<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:times new roman,new york,times,serif;font-size:14pt">Scientific methods attempt to extract rules (with predictive power) from observations; artistic methods attempt to apply rules (e.g. harmony, balance, abstract metaphor) that elicit a psychological response from people - typically admiration of beauty.<br><br>With this distinction in mind, I would certainly call Linguistics far more of a science than an art. Without stretching definitions too far, one might refer to a specific utterance (e.g. a speech) {or even an entire language} as artistic - but the goal of Linguistics is to extract rules, structures, relationships, etc.<br><br>(Does that make a generativist an artist? Not really - creating language structures from rigid rules fails the psychological response test.)<br><br>Bruce Anderson<br>Glendon College / York
University<br><div><br></div><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 14pt;"><br><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;"><font face="Tahoma" size="2"><hr size="1"><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">From:</span></b> Yuri Tambovtsev <yutamb@mail.ru><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> corpora@uib.no<br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Tue, March 23, 2010 4:02:01 AM<br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> [Corpora-List] Do you think LINGUISTICS is SCIENCE or ARTS?<br></font><br>
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<div><font face="Arial" size="2">Dear Corpora colleagues, Do you think
LINGUISTICS is SCIENCE or ARTS? I think the discussion about linguistics
using either the scientific or artistic methods, is quite interesting.
Really, is it ARTS (the Humanities) or Science. If we divide this man
activity into Sciences and Arts, then linguistics for the exception of phonetics
is Arts. Can linguistics reconstruct some parent language? We know that all
the Romance languages have the parent language, i.e. Latin. But can linguists
reconstruct Latin on the basis of Italian, Spanish, French and other Romance
languages? The answer is NO. If linguistics had been SCience, then it would have
been possible. But it is ARTS, thus it is impossible. Or am I mistaken? Looking
forward to hearing from you either directly <a rel="nofollow" ymailto="mailto:yutamb@mail.ru" target="_blank" href="mailto:yutamb@mail.ru">yutamb@mail.ru</a> or via the net. Be well, Yuri
Tambovtsev </font></div></font></div></div></div>
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