'substantial surprise'

Ken Manson ken.grammar at gmail.com
Fri Apr 24 02:50:04 UTC 2009


Hi all,

A preprint of the article is available online at
http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Evans-08042008/Referees/Evans-08042008_pr
eprint.pdf.

Regards
Ken 

-----Original Message-----
From: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu
[mailto:funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu] On Behalf Of Tom Givon
Sent: Friday, 24 April 2009 6:19 AM
To: Daniel L. Everett
Cc: Esa Itkonen; Funknet
Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] 'substantial surprise'



Thanks, Dan. Alas, the article is not yet published, and is not available on
the web, leastwise not to me. The only thing I could get was an abstract
(courtesy of my friend Phil Young, who knows how to get to those elusive
items); and having read the abstract I (so far) don't see anything there
that would suggest the article's orientation is other than what Esa
suggested. I am of course looking forward to reading the full article, as
obviously we all should. And of course, it is not exactly surprising you
like the article, given what you have been saying about Piraha.  Best,  TG

==========


Daniel L. Everett wrote:
> Tomas,
>
> I think it would be better to read the article first. Moreover, as a 
> BBS target article, it will have many, many published comments, 
> critical and supportive, accompanying it when it comes out.
>
> The article is not naive and it does comment, I think quite 
> convincingly, on the reasoning linking surface vs. deeper traits.
>
> In fact, I would go so far as to rate this article as one of the more 
> important pieces to appear in the field in years, written by one of 
> the best fieldworkers and one of the best psycholinguists around.
>
> I agree with some of your caveats below, but I urge you and other 
> readers of this list to have a careful look at the article.
>
> All the best,
>
> Dan
>
>
>
> On Apr 23, 2009, at 11:46 AM, Tom Givon wrote:
>
>>
>> Dear Esa,
>>
>> I don't have the original Evans/Levinson BBS article, which I will 
>> try to obtain ASAP. So the following is based on the assumption you 
>> quoted them--and yourself-- accurately.
>>
>> I must say that these picky laments about (the demise of) universals 
>> go back to (at least) Bloomfield, and are really dependent on apriori 
>> definitions, or a philosophical stance. The extreme Bloomfieldian 
>> position assumes that universals must be concrete SURFACE  FEATURES 
>> of language, rather than CONTROLLING/EXPLANATORY PRINCIPLES that 
>> govern the distribution of surface features. The extreme Chomsakian 
>> position makes the facts themselves so abstract and so formal (as 
>> against substantive/functional) that "universals" are 
>> observed--really, posited--virtually by fiat. Still, there is one 
>> useful element one could extract from Chomsky's extremism: The 
>> insistence that universal are not just concrete surface features that 
>> must appear in all languages, but rather controlling "principles & 
>> parameters". This is fully in line with Carnap's, in my view apt, 
>> distinction between "factual generalizations" and "theoretical 
>> statements". So far so good. The problem is, of course, that 
>> Chomsky's P&Ps are abstract, non-substantive and divorced from real
>> (Carnapian) factual generalizations. Above all, Chomskian universals 
>> are of  EXTANT STATE states rather than DEVELOPMENT.
>>
>> It would be useful to point out that there is a middle-ground, 
>> biologically-based alternative to our view of universals, a middle 
>> ground that has existed at least since H. Paul, and has been 
>> espoused, at least in late life, by Joe Greenberg: That universals 
>> are NOT concrete surface features ("all living beings have cells"; 
>> "all languages have verbs"), but rather more general principles that 
>> underlie the phylogeny and ontogeny--and for language, the 
>> diachrony--of the distribution of all surface forms. Evolutionary and 
>> molecular biology are constructed to  elucidate those principles in 
>> biology. In biology, these universals of development account for the 
>> distribution of surface forms. In linguistics, in addition to 
>> evolution & child language development, the most powerful 
>> developmental process that explains the distribution of  concrete 
>> surface forms is DIACHRONY. So talking about the distribution of 
>> Tamil forms without understanding the diachrony of those forms is, to 
>> my mind,  somewhat self-defeating.
>>
>> One more philosophical/definistional element in this discussion is 
>> the notion that universals must be 100%, either or. A single 
>> exception throws out a strong statistical tendency (say 99.9%). This 
>> again flies in the face of what is known about biologically-based 
>> complex systems, where most surface-feature generalizations are 
>> strong statistical tendencies rather than 100%. This is so because 
>> biological systems & behaviors are adaptive compromises between 
>> conflicting  tho equally valid general ('universal') adaptive 
>> principles.  As Ernst Mayr observed long ago, only physics & 
>> mathematics have exceptionless  laws. What is more, there is usually 
>> more than one possible solution to an adaptive imperative, and 
>> related species may adopt different solutions, each having both 
>> advantages & drawbacks. Language typology reveals exactly that--a 
>> range of possible ways of solving the same adaptive-communicative 
>> task, each having adaptive advantages and disadvantages.
>>
>> Again, what is universal is/are not 100% generalizations about 
>> surface features, but the controlling principles of the developmental 
>> processes that create complex systems. Diachronic change behaves, in 
>> this regard, very much like biological evolution (see ch. 3 of my
>> 2008 book "The Genesis of Syntactic Complexity"), and produces 
>> seemingly-conflicting, oft puzzling surface facts. Speaking of old 
>> books, ch. 6 of my "On Understanding Grammar" (1979) "Where does 
>> crazy syntax comes from?" is dedicated to showing how diachrony can 
>> often produced counter-universal surface features. My 2000 paper 
>> "Internal reconstruction:" As method, as theory" (in a TSL volume 
>> edited by Spike Gildea) discusses a monumental case of seeming 
>> violations of well-known synchronic generalization in the Athabaskan
>> (Tolowa) verb complex. Bern Heine has also some recent discussion on 
>> the subject.
>>
>> In sum, I think the position you attribute to Evans/Levinson is a 
>> regrettable throwback to non-biologically- based, non-process-based 
>> approach to "surface universals" that has been dogging linguistics 
>> for a long time. For as long as functionally-oriented linguists do 
>> not strive to produce, in Carnap's words, "theoretical 
>> generalizations" that are explanatory rather than mere summaries of 
>> the fact (thus really Carnap's "factual generalizations"), I am 
>> afraid we will continue to cede the field of  "theory" to the 
>> Chomskians, who have of course botched it royally, for 
>> well-understood reasons. And as long as the only alternatives 
>> availably to us are the two extreme positions of Bloomfield and 
>> Chomsky, a real understanding of universals will remain a tantalizing 
>> mirage.
>>
>> Best,  TG
>>
>> =================
>>
>>
>> Esa Itkonen wrote:
>>> Dear Funknetters: Nicholas Evans and Stephen Levinson have written 
>>> an important article 'The myth of language universals' (Behavioral 
>>> and Brain Sciences). Their thesis is that our knowledge of 
>>> linguistic diversity is far from complete. Even the most 
>>> self-evident generalizations may be, and are, falsified. On two 
>>> occasions they mention the fact that one way to express sentence 
>>> negation in Ancient Tamil is by means of zero (i.e. lack of tense 
>>> marker). In brief, "almost every new language description still 
>>> guarantees substantial surprises".
>>>
>>> In fact, it need not even be a NEW language description which 
>>> produces a substantial surprise, it can also be an old but neglected 
>>> one. Again, interestingly, we have to do with Ancient Tamil.
>>> Proto-Tamil (from which Ancient Tamil had descended) is assumed to 
>>> have had at least four inflecting cases, Ancient Tamil had seven (or 
>>> eight if vocative counts too), and Modern Tamil has eight (if 
>>> benefactive in N-DAT-aaka does not count). Against this rather 
>>> unexceptional background it is rather surprising to learn that 
>>> case-endings could be, and were, either interchanged or simply 
>>> dropped in Ancient Tamil. There can be no doubt about this fact. It 
>>> is directly documented by all existing texts; it is confirmed by the 
>>> (two thousand years old) grammar Tolkaappiyam; and it is further 
>>> confirmed by such living authorities on Ancient Tamil as Thomas 
>>> Lehmann and Asko Parpola. This phenomenon of suffix-dropping extends 
>>> to non-finite verbs as well, with the result that a typical sentence 
>>> is jus t a string of uninflected roots, with the final word (= 
>>> finite verb) as the only inflecting one.
>>>
>>> How can this phenomenon be explained? Is it due to the fact that all 
>>> existing texts are poems? When asked, Lehmann replied: "This could 
>>> be the answer", while Parpola shrugged: "Nobody knows."
>>>
>>> In any case, this phenomenon is surely interesting enough to be more 
>>> widely known (or so I naively thought). Hence, I wrote a paper (in
>>> 2003) and sent it to a typological journal. It was rejected by two 
>>> referees both of whom declared the phenomenon in question to be 
>>> impossible.(And, believe it or not, one of the referees ALSO claimed 
>>> it to be thoroughly common, and even one that occurs in the 
>>> author's, i.e. my, native language, i.e. Finnish, which borders on
>>> insanity.)
>>>
>>> This was not the first time that my ideology has clashed with that 
>>> of referees. I do not see the value of repeating what has been said 
>>> hundreds of times before; rather, I see the value of 
>>> inventing/discovering something new. 90% of the referees with whom I 
>>> have dealt with during the last 35 years or so, hold the opposite 
>>> view. This is why, if my contribution has been accepted at all, it 
>>> has more often than not been accepted by the editor and contary to 
>>> the referees' opinion.
>>>
>>> To sum up, this phenomenon is real; it provides a "genuine surprise" 
>>> à la Evans & Levinson; and it can be read on my home-page (click
>>> below) under the title "A case system with interchangeable and 
>>> optional endings" (2003).
>>>
>>> Esa
>>> Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>



More information about the Funknet mailing list