Book announcement--Newmeyer (fwd)

[Frederick Newmeyer]

Dear Funknetters,

I feel more than a little uncomfortable defending my book in a bulletin
board posting, but I really feel that I have to respond to Dan Parvaz's
posting. My book 'trashes functionalism' only in the sense that it argues
against particular analyses put forward by particular functionalists. In
fact, the bulk of the generalizations about the effect of function upon
form uncovered in decades of functionalist research are not only taken to
be correct, but given an attempted explanation. These include the iconic
motivation of grammatical structure, prototype effects, and the set of
historical changes classified as 'grammaticalization'.

In a nutshell, LANGUAGE FORM AND LANGUAGE FUNCTION argues that generative
grammarians have been unable to deal with these phenomena in the past
because 'modularity' was given only lip service. I argue that if we narrow
the domain of explanation of formal grammar proper and study its
interaction with semantic and pragmatic principles, many of the phenomena
that functionalists have taken as 'refuting' the generativist approach
have a natural explanation. I even present a functional explanation for
why an autonomous grammar should exist at all!

You are free to agree or disagree with my proposals (and I know that many
readers of this list will disagree), but it really seems unfair to say
that the book 'trashes functionalism'

Fritz Newmeyer

On Mon, 1 Mar 1999, Dan Parvaz wrote:

> 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.
>