Another take on Funknet Principles

[Spike Gildea]

I am writing this posting with two hats on: one is as the co-owner of the
list, to express my dismay at the personal attacks that have come out in
recent postings and to ask that this stop -- the other co-owner, Michael
Barlow, has indicated that he agrees.  The other is as a member of the
FUNKNET community interested in detaching some substantive issues from the
personal vitriol.

(1) On personal attacks and "rudeness" (and its correlate, "formalist
bashing").

First, on tone.  Attacks on unreliable data and poorly-considered analyses
can be made without taking a personally demeaning tone (e.g. "If you really
want to participate in an informed discussion of this, David, I suggest you
learn enough...").  This sort of tone changes the focus of discussion from
substantive issues (like the importance of being empirically responsible)
to the personal (Was that "rude"?  Should David respond in kind?).  An
alternative might be something like: "The data from the literature David
cites is full of errors, as any fluent speaker of Japanese will attest.
Unfortunately, this bogus data seems to have some respectability in
formalist circles, so that David is perpetuating the error by repeating it.
See <references> for the real story."  It really isn't hard to be polite
while telling someone their source is full of shit.

On "formalist-bashing" and ad hominem attacks.  I don't want to interact
with people who dismiss functionalism as "irrelevant" or "uninteresting"
(i.e. generic "functionalist bashers), nor am I interested in generic
"formalist-bashing".  The contributions to this list by formalists have by
and large been limited to offering different takes on issues we are
discussing, along with calling us on it when we have particularly egregious
examples of content-free "formalist bashing".  In the case of David's
recent posting on jibun, given what he knew from the literature, he was
making a reasonable contribution -- that we should look at the body of work
by Safir, as we might learn something interesting from it.  Dan Everett
also gave a reference that those who are interested might follow up on.
This is how people engage in a constructive conversation.  If you don't
like the references they offer, you are free to enter that conversation and
explain why.

John's response was not constructive: "I DON'T want people on funknet
referring to studies by, e.g. Ken Safir (as David did) as a source of
cross-linguistic data. I know about Ken (we overlapped at Penn); I know his
data can (and should) be thrown in the garbage can before people waste even
more of their time making up theories based upon them. I don't know how
many of the other several hundred people on funknet realize this."

This kind of unsupported blanket condemnation is a form of verbal terrorism
-- John does not like Safir's work and insists that nobody mention it on
FUNKNET unless they are prepared to face personal attacks themselves.  He
explicitly tries to force David to stop posting on FUNKNET because he finds
his sources of data offensive.  Attacks on the empirical reliability of our
colleagues' work should also maintain high empirical standards, and right
now we have nothing but John's assertion that, because he and Ken were once
at the same institution, he knows that the entire body of Ken's work is not
worthy of consideration by "serious" linguists.  That's called an ad
hominem attack and it has no place in any discussion of substance,
especially not one where some 800 other people might be influenced by it.
I'm all for empirical reliability, but I demand it from my theoretical
friends as well as from my theoretical foes.

I request that future public condemnations of *work* by other linguists --
both formalist and functionalist -- include some thoughtful discussion of
the basis for the attacks, and that they take a respectful tone towards the
*people* involved, at least if you want to post them to FUNKNET.

(2) On empirically reliable data.  I think this is a critically important
issue that many linguists somehow take for granted.  No, all that is
published, especially about "exotic" languages, is not true.  And I believe
the collection and repetition of unreliable data are not limited to
formalists.  How about a discussion of methods by which data collection can
be made more reliable, whether by learning to speak the language in
question, by relying primarily on naturally-occurring discourse for
examples (especially, where possible, from large, searchable corpora), or
by at the very least reading the entire grammar of the language before
extracting some small piece to present in a more theoretically or
typologically-oriented setting (cf. Mithun's 1999 magnificent treatment of
the languages of North America).

I have never believed in the equation FUNCTIONALIST = RELIABLE DATA, so I
don't identify with John's impassioned plea to *keep* FUNKNET as a place
where data are always reliable.  ALL data in ALL linguistic discussions
need to be subject to the same scrutiny for reliability -- FUNKNET
contributions never have been and never will be exempted from the need for
that scrutiny.

(3) On the "purity" of discussion on the list.

TG's original mission statement was designed to attract like-minded people
to a list where we could discuss the issues we care about.  That mission
statement attracted a community, and ever since that community has been
evolving.  John's and Jon's most recent postings are an attempt to pull the
community in a certain direction, which they identify as more compatible
with the vision that launched the original community.  As members of the
community that is their right.

On the other hand, I am actually quite contented with all the diverse
directions the list has taken over the years, as I am happy to see the
entire enterprise of functionalist linugistics evolving.  In my own
evolution, as I do more historical work I see more and more the importance
of persevering patterns, and not just in morphology but in syntax.  The
existence of "autonomous" patterns, which change function but persevere in
form, should be no more controversial than the existence of autonomous
patterns in phonology, (e.g. words), which change meaning but persevere
(more or less) in form.  I am able to reconcile this reality with my
orientation as a functionalist because I have always been able to find
functional/semantic roots for the creation of innovative grammatical
patterns, and functional motivations for their subsequent functional
evolution.  So frankly, I think people who believe in "grammar" have as
much place on this list as people who do not, and I want to be able to hear
from people who mix their functional explanation with formal issues.  I
often disagree with the formal "explanations", but the data that
formalistshave brought to discussions of South American languages (to
choose a domain I am more familiar with) is both interesting and
challenging.

One of the issues that many of us care increasingly about is the
interaction between formal and functional views on language.  Frankly, I am
not interested in "converting" anyone,  and I'm not sure that I would be
interested in interacting with anyone who might be converted merely by the
discussions I have seen thus far on this list.  I am interested in
substantive criticisms of formal models (and I believe there are many to be
made, including over-reliance on unreliable elicited judgements of
grammaticality), but more, I am interested in seeing how we, as
functionalists, address the challenge of explaining form when it does *not*
appear (at least synchronically) to be driven by function. If most people
on this list are uninterested in discussion on issues like these, then I
suppose they will lead the discussion in other directions, and that's OK
too.  We continue to define our community every time we take up a new topic
that interests enough people to generate discussion.

Spike