What is this dispute anyway?

[David Pesetsky]

I think one can improve on Myhill's diagnosis.

There is widespread agreement in principle on the range of possible
explanations a linguistic phenomenon might receive.  Everyone agrees that
facts about language might be due to a specific property of language, to
properties that language shares with other functions, to historical
factors, and to interactions among any of the above.

The central disagreement seems to concern the default explanations we
accord to specific linguistic phenomena that are not well understood (i.e.
most of them).  Suppose we find a fact of language which we can
characterize fairly well (but not completely) in language-internal terms.
Do we assume that the fact as a whole is language-specific until proven
guilty of non-specificity?  Or should it be the other way around?

Our personal answers to these questions do indeed reflect our hunches and
wishes.  But we also recognize, presumably, that our goal is to move beyond
hunches and wishes to discover the truth of the matter.

Being human beings, however, we are easily distracted. We shift all too
easily from research-generating propositions like:

        1. "I think the explanation lies (partly, entirely) in area X."

        2. "As an expert in area X, I can best contribute to research by
         investigating possible explanations in area X."

to research-stifling propositions like "I think the explanation lies in
area X because..."

        3. "...everything really interesting is in area X."

        4. "...area X contains more stuff than any other area, and therefore
        is better."

        5. "...area X is the essence of language."

        6. "...no one would ever work outside area X unless they
        had a major character flaw."

        7. "... [New Yorker (latest issue, 1/13/97),
        cartoon on p.52]."

But anyone with a will can separate these distractions from our real business.

I agree that there is no general, falsifiable "autonomy thesis" that
separates us.  But, at the same time, we're not just floating in a sea of
nonsense either.  Our hunches and prejudices (though they are not in
themselves testable hypotheses) can and do suggest competing explanations
for actual facts. Discussions of these alternatives can and do change minds
(mine, for instance). Myhill writes:

> Shouldn't we be a little bit concerned that people with
> different leanings interpret the same data in opposite ways according to
> what they regard as their view of language.[...]

I say "No".  I think this situation is quite fine.  The problems arise
*after* we've offered our varying interpretations of the data. Do we defend
our interpretation with specious propositions like 3-7?  Or do we try to
discover the truth?  Since every now and then the second path is taken, I
have more hope for the field than Myhill does.

        -David Pesetsky

P.S. I'll try not to bother this list any more.


*************************************************************************
Prof. David Pesetsky, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy
20D-219 MIT,  Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
(617) 253-0957 office           (617) 253-5017 fax
http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/www/pesetsky.html