Call for Papers: Beyond Chomsky 2003

[John Myhill]

Well put, Talmy!
John




>
>Dear FUNK people,]
>
>Having received, courtesy of Bruce Richman, 22 commerial messaages
>from the hustlers at Hotmail, and having been over the past few
>months subjected to his repeated announcements of  the "Beyond
>Chomsky" agenda, I am finally moved to say the following:  Hey, you
>may be a terrific guy, Bruce, I have no way of knowing. But---even
>you Hotmail caper aside--I think you stand in grave danger of
>alienating a substantial number of the FUNK folk. So I though I'd
>maybe take a minute to tell you why.
>
>Vigorous alternative approaches to Chomsky sprang all over the
>countryside beginning with Ross & Lajoff (1967) "Is deep structure
>necessary?". Chuck Fillmore (1966) "The case for the case" was an
>implicit challenge already. Wally Chafe's (1970) "Meanning & the
>structure of language" was right-on  and right there. The early CLS
>years (1968-1975) gave vent to a large & unruly collection of
>'alternatives'. The Greenberg/Bolinger-inspired
>typological-cum-functional explosion of the 1970s was another case
>in point, as was Langacker/Lakoff's "Cognitive Grammar". Joan
>Bresnan, another ex-student of Chomsky, has certainly counted
>herself as an alternative to nthe Master since the late 1970s. And
>there are many more whom space does not permit to enumerate. But
>still, Bruce--
>
>Even if you grant all this, there is something a bit bizarre about
>the "Beyond Chomsk" agenda. Certainly to me. You see, I count myself
>as Chomsky's student. I rebelled very early, even before I finished
>my dissertation (1969). For how could someone interested in
>typological diversity, meaning/function and diachrony abide by
>Aspects for very long? But Aspects was my first Syntax textbook,
>fresh off the press (1965). And to this day, having spent I think a
>considerable portion--perhaps too much--of my professional life
>trying to articulate where the Generative agenda went wrong--I still
>must go on record and say that I owe my career in syntax (and
>linguistics) to Noam Chomsky. And that even when I find him least
>helpful, most arcane, most infuriating, I must nonetheless credit
>him with raising some of the most interesting questions that still
>haunt us in the study of grammar/syntax.
>
>Who of the Bloomfieldians would have challenged the Watson/Skinner
>extreme empiricist view of language learning by--ONLY-- rote,
>memory, immitation and S(timulus)-R(esponse)? Who would have
>challenged Bloomfield's anti-meaning and anti-mind dogma? Who would
>have raised the possibility that beyond the surface
>item-and-arrangement strucures that Bloomfield urge us to catalogue,
>classify, disect AND THEN QUIT, there lay a system that 'supported
>semantic interpretation'? That accounted for meaning paraphrases?
>That accounter for 'syntactic' (but perforce also semantic, given
>Chomsky's very definition of Deep Structure) ambiguity? Ross and
>Lakoff (1967), with all due credit, old amigos, was nothing but the
>logical consequence of Aspects, a consequence that Noam himself was
>either unwilling or unable (or perhaps afraid?) to draw. The
>Generative Semantics rebellion that sprang right there was a direct
>consequence of Chomsky's "complex symbol" treatment of semantics in
>Ch. 2 of Aspects.
>
>Sure, we have many reasons for choosing to disagree with Chomsky.
>But before we/you go beyond him, perhaps it would behoove us all to
>acknowledge what--and how much--we owe him. And perhaps it would be
>useful to remind ourselves that however infuriating he may be at
>times, and however  'wrong'  posterity may eventually deem him
>(yeah, that fickle lady of whom none of us could ever take for
>granted...), his reasons for doing things the way he does are
>neither haphazard nor fickle nor incoherent. They spring from, and
>are dictated by, an agenda that has certain--indeed rather
>consistent--philosophical & methodological roots, ones that may be
>traced back to both Plato and Saussure and, somewhat paradoxically,
>also to Russell and Carnap (tho here Chomsky might disagree most
>violently). What is more, Chomsky's historical position--as the
>person who almost single-handedly deposed the dogmatic,
>philosophically-constrained, methodologically bizarre Bloomfieldians
>at the worst stage of their convoluted, garrulous decay in the
>1950s--is something all of us benefitted from, and should be
>therefore generous enough to acknowledge.
>
>The fact that Chomsky's Generativism soon became just as extreme and
>reductive as the dogma Empiricist that preceded it is indeed sad. It
>reflects a certain dynamics of our historical community, of swinging
>like a wild pendulum from one extreme to the other. It is indeed
>this very reductionism that impelled many of us, I contend  for
>valid philosophical and methodological reasons, to dissent and
>strike out on our own. But let us (in this departing from Chosky's
>own occasionally-infuriating coups of revisionist historicism and
>self-invention) try to keep in mind where we come from. It has, just
>maybe, a huge bearing on where we're headed.
>
>
>Y'all be good y'hear,  TG
>
>=========================
>
>
>
>bruce richman wrote:
>
>>                      Beyond Chomsky 2003: The Real Study of Real
>>Language                              A conference to be held on
>>April 26 and 27, 2003 at                              Carnegie
>>Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania       For the past 40
>>years progress in the study of language has been set back by the
>>huge influence of Chomsky's model of studying language.  Linguists,
>>language scholars, people in other fields, and the general public
>>have concluded that Chomsky has somehow made a great discovery
>>about language of great scientific importance.      (See the
>>pro-Chomsky article that appeared in the Science News section of
>>the New York Times on Jan. 15, 2002 for an example of this.)
>>The time has come for those of us who know better, to announce to
>>the world that Chomsky's great "discovery" about language is
>>basically empty and irrelevant.  Rather than being a real study of
>>real language, Chomsky's method involves the rhetorical invention
>>of a made-up subject matter that has little relation to language
>>and little relevance for it.  It started out supposedly being an
>>explanation about the discourse relations of sentences.  Then it
>>changed to an explanation of the psychological reality of
>>sentences.  When this proved impossible, Chomsky's method retreated
>>to being an explanation of biology; a biology that was impossible
>>to study -- but great for speculation.  For 40 years, it has
>>retreated further and further away from the reality of language.
>>Chomsky's model remains just an ingenious explanation in search of
>>something to explain.      Once we renounce this irrelevant
>>"method," we can go forward with the hard work of the empirical
>>study of real language in real life.      Chomsky's biggest mistake
>>from the beginning was to hold on tenaciously to the belief in the
>>basic principle of traditional grammar that the basic organizing
>>force of grammar is meaningless, mechanical "agreement."  This
>>mistaken view of grammar as meaningless and mechanical goes back to
>>the theories of ancient grammarians, who were unable to explain the
>>actual distribution of grammatical cases, and consequently invented
>>the notion of grammatical "agreement" as a way to "explain" their
>>ignorance of why forms were distributed as they were.  (The late
>>William Diver and his followers have done great work on this
>>subject.)      Chomsky and his followers have taken this crucial
>>mistaken view of grammar and kicked it upstairs and enshrined it,
>>making meaningless, mechanical grammar the be all and end all of
>>all accounts of language.      All the complicated grammatical
>>stuff that Chomskyans expend so much ingenious efforts on
>>"explaining" are about aspects of grammar that are entirely
>>irrelevant to what most adults and all children actually deal with.
>>All the complicated grammatical "calculations" that Chomskyans
>>waste so much effort on are about phenomena that do not occur at
>>all in spontaneous spoken language and are really the kind of stuff
>>that only some college trained people sometimes encounter in
>>written form.  Real spontaneous spoken language is quite free of
>>much of the "grammar" so dear to Chomskyans hearts.  (See Jim
>>Miller and Regina Weinart's work on this.)     This is another
>>reason to agree with Esa Itkonen that Chomsky's theory is an
>>explanation in search of something to explain.     We want people
>>from a wide range of areas related to language present papers and
>>join in our discussions.  Only by having people from many different
>>areas can we build up an overall picture of where language study
>>should go.  At the end of the conference we will try to put
>>together a collective statement of the findings of the conference
>>which we will make public.    If you are interested in
>>participating, please contact Bruce Richman at
>><mailto:brucerichman at hotmail.com>brucerichman at hotmail.com or
>>Alexander Gross at
>><mailto:language at sprynet.com>language at sprynet.com
>>
>>
>>
>>Join the world’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail.
>><http://go.msn.com/bql/hmtag4_etl_EN.asp>Click Here


--
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/funknet/attachments/20020205/9e7459c1/attachment.htm>