the pseudo-issue of Plato's problem

John Moore moorej at UCSD.EDU
Tue Dec 21 16:57:14 UTC 1999


At 09:06 AM 12/21/99 +0000, Martin Haspelmath wrote:

>In my view, what often divides the two camps is that Chomskyans are
>primarily interested in solving Plato's Problem ('How can we acquire
>language?'), whereas functionalists are primarily interested in
>explaining language structure.

Unfortunately, this may be true.  However, if one looks at what formal
linguists actually do, there is very little solving of Plato's problem, and
a lot of explaining (or  at, least accounting for) language structures
(gratuitous references to "The Child" notwithstanding).  Occasionally one
finds an epistemological introduction in formal papers, but I just skip it
and get directly to the linguistics, which is often very good.

While perhaps not be typical of formal linguists' beliefs, at least some
take a very agnostic stand on what the deep psychological explanation for
language structures may be.  This was overtly stated in GPSG work (I think
Geoff Pullum has a Topic Comment essay on this issue).  Joan can speak to
the strong competence hypothesis in LFG, but I don't see the same kind of
arm-chair psychology in LFG work that one sometimes encounters in some GB
and P&P work; one never found it in RG work, as far as I know.  Finally, I
suspect that it is less common even in GB/P&P work than some of Chomsky's
writings might lead us to believe.

Again, Plato's problem was never mentioned by any of the formalists at the
explanation conference.

If we strip away these issues, which I think are rather peripheral to the
enterprise, we may find that the differences between formal and functional
linguistics are fewer than we thought - perhaps some methodological ones,
but even those currently divide functional and cognitive linguistics (and
they seem to get along).

John Moore



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