emergence and exaptation

[Brian MacWhinney]

I am happy to second everything in Liz's message, except one minor
point.  Until last night, I would have agreed completely with her
observation that "most of the generative folks cannot envision what it
would mean for emergence to work as a developmental principle."  Then I
read a remarkable book on minimalism by Uriagereka titled "Rhyme and
Reason".  It is difficult to find a single adjective to describe this
book.  First, there is the adjective "heavy".  It is almost as heavy as
Gazzaniga's monster "The Cognitive Neurosciences".  Second, there is
the adjective "oblique".  The whole book is written as a Platonic
dialog between "L" (the linguist) and "O" (the other).   It starts out
with the same basic principles of emergentism that Liz and I share,
discussing D'Arcy Thompson and packing constraints in nature.  But then
it starts to go in another direction, focusing on exaptation, rather
than adaptation, claiming that there is a fundamental relation between
minimalism and some crucial properties of nature as revealed through
Fibonacci numbers.  After all, the Fibonacci series can be generated by

0 -> 1
1 -> 0 1

applied recursively with  some additional parallel read-off
constraints.
Somehow, Uriagereka believes that this shows that minimalism is
emergent too.  Not ontogenetically emergent, perhaps, but at least
phylogenetically emergent, but only in the sense that spandrels (the
areas under cupolas) are emergent.

That is the first 180 pages of "Rhyme and Reason".  About page 200,
there is an admission that Optimality Theory might be a plausible
alternative approach to phonology, although not to syntax.  I found
even that level of ecumenicality refreshing.

After that, things take a more conservative turn with repetition of
standard arguments about poverty of stimulus and ideas about how UG
would reveal itself in tests with infants.  Later, Uriagereka spends a
page on cognitive grammar and dismisses it with sighs about "not coming
down to earth".  Somewhere around page 350, I started to tire of the
dialog form of presentation and decided to skip to the chapter
summaries and formal summary at the back of the book.

Why am I discussing this book on FunkNet?   The reason is that it
demonstrates the "emergence" of a bit of common ground between
functionalist and formalist approaches.  If both approaches recognize
the role of emergence, then maybe the disagreement is about adaptation
vs. exaptation.  However, I think we will want to be careful here too,
since functionalists like Givon have been arguing for the importance of
non-adaptive features in grammar.

--Brian MacWhinney