Concerning WALS - Bees, Bats, Butterflies

[Tom Givon]

I think, Timo, that one can perhaps go a bit too far in claiming that linguistic categories have no reality (Comsky has arrived cat this conclusion about moroho-syntactic constructions, by the way...) It is true that linguistic methodology often makes it appear this way, not only on the Chomskian side but also on the more empiricist side.But there are quite a few of us who strive to connect our work with, and indeed be guided by, experimental work on the cognition & neurology of language. It requires a lot of patience to do this, but it is both rewarding & promising (while being still very far from where we want to go...). I think both extremes of the field will need to change their approach to universals before a true fusion with cognitive-neuro-linguistics will come about. Chomskian universals are too abstract & are achieved by formal fiat, facts of cross-language diversity be damned. But simple  surface-fact-universals are not all that useful either, if you don't go beyond them. They are the same old "inductive generalizations" in Booomfield's sense, and counter to M. Dryer, they are not a theory, but rathe the important empirical buildup toward an eventual theory. They are summaries of facts ("all languages have a surface feature x"), what Carnap calls "empirical genewralizations". What we need is to discover the universal principles and mechanisms (diachronic, evolutionary, acquisitional) that makes the seemingly-universal facts what they are. And for this, we have to get away from BOTH extremes in linguistics. So no, Noam, constructions DO exist. And yes, Noam,  general facts, however general, are NOT themselves the universals. Principles & the mechanisms  (of development, of "emergence", of cognition & communication; rather than abstract "principles & parameters") that they control are what we are after. But in order to discover what the principles, we DO have to study constructions, their communicqative use, their acquisition & their diachronic emergence, and their neuro-cognitive processing.

Cheers,  TG

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On Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:18:39 +0200 (EET), timo.honkela at tkk.fi wrote:
> Thank you for initiating a very interesting discussion. The complexity 
> of the study of language as a socio-cultural and cognitive phenomenon 
> by far exceeds, for instance, the complexity of the basic principles 
> of physics and astronomy. 
> 
> In general, it seems clear that linguistic categories cannot be 
> claimed to have any objective ontological status. They are social 
> constructions and there are multiple ways to construct the theories in 
> a meaningful way.
> 
> A formalization of the subjectivity/intersubjectivity of language use 
> is presented in our recent article "Simulating processes of concept 
> formation and communication" (J of Econ Methodology, vol. 15, no. 3, 
> Sept 2008, pp. 245-259):
> 
> 1 Introduction
> 1.1 Multi-agent systems
> 1.2 Language learning and game theory
> 1.3 Grounding
> 1.4 Learning paradigms
> 2 Basic theoretical framework
> 3 Communication between agents
> 3.1 Language games
> 3.2 Single-agent model
> 3.3 Two-agent model
> 4 Learning of conceptual models
> 4.1 Unsupervised learning of conceptual systems
> 5 Practical implications
> 5.1 Meaning negotiations
> 5.2 Costs associated with harmonization of conceptual systems
> 6 Discussion
> 
> The article aims to provide a principled alternative to the formal 
> approaches in which language is viewed as an autonomous system without 
> careful consideration of the subjective element. Constructive comments 
> on the paper (available on request) are welcome! 
> 
> Best regards,
> Timo
> 
> P.S. I will be in UC Berkeley from 17th to 19th, in Stanford from 20th 
> to 21st and in UC San Diego from 25th to 27th of November. If you are 
> working there and would be interested in discussing these issues, 
> please contact.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, 10 Nov 2008, Martin Haspelmath wrote:
> 
> > If you want to compare Chomsky with someone, I think the best analogy is
> > Socrates -- he asked a number of new questions in a very serious way, without
> > providing answers (Socrates also had clashes with authority, rather fatal
> > ones).
> > 
> > Comparative biology became an empirically-based science long before Darwin,
> > but it was extremely difficult to make sense of the variation until a new way
> > of thinking became possible. Maybe that is the case with comparative
> > linguistics, too. It seems that we are still very far from the Keplerian,
> > Galilean or Darwinian stage.
> > 
> > The World Atlas of Language Structures is primarily an attempt to put
> > comparative linguistics on an empirical foundation. Until recently, it was
> > often based on Platonic or Aristotelian speculation, like medieval biology.
> > 
> > Martin
> > > At 10:48 PM -0500 9/11/08, Salinas17 at aol.com wrote:
> > > snip..
> > > 
> > > > we need a Copernicus, not a Chomsky or a Greenberg.
> > > 
> > > A reminder that it was Kepler who formulated the planetary laws, and a
> > > comment that Chomsky has in common with Galileo a discipline-changing
> > > body of work (subsequently elevated into a theory of everything). Both
> > > also had clashes with authority although of a rather different kind.
> > > Maybe we haven't yet had our Darwin or Einstein but to be a Galileo is
> > > not to be sniffed at.
> > -- 
> > Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva.mpg.de)
> > Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Deutscher Platz 6
> > D-04103 Leipzig      Tel. (MPI) +49-341-3550 307, (priv.) +49-341-980 1616
> > 
> > Glottopedia - the free encyclopedia of linguistics
> > (http://www.glottopedia.org)
> 
> 
> --
> Timo Honkela, Chief Research Scientist, PhD, Docent
> Adaptive Informatics Research Center
> Helsinki University of Technology
> P.O.Box 5400, FI-02015 TKK
> 
> timo.honkela at tkk.fi,  http://www.cis.hut.fi/tho/
>