Time for a sea-change in linguistics: Response to comments on ‘The Myth of Language Universals’ (original) (raw)

Introduction: Linguistic universals and language change

Certain grammatical patterns are found again and again in the languages of the world. Some of these patterns recur so frequently that they are given the label “universal”. Explaining the source of such patterns is clearly an important goal of linguistics, but how to go about doing this is not obvious. Problems range from the terminological (what sort of patterns should we consider universal?) to the methodological (what kind of explanation will we accept as sufficient?) to the theoretical (what role does a universal grammar have in shaping recurrent patterns? what role do functional considerations play?). How one answers one of these questions will affect how one answers the others. Can probabilistic generalizations be considered universals? If so, then we need explanations predicting probabilistic patterns. Are we looking for proximate explanations (for example, “language A shows pattern X because it inherited it from its parent language”) or ultimate ones (for example, “language A shows pattern X because only this pattern is permitted by Universal Grammar”)? Will we assume there is no such thing as Universal Grammar? Then, of course, we cannot appeal to it for any sort of explanation. Will we assume there is such a thing? Then, what is its precise structure?

Editors' introduction: some concepts and issues in linguistic theory

On Nature and Language, 2002

Editors' introduction: some concepts and issues in linguistic theory 1 The study of language in a biological setting Dominant linguistics paradigms in the first half of the twentieth century had centered their attention on Saussurean "Langue," a social object of which individual speakers have only a partial mastery. Ever since the 1950s, generative grammar shifted the focus of linguistic research onto the systems of linguistic knowledge possessed by individual speakers, and onto the "Language Faculty," the species-specific capacity to master and use a natural language (Chomsky 1959). In this perspective, language is a natural object, a component of the human mind, physically represented in the brain and part of the biological endowment of the species. Within such guidelines, linguistics is part of individual psychology and of the cognitive sciences; its ultimate aim is to characterize a central component of human nature, defined in a biological setting. The idea of focusing on the Language Faculty was not new; it had its roots in the classical rationalist perspective of studying language as a "mirror of the mind," as a domain offering a privileged access to the study of human cognition. In order to stress such roots, Chomsky

Linguistics and philosophy (2016 pre-print)

Final version available in: K. Allan (ed.). Routledge Handbook of Linguistics, London: Routledge, pp. 516-531, 2016

Philosophy and the study of language are intimately connected, to the extent that it is impossible to say from which point in human intellectual history the study of meaning in natural language can be regarded as an independent enterprise. Natural language syntax, semantics and pragmatics are now considered to be sub-disciplines of theoretical linguistics, surrounded by the acolytes in the domains of language acquisition, language disorders, language processing (psycholinguistics and neuroscience of language), all using empirical, including experimental, methods in addition to rationalistic inquiry. However, philosophical problems associated with the structure of language as well as with meaning in language and in discourse still remain, and arguably will always remain, the backbone of syntax and semantics, and a trigger for progress in theorizing. It is impossible to summarise the impressively rich tradition of thinking about language in the history of philosophy. One would have to start with Presocratics in the 6 th and 7 th centuries BCE in Ancient Greece (see e.g. Curd 2012) and cover two and a half millennia of intensive questioning and argumentation over the relations between language, reality, truth, and the human mind. Or, one could try to delve into the history before the Greeks, then move through the landmarks of Plato, Aristotle, and the later Stoics into the current era (see e.g. . In this brief introduction we shall focus on much later debates, starting from the period when discussions about topics that are currently in the focus of debates originated, that is late 19 th century, marked by Frege's insights into an ideal language for describing knowledge and the origin of modern logic that is now used as a metalanguage for theorizing about meaning in natural human languages. From formal approaches within analytical philosophy I shall move to the 'language-as-use' paradigm of the ordinarylanguage philosophy, followed by the more recent debates on meaning as it is to be understood for the purpose of formal representation and linguistic theory. In the process, I shall address some of the core areas that philosophers of language have been drawn to such as reference and referring or propositional attitude reports. Next, I move to the topic of the role of intentions and inferences, and finish with a brief attempt to place 'linguistics and philosophy' on the map of language sciences and research on language in the 21 st century.

What diachronic typology can tell us about language universals and variation

Paper presented at the workshop "Variation and universals in language - The implications of typological evidence for formal grammar", Crecchio (PE), Italy, 9-11 June 2017, https://www.robertadalessandro.it/crecchio-workshop

Functional approaches account for language universals and patterns of cross-linguistic variation by deriving them from more general aspects of language use. The most important factors that are responsible for universals and variation include: