What is this dispute anyway?

[John Myhill]

Oh well, I guess I better say something else.

To Talmy G.:

I am not advocating security through ignorance. For more than 10 years I
wrote functionally oriented articles with very large databases, detailed
text counts, statistical significance tests for all my claims, multivariate
statistical analysis, etc. I tried my best to
bring normal scientific methodology to functional linguistics. I finally
gave up on the statistics (to functionalist audiences) because I realized
that not only did no one evidently care, but when I even brought up data of
this sort, my audiences would get glassy-eyed and lose interest in the
whole paper. I consider this is a more serious effort to incorporate
scientific methods into functional linguistics than reading popular
interpretations of research in the hard sciences and imagining how they
might apply to linguistics. I've been reading your articles for more than
15 years now, Talmy, I've seen a lot of numbers, but I have yet to see you
do even a single simple statistical significance test, even a chi-square,
let alone a regression analysis; your arguments about knowledge and
ignorance of science would be more convincing if you yourself actively
showed a little scientific knowledge here.

Incidentally, it's 'yosif da`at yosif max'ov', not 'mosif da`at mosif max'ov'.

To David P.: You write:

        Discussions of these alternatives can and do change minds
        (mine, for instance).

You've changed your mind about the autonomy thesis? You used to not believe
(didn't used to believe?) in autonomous syntax? After you got out of
graduate school? Did you put this in print anywhere?
And you got a job at MIT? Am I understanding you correctly? Please clarify.
(I'm not being facetious, I really am interested in
this)
In reply to my question: 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? You write:

        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?

I agree with you in principle, but unfortunately that is not the tone the
discussion (such as it is) has taken. To take the most blatant example,
Chomsky's favorite 'defense' of whatever approach he feels like pursuing at
the moment has always been that it is 'interesting,' (your specious
proposition #3), e.g. 'Knowledge of language' pg. 5:

        'During the past 5-6 years, these efforts have converged in a
somewhat unexpected way, yielding a rather different    conception of the
nature of language and its mental     representation, one that offers
interesting answers to a range  of empirical questions and opens a variety
of new ones to       inquiry while suggesting a rethinking of the character
of       others. This is what accounts for an unmistakeable sense of
energy and anticipation...'

Similarly pg. 4:

        `This (research program)  should not be particularly
controversial, since it merely expresses an interest in certain
problems...'

Such examples could be multiplied many times over (anyone have Chomsky's
writings in a text base? search for 'interest'). Having justified choosing
a particular approach because it is 'interesting' and gives 'an
unmistakeable sense of energy and anticipation,' while other approaches
evidently do not, NC can now devote the rest of his book to working out the
fine points of this approach. This is particularly significant, and
worrying, because the great majority of Chomsky's followers appear to be
similarly basing their choice of approach on what Chomsky finds
'interesting' as well, to judge by the general lack of serious effort to
give more convincing arguments for this approach. I assume that you (David)
yourself are thinking something similar about functionalists, so this
appears to be a general property of the field (though I applaud Matthew
Dryer's sincere efforts to try to get things straightened out). This is
what I am concerned about.      John Myhill