Language: A Typological, Functional, Cognitive, Biological and Evolutionary Approach (original) (raw)

On the form-function dichotomy in linguistic theory

Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis 127, 2010

This paper focuses on an important divide in theoretical linguistics between two broad perspectives on the structural properties of human languages, generative and functionalist. In the former, linguistic structure is explained in terms of discrete categories and highly abstract principles, which may be language-independent or language-specific and purely formal or functional in nature. In the latter, explanation for why languages have the structure that they do is found ‘outside’ language, in the general principles of human cognition and the communicative functions of language. The aim of this paper is to highlight the need for abstractness, explicitness, simplicity and theoretical economy in linguistic description and explanation. The question is not whether principles of grammar are formal or functional. The question is whether the principles that are postulated to explain linguistic structure express true generalizations.

Functionalism and Construction Grammar Approach

2016

■ ABSTRACT: This paper presents, discusses and exemplifies the direction of the functionalist research in its most recent orientation, in its dialogue with cognitive studies. As a result of this interrelation, we highlight the constructional approach to grammar, emphasizing the function x form pairing, which marks the linguistic expressions. Besides pointing out the theoretical and methodological gains that such dialogue has brought to Functionalism, this article also refers to the specificities of both theoretical approaches and to necessary adjustments to enable researches in this interface. The treatment of grammar in a holistic perspective and the strictness in detecting properties of meaning and structures, which mark linguistic usages, are considered positive and promising biases of functionalist research in a constructional approach.

The Philosophy of Generative Linguistics: Best theory criteria

Current Approaches to Syntax: A Comparative Handbook, 2019

Given the broad range of frameworks for syntactic theorizing within generative linguistics (as attested to by the contributions to this volume) the question sometimes arises as to whether philosophical, or best theory, criteria could help us choose between those frameworks. For example, some frameworks are claimed to be more conceptually simple, others are claimed to be more formally rigorous, and some are claimed to be better grounded empirically or conceptually. As we will see, such cross-theoretical considerations need to be handled with care. Consider the question of whether some theories handle more data or better data or are more “driven by data” and are thus more empirically sound. This quickly leads us to the question of what data is important and what relation it bears to theory choice. I’ll argue that there is no atheoretical notion of best or most important data — whether data is interesting or important depends upon the theoretical questions that we are investigating and what the ultimate goal of our work is. If, for example, the goal is a reduction to basic science rather than taxonomy or natural language processing, what counts as valuable data will be quite different. Furthermore, I’ll argue that data only really exists in the context of some theoretical framework, and thus claims of data-driven theorizing and atheoretical or framework-free data gathering needs to be viewed with some skepticism. In addition, I’ll consider the claims made about simplicity and formal rigor, and then offer something of a positive proposal for cross-theoretical evaluation — in effect, I’ll argue that the best theory is the one that enables the theorist to tackle problems of interest with the most efficiency, and I’ll argue further that the choice of best theory is a decision that is best left up to the individual theorist. We will see that cross-theoretical superiority claims involving simplicity and formal rigor are vacuous unless understood as claims about ease of use, or alternatively as tools to facilitate reduction to a more basic science or scientific unification generally.

Dissociations between argument structure and grammatical relations

1999

In Pollard and Sag (1987) and Pollard and Sag (1994: Ch. 1 {8), the subcategorized arguments of a head are stored on a single ordered list, the subcat list. However, Borsley (1989) argues that there are various deciencies in this approach, and suggests that the uni ed list should be split into separate lists for subjects, complements, and speci ers. This proposal has been widely adopted in what is colloquially known as HPSG3 (Pollard and Sag (1994: Ch. 9) and other recent work in HPSG).

When linearity prevails over hierarchy in syntax

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2017

Hierarchical structure has been cherished as a grammatical universal. We use experimental methods to show where linear order is also a relevant syntactic relation. An identical methodology and design were used across six research sites on South Slavic languages. Experimental results show that in certain configurations, grammatical production can in fact favor linear order over hierarchical structure. However, these findings are limited to coordinate structures and distinct from the kind of production errors found with comparable configurations such as "attraction" errors. The results demonstrate that agreement morphology may be computed in a series of steps, one of which is partly independent from syntactic hierarchy.