form and function

[Matthew S Dryer]

While I agree with Edith Moravcsik's statement that functionalists need
"some description of form", I strongly disagree with her claim that "if
describing and explaining sentence form is a shared goal between them,
then functionalists depend on formalists for their explananda".

First, in the particular case of Japanese jibun, the issue is what is an
accurate description of its distribution: is its distribution accurately
described in the sort of syntactic terms proposed in the formal literature
or is it to be described in the sort of functional terms proposed in the
functionalist literature?  If the functionalist accounts are right, then
generalizations provided in the formal literature are not something for
functionalists to explain, but just inaccurate descriptions of the facts.
The data based on judgments of isolated sentences cited in the formal
literature will either be inaccurate (for example, sentences that could be
used in an appropriate context are treated as ungrammatical) or given a
pragmatic explanation (the oddness of a sentence treated as ungrammatical
can be explained in pragmatic rather than syntactic terms).  The
generalizations based on this data will be at best pseudo-generalizations,
epiphenomenal illusions that are artifacts of judging sentences in
isolation.  From a functionalist perspective, the data and conclusions in
the formal literature will be useless.

Second, in so far as functionalists need descriptions of form, I am not
aware of any instance in which the descriptions provided by formal
linguists have been of value.  If a functionalist is attempting to explain
some typological pattern, for example, the useful descriptions of form
will be descriptive grammars, rather than anything provided by formal
linguists.

I thus see no reason to think that functionalists ever depend on
formalists for their explananda.

Matthew Dryer