autonomy of syntax

H Stephen Straight sstraigh at BINGHAMTON.EDU
Tue Dec 21 04:03:43 UTC 1999


Noel Rude ruminates:

> To me, as in all the mind sciences, "emergence" and "supervenience"
> seem like covers for ignorance, merely reductionist "promisory notes":
> When we know enough about neurons and whatnot, then language will be
> accounted for bottom-up.  But until we do, how can we be so sure that
> there is no top-down phenomena like grammar?

Granted, we can't be sure that there is no overarching set of linguistic
"rules" (Grammar), but we can be sure that the positing of such a
"supervenient" entity violates the rule of parsimony.  To pursue the study
of language scientifically we must avoid positing any theoretical entities
beyond those necessary for the pursuit of our inquiry.  In this case, we
know we need separate accountings of how people interpret the linguistic
events they perceive and of how they create linguistic events.  The Myth of
G would have us accept the existence of a Grammar as a "source" of such
events independent of the processes of reception and expression, and would
have us ignore the evidence for discrepancies, separateness, dissociability,
cognitive multiplexity, and other (often highly "creative") interactivity of
receptive, expressive, and other language processes.  Arguments for the
existence of G have considerable intuitive appeal, but so do arguments for
numerous other common-sensical and supernatural entities that rightly play
no role in scientific accounts of reality.

H Stephen Straight



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