conversation and syntax

[R. A. Jacobs]

Dear Colleagues,

Paul Hopper's data on formulaics expressions in 
the mini-text Fritz Newmeyer presented is 
certainly to the point. I agree with him that it 
would be sad if Funknet became a clearing house 
for the exchange of titles and abstracts rather 
than the actual discussion of ideas. But it seems 
to me reasonable that Fritz could give some 
details of an argument (polemical but on a topic 
of central interest to this list that he has 
dealt with much more fully in a paper, as long as 
that paper has been made accessible to list 
members. That's one way a good list like this is 
useful. Fritz did just that. I was interested, so 
I downloaded the paper. Paul's own brief 
discussion added to the value of the exchange, 
and I hope there would be others.

Ricky


>Newmeyer writes (MS p. 13): "There are certainly 
>formulaic expressions here: hi, right, take in 
>stride, I don’t think, and possibly a few 
>others. But in other respects the transcript 
>reveals a sophisticated knowledge of syntax that 
>defies any meaningful analysis in terms of 
>fragments ...
>Regarding Fritz's last statement: Dwight 
>Bolinger said somewhere that there's a reason 
>the human brain has trillions of cells...! Well, 
>I identified the groups of words that I would 
>suspect are formulaic and typed them into 
>Google.com to see if they were as unique (and 
>therefore syntactic) as Fritz claims. The 
>results are, it seems to me, consistent with the 
>idea that the speaker is indeed stringing 
>together formulaic fragments. ...
>
>- Paul
>
>>  Dear Colleagues,
>>
>>  What is to be the nature of Funknet?
>>
>>  Most of us would think of it as an arena in which we can discuss topics
>>  within the/a functionalist paradigm by swapping ideas in an ongoing
>>  conversation. However, the polemical "article of faith" abstract Fritz
>>  Newmeyer has sent round contains no empirical arguments, so it cannot be
>>  responded to without reading the entire article. The controversial points
>>  he makes in the article will basically go unanswered in this forum simply
>>  because the genre of email doesn't permit a paradigm-level response. Only
>>  another article can respond to an article. So Fritz gets to trash someone
>>  else's work in public on the basis of a promissory note.
>>
>  > It would be sad if Funknet became a clearing house for the exchange of
>  > titles and abstracts rather than the actual discussion of ideas.
>  >
>  > - Paul

-- 
Roderick A. Jacobs, Author/Linguistic Consultant	Recent Article:
[Georgia State University] 
	Review of  'Handbook of English 
Linguistics
Em.Prof. Linguistics & 2nd Language Studies 
	in JOURNAL OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS,	,
Past Dean, College of Languages, Linguistics, 
	35:2 (June 2007), 188-193.
& Literature, University of Hawai'i