A couple final remarks

Frederick Newmeyer fjn at U.WASHINGTON.EDU
Mon Jan 13 03:33:10 UTC 1997


Just a couple final comments, before I return to lurking on the list.

First, Mark Durie writes and asks:

>So the autonomy hypothesis in Fritz's sense (divorced from any
>consideration of innateness) is structuralism.  Or have I completely
>misunderstood?

I obviously have not made myself clear enough. Saussure's position
('structuralism') is that the set of form-meaning pairings (the set of
signs) is autonomous. I do accept that, but also something more, namely,
the autonomy of syntax. In that hypothesis, the set of form-form
interrelationships *also* forms a discrete system, independently of the
meanings of those forms or the uses to which they are put. Many accept the
former, but not the latter.

And Matthew Dryer remarks:

> Fritz' response to my comments reflects a substantive difference
> that is fundamental to differences between functionalist and
> "formalist" approaches.  Fritz says
>
> >>The sensitivity of speakers to the abstract (formal, structural)
> >>notion 'Phrase structure branching-direction', a notion that
> >>doesn't (as Dryer shows) correlate perfectly with semantic
> >>notions such as 'head-dependent' supports the idea that speakers
> >>mentally represent abstract phrase-structure relations
> >>INDEPENDENTLY of their semantic and functional
> >>'implementations'.
>
> If by this Fritz means that speakers represent the fact that
> different structures in their language involve the same branching
> direction, then this doesn't follow at all.  My hypothesis is that
> languages with both left and right branching result in structures
> with mixed branching that in language USE are slightly more
> difficult to process, and that over the millenia, this has
> influenced language change so that one finds crosslinguistic
> patterns reflecting a tendency toward more consistent direction of
> branching.  But this does not entail that the fact that different
> structures in the language employ the same direction of branching is
> itself represented by speakers.  Rather, it simply means that
> speaking a language in which structures branch in the same direction
> will result in slightly fewer instances of individuals' failing to
> extract the intended meaning of an utterance.

No, in fact I don't assume that speakers mentally represent the fact that
different structures in their language involve the same branching
direction (though I don't reject a priori the possibility that they might
do so). It's the mere fact of representing branching phrase structure at
all INDEPENDENTLY OF THE MEANINGS / FUNCTIONS encoded / carried out by
that structure that supports the autonomy of syntax.

That's all from me.

Best wishes to all,

--fritz



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