Conflicting vs. convergent vs. interdependent motivations in morphology (original) (raw)
2014, Competing Motivations in Grammar and Usage
Competing motivations" may have different meanings. I intend to discuss three of them: 1) Competition may mean conflicting motivations either within the same theoretical approach or between different theoretical approaches. This is prototypical rivalry between motivations that exclude each other, if properly formulated. This is the classical case of the scientific ideal of monocausality, which is much easier to establish in "hard" sciences than in "soft" human sciences to which linguistics belongs in spite of all efforts to the contrary. Here the main epistemological problem is the weight of decisive criteria, whereas the main problem from the perspective of the sociology of science is ideological aversion against other theoretical approaches. 2) Convergent motivations are best conceived of as mutually independent motivations that combine or conspire in determining or promoting a certain result. Here the main problems lie in establishing multicausality, the mutual independence of motivations and in weighting the relative importance of each motivation. 3) Interdependent motivations are the most problematic ones to identify and classify. The ideal is to subordinate one motivation under another one, e.g. when subordinating a linguistic principle under a semiotic one. Here we must avoid the danger of undue reductionism, and clear criteria must be established, for example for differentiating reduction of phonology to phonetics from establishing a phonetic basis for a phonological generalisation. Whenever symmetric, reciprocal implications are found, one should try to subordinate such implications under a higher level motivation. But when asymmetric implications are found, then there may be either a superordinate motivating principle or the implied may be simply more basic. 4) An orthogonal dichotomy is the difference between sufficient and partial motivations where the boundaries are often difficult to draw. Are all non-reductionist motivations partial or are partial motivations rather a symptom of insufficiency of explanation? I intend to discuss these and related problems with examples A) from morphological grammar theory with their synchronic and diachronic impacts and B) from psycholinguistic research in morphology (first language acquisition and online or offline processing, where I will draw on joint work with my coauthors). Since too many examples are worth of discussing, I am not yet decided which ones to finally choose, but indicate some of the most promising ones.
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