"loss of generality"

[Rob Freeman]

On Friday 25 June 2004 00:56, Sydney Lamb wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Jun 2004, Rob Freeman wrote:
> > ...
> > But what was Chomsky's objection? According to Newmeyer "part of the
> > discussion of phonology in 'LBLT' is directed towards showing that the
> > conditions that were supposed to define a phonemic representation
> > (including complementary distribution, locally determined biuniqueness,
> > linearity, etc.) were inconsistent or incoherent in some cases and led to
> > (or at least allowed) absurd analyses in others." Most importantly the
> > interposition of such a "phonemic level ... led to a loss of generality
> > in the formulation of the rule-governed regularities of the language."
> > ...
>
> Chomsky ... correctly pointed out that the usual
> solution incorporates a loss of generality, but he misdiagosed
> the problem. The problem was the criterion of linearity. He
> stubbornly holds on to this criterion, although it really is
> faulty, and comes up with a solution for the Russian obstruents
> that obscures the phonological structure. I showed (in accounts
> cited below) that by relaxing the linearity requirement we get
> an elegant solution while preserving "centrality of contrastive
> function of linguistic elements".

Syd,

I think I am with you on this one.

Am I right in understanding that "relaxing the linearity requirement" means
the phonetic value of a sequence of phonemes is no longer taken to be the
sequence of phonetic values of isolated phonemes? In short that the phonetic
value of a phoneme is no longer taken to be independent of its context?

If so, I'm happy with that. What I am looking for is evidence of subjectivity.
If you swap a claim about the generality of rules for a claim about the
(contextual) subjectivity of elements, I don't mind at all.

I think your analysis is just the kind of confirmation I was looking for.

I'm not so interested in the conclusions Chomsky drew. I'm just looking for
evidence of subjectivity. Reading Newmeyer's analysis it struck me that
Chomsky's evidence (which I think we can give him credit for observing
clearly) was not so much of innateness, or that the fundamental focus of the
structuralists of the time on "contrastive function" was wrong. Rather it
looks to me to be evidence that a focus on the "centrality of the contrastive
function of linguistic elements" (which is also the foundation of
Functionalism) implies structural subjectivity in language.

If we ever knew this we seem to have forgotten it, otherwise we would not be
arguing about it on Funknet.

That is the thread I want to explore.

I think you are supportive of the same basic issues. Am I wrong? Do you
believe language structure is universal and capable of being objectively
codified?

-Rob