methodologies {was Re: form versus meaning}

[Jon Aske]

This is related to the methodology strand of this schizophrenic
conversation.

I think that ALL of us need to learn to look at and analyze language in
a different number ways and using different methodologies, not just each
one doing their own separate thing.

For many years I was an typical syntactician.  I looked at sentences in
isolation and got real good at parsing and devising fancy trees.  Then I
started to look at a phenomenon, word order in Basque, which just didn't
make sense in those terms.  So I started making recordings and spending
months and months transcribing just a few hours of tape, paying
attention at how people actually speak, intonation, intonation units,
pragmatic factors, etc, etc.  I can sincerely tell you that that opened
my mind.  Now I look at language very differently.

My conclusion: everybody should learn to look at language in as many
ways as possible.  Introspecting about it, devising experiments, etc.
But I think that the first and primary way should be to look at language
as it is actually used.  It is different.  Believe me.  And something
else, you would probably have to go through dozens of hours of
transcripts to come up with one example of some of the phenomena that
fill many theoretical journals these days.  The core stuff, you know.

Anyway, I tried to keep it short.  I sense that some people are starting
to get tired.

Jon

--
Jon Aske
jaske at abacus.bates.edu
http://www.bates.edu/~jaske/
--
Lagun onak, ondu; gaiztoak, gaiztotu
"A good friend makes one a better person, a bad one a worse one."