OT, Functionalism, and the Myth of G

[H Stephen Straight]

The problem with Chomskyan (and post-Chomskyan, and the preponderance of
pre-Chomskyan) theorizing derives not from over-formalizing,
under-empiricizing, or most of the other errors identified in the current
FUNKNET discussion.  What it all boils down to is belief in the Myth of G.

Brian Macwhinney points us in the right direction by urging us to reject the
idea that each linguistic event derives from a single underlying form.
Underlying forms derive in turn from a Grammar, in which each such form
serves as the key to an actual or potential linguistic event, whether as a
product of language production or an object of language perception.  Let me
attempt to debunk this pernicious Myth of G by critiquing Fritz Newmeyer's
helpful contribution to this awesome FUNKNET thread.

Fritz reasonably (and pro-functionally) asks us to

 "posit two functionally-motivated OT constraints for English [:]

 ICONICITY: Syntactic constituents reflect semantic units.
 HEAVY-LAST: Heavy constituents follow light constituents.

 ICONICITY can be illustrated by the fact that, in every formal account,
 adjectives are generated under the same phrasal node as the noun that they
 modify. HEAVY-LAST can be illustrated by the fact that within the verb
 phrase, sentential complements are positioned after phrasal complements."

Fritz then poses the (false, OT-motivated) question, "Now, then, which
constraint is ranked higher for English, ICONICITY or HEAVY-LAST?"  Because
Fritz, like OT, has only G to turn to, he concludes that "In some cases, we
have identical grammatical elements in variant orders with no meaning
difference, each option corresponding to a different ranking of the two
constraints."  But Fritz's supposedly conclusive examples mix receptive and
expressive parameters:

> For example, both of the following are grammatical English
> sentences:
>
> (1) a. A man who was wearing a silly-looking red hat dropped by
> today.
>     b. A man dropped by today who was wearing a silly-looking red hat.
>
> Sentence (1a) reflects a ranking of ICONICITY over HEAVY-LAST; sentence
> (1b) the reverse ranking. In some cases, however, only a higher ranking of
> ICONICITY is possible. Simple adjective phrases cannot be extraposed from
> the nouns that they modify, no matter how heavy they are:
>
> (2) a. An extremely peculiar-looking man dropped by today.
>     b. *A man dropped by today extremely peculiar-looking.

Omitted from Fritz's purview is the fact that 2b works just fine with a
healthy, listener-warning pause:

        c. A man dropped by today ... extremely peculiar-looking.

Also omitted is the fact that the explicit relativizer present in examples
(1) is in fact optional:

(1) c. A man wearing a ...
    d. A man dropped by today wearing ...

So what can we make of these facts?  Nothing about Grammar, if it is assumed
to be neutral with regard to the demands of speakers and listeners.  Fritz
appeals to G-specific arbitrarinesses specifiable only in non-functional
(i.e., formal) terms, though given the counter-examples I don't think this
tactic will save him.  However, if we instead see these competing demands as
resulting in a gradient of preferences weighted differently for the domain
of the receiver versus the domain of the producer, and perhaps even
competing within each of these domains, we (rightly) conclude that one and
the same "sentence" (a term already unfairly biased toward the G side of
this issue) can be OK or problematic for the one but bad or differently
problematic for the other.

Take for example Fritz's frightful "*That's a more boring than I have ever
read book."  If we consider that this example violates the pragmatic
(functional?) OLD-BEFORE-NEW principle because "book" is clearly topic
rather than comment, and that it also ignores counterexamples such as "Thank
you for the much needed by a teenager present" (attested in my own
experience), we can conclude that Fritz has allowed his asterisks to lull
him into complacency about the unidimensionality of grammatical judgments.

Fritz rightly criticizes "functionalist OT models" for trying to use
functionalist principles to predict grammaticality judgments, but what's
wrong is not the principles but rather the judgments:  They are a mixed and
inconclusive source of evidence because language users employ a wide variety
of different criteria to arrive at such (often demonstrably ephemeral)
judgments.

Fritz's conclusion that "grammars reflect external forces, but without each
language-internal grammatical statement being tied to a particular
functional motivation" sums up the Myth of G in a manner both ironic and
poignant:  "Language-internal" statements amount to no more than the
unidimensional "prescriptive" judgments of popular grammarians of the likes
of Kilpatrick, Newman, and Simon, judgments long since debunked by linguists
from Sledd to Bolinger to Pinker.

Why can't linguists admit once and for all the uncertainty and
contradictoriness of their data on "grammaticality"?  When will linguists
stop living in armchairs and consider seriously the evidence provided by
corpora, elicitation, and experiment?  We say things no one can (easily)
parse, and we (readily) parse things no one (hardly ever) says.  Shouldn't
these facts (along with a myriad of others) tell us something really basic
about the (non-G) nature of construing and saying?

Best.           'Bye.           Steve
________________________________________________________________
 H Stephen Straight - straight at binghamton.edu