Form and function

[Wallace Chafe]

        It may be that there's been some confusion caused by the fact that
the word "formalism" contains the element "form".  It would certainly be
wrong to suppose that formalists believe that language has form and
functionalists don't.  Probably most people would agree that language
exhibits form, or structure, or patterning, although there's plenty of
room for disagreement as to the nature of the elements that enter into the
form, as to its stability, and above all as to its provenience.
        It's too simple to assign linguists to one or the other of two
camps, but there does seem to be a significant divide established by one's
beliefs and goals.  Most "functionalists", I think, believe that the
patterns found in language result from cognitive, social, and/or
historical forces, and they see it as their goal to identify those forces
and place them within larger contexts of mental functioning, social
interaction, and grammaticalization.  Being of that persuasion myself,
I find it harder to characterize the beliefs and goals of "formalists",
but they seem to believe that linguistic form has been wired into the
human brain through mysterious processes of evolution, and they see it as
their goal to invent some kind of complex machinery that will be able to
deal with (describe?) that form, independently of the cognitive, social,
and historical forces that attract functionalists.  It's evidently this
philosophical stance that seems to exempt formalists from the empirical
responsibility that's been the topic of much of this discussion.  If this
is an unfair caricature, I'd be glad to be set straight.

Wally Chafe