Book announcement--Newmeyer (fwd); functionalism and formalism

[Suzie & Peter Bartsch]

Dan Parvaz schrieb:
> Given the little that I've seen of Newmeyer's book, the announcement's
> assessment can at best be termed "creative".  Since I have not seen the
> entire book, can someone please tell me which aspects of functionalism
> does he not summarily trash?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Dan.


        And I had thought after reading the announcement to write encouraging
Newmeyer to tell us more about his book because:

        a) I'm always interested in syncretistic approaches:  in
quotidian life and in sciences in general, and in linguistics in particular;

        b) as for the specific case formalism (e.g. generativism) and
functionalism, I'd like to know how - and if - contrary basic premisses are made
compatible with each other, as for example the generative premiss of autonomy of
syntax and Givon's functional premiss of iconicity of syntax;

        c) two months ago there was here an interesting discussion on
functionalism vs generativism that however i.m.h.o. was not totally
satisfactory, because a central difference between these two approaches was not
clearly enough pronounced: the fact that generative "explanations" in form of
principles and parameters are actually not explanations, but at best possible
descriptions of structures, while functional approaches, basing on iconicity of
syntactic structures, can be seen as adaquate and plausible explanations.

        d) and I had hoped that Newmeyer perhaps would have found a way to
reconcile generative formal descriptions with functional explanations.

        Best regards

        Suzie

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Suzie Bartsch
Student of German and French Linguistics
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
supeba at t-online.de