kind of UG we have. Here he reasoned from a combination of factors, including PoS argumentation. And this is part of what I would like to emphasize. PoS works quite well based on the investigations of a single G. I would go further: PoS argumentation, if doable, is far more powerful than cross linguistic work in establishing FL/UG principles. Of course, one wants to get as much data as one can for any proposition, so cross G validation is always welcome. But the idea that this is the sine qua non of universal reasoning strikes me as just plain wrong.