Grammar with a G

[david_tuggy at SIL.ORG]

     Rob Freeman wrote:

     ****
I was hoping some more debate might come up on the (abstract) merits of analogy,
.. But as none seems forthcoming just a final comment on 'reductionism'. I
don't see basing examples on syntactic abstractions (the usual idea of
G-grammar) as inherently less reductionistic than basing syntactic abstractions
on examples (which is analogy). Even where 'reductionism' might be thought of as
bad, which is by no means always, grounding in examples i s
simply not more reductionist, if anything it is less.
    ****

As usual, Langacker's position makes a lot of sense to me (e.g. Foundations of
Cognitive grammar vol. I (1987), 445 ff.) Analogy, if examined, turns out to
necessarily involve perception of a similarity, and that similarity, to the
extent that it is established in the language through usage, is a rule (a
schema, in Langacker's terminology) that can be used by speakers to produce new
forms. You have BOTH examples produced by rule, and the rule based on examples.
When the schema (rule) is not yet established, using analogy necessarily
involves activating the schema, precisely the kind of usage that will establish
it. It is not a reductionist account, in that both mechanisms are expected and
allowed for, and it shows rule-based and analogy-based accounts to differ only
in degree, not in kind. "The distinction comes down to whether the schema has
previously been extracted, and whether this has occurred sufficiently often to
make it a unit [=established cognitive structure]."

--David Tuggy