funknet principles

[John Myhill]

The problem is not so simple as criticizing how one person happened
to analyze something in a particular paper. In the case of jibun, as
I have already written in several postings here, you just plain can't
understand how it's used with a formalist/structuralist account. It's
related to viewpoint, empathy, textual factors. You can't understand
it from isolated sentences. It has nothing to do with structure at all.
The most brilliant linguist in the world couldn't give an empirically
adequate structural account of its use, because there is none. The problem,
therefore, is NOT that formal analyses happen to have certain shortcomings;

it's that, in this case, formal analysis is inherently inappropriate.
If you can read Japanese texts, this is simply inherently obvious, but
textual function as an explanation is by definition out in formal
linguistics. Therefore, I felt that the correct course of action in this
case was not to criticize individual studies but the entire field of
formal linguistics, for trying to explain something for which the
only empirically adequate explanation is something which it methodologically
excludes. In this respect I'm 'formalist-bashing'--there is no
formal account of jibun. There is also no formal account of tu vs. usted in
Spanish. There aren't formalist accounts of a lot of things. The difference
in the case of jibun is that formalists for some reason THINK there is
an account.

Sorry, Spike, evidently I take empirical responsibility more seriously than
you do. I think that crackpots are dangerous and should be identified; this
is how to stop them (please note that whatever I have said about David
Pesetsky, I would absolutely not put him in the same class as Ken Safir).
Moralizing
is nice but it isn't nearly enough. It's nice to say 'all data should be
open to criticism', but in practice this is the first discussion we've had of
this in the several years I've been on the network.

If you don't like my postings, Spike, you're in charge here, bounce them back.

I have no objections to formalist-functionalist interaction on funknet. I'm
not interested in it, but I have no objections to it. I have objections to
introducing lower standards of empirical accountability into our discussions.

John Myhill