form versus meaning

[Elizabeth Bates]

Okay, instead of "territorial imperialism", how about
"disciplinary hegemony"?  In his discussion of the "derivative"
status of some fields and the "core" status of linguistics,
Dan suggests that the very name of fields with titles like "The
sociology of X" imply that the core field is the one called "X".
There may be sociological/historical reasons why such terms evolve,
but I don't think the argument works (or should work) for the many
fields that study language.  Linguists study language.  So do
psycholinguists, neurolinguists, sociolinguists, etc.  In this case,
"X" is Language.  Field linguists and theoretical linguists who use
naturally occurring text or grammaticality judgments are studying
language, by one set of methods.  Psycholinguists are using yet
another set of methods to study language.  And so on.  No one, in
my view, is any closer to "the thing itself".  what we are talking
about here are simply different perspectives on the same problem.
Of course there ARE branches of psycholinguistics, aphasiology, etc.,
in which investigators start with the products of theoretical
linguistics and then set out to use them against a particular
kind of data.  That's one approach (e.g. the search for the
"psychological reality of transformations" in the 1960's).
It's not the only approach.  It is certainly not the DEFINITION
of psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, etc.  By insisting that
linguistics has priority over other fields that study language,
Dan is doing all of us (including the linguists) a disservice.
What he really means is that certain METHODS have priority -- because
that is all that really, at base, separates linguistics from psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, etc. -liz bates