'substantial surprise'

[Suzanne Kemmer]

Hi all,
The paper in .pdf format  is at the weblink given by Ken Manson,  
although note that you have to put the
entire URL on one line:
http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Evans-08042008/Referees/Evans-08042008_preprint.pdf

This discussion is a great illustration of how it's easy to talk at  
cross-purposes.  Tom's right
if we read the abstract one way, but then  looking at the paper, you  
see that in the context
of the paper the abstract makes sense in a different way.

 From the abstract: "there are vanishingly few universals of language  
in the direct
sense that all languages exhibit them. ....  While there are  
significant recurrent patterns in organization, these are
better explained as stable engineering solutions satisfying multiple  
design constraints, reflecting both
cultural-historical factors and the constraints of  human cognition. "

The last sentence is precisely how functionalists WOULD explain  
significant recurrent patterns in organization--
but we'd also take these significant recurrent patterns as exactly  
what WE call the universals (implicational, statistical, diachronic,  
etc.)
of language.   Once you read the paper's introduction, it becomes  
clear that the authors are arguing against Chomsky's
view of structural universals, which they point out is the assumed one  
in psycholinguistics--and that is the
basis of comparison (for "better explained") that is not explicated in  
the abstract.

It is so disappointing that whole careers of research dismantling  
these abstract and mutable "universals" in favor of a more realistic,
and to us much more exciting,  conception of universals--one that  
actually relates to the mind and to
culture, communication, and history-- still hasn't  seemed to have  
touched a lot of psychology
and cognitive science.

I'll copy the abstract and the first paragraph of the introduction.  
The paper is very much worth reading despite its
framing of the issue in this way. The horse never dies, however often  
it's beaten.

As to how this article might affect cognitive science--I don't know if  
"plac[ing] diversity at center-stage"
is going to resonate as much as a Chomskyan view,
since the aims of cognitive science harmonize much better, I think,  
with a search for universals of the
human mind--it is a powerful idea stressing common humanity.
The focus ought to be on both universality and diversity at the same  
time,
as functional typology insists,
but it's probably too hard to get a whole field like cognitive science  
NOT to focus on
one side of the coin (especially given how hard it is even to get  
across a proper
conception of universals.)
Suzanne

---------

The Myth of Language Universals: Language diversity and its
importance for cognitive science
Nicholas Evans and Stephen Levinson
To be published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (in press)
© Cambridge University Press 2009
(unedited, uncorrected final draft of a BBS target article that has  
been accepted
for publication. This preprint has been prepared for potential  
commentators who wish to
nominate themselves for formal commentary invitation. Please DO NOT  
write a commentary
until you receive a formal invitation. If you are invited to submit a  
commentary, a copyedited,
corrected version of this paper will be posted.)


Abstract: Talk of linguistic universals has given cognitive scientists  
the impression that languages are
all built to a common pattern. In fact, there are vanishingly few  
universals of language in the direct
sense that all languages exhibit them. Instead, diversity can be found  
at almost every level of
linguistic organization. This fundamentally changes the object of  
enquiry from a cognitive science
perspective.

The article summarizes decades of cross-linguistic work by typologists  
and descriptive linguists,
showing just how few and unprofound the  universal characteristics of  
language are, once we honestly
confront the diversity offered to us by the world’s 6-8000 languages.  
After surveying the various uses
of ‘universal’, we illustrate the ways languages vary radically in  
sound, meaning, and syntactic
organization, then examine in more detail the core grammatical  
machinery of recursion, constituency,
and grammatical relations. While there are significant recurrent  
patterns in organization, these are
better explained as stable engineering solutions satisfying multiple  
design constraints, reflecting both
cultural-historical factors and the constraints of  human cognition.

Linguistic diversity then becomes the crucial datum for cognitive  
science: we are the only species
with a communication  system which is fundamentally variable at all  
levels. Recognising the true
extent of structural diversity in human language opens up exciting new  
research directions for
cognitive scientists, offering thousands of different natural  
experiments given by different languages,
with new opportunities for dialogue with biological paradigms  
concerned with change and diversity,
and confronting us with the extraordinary plasticity of the highest  
human skills.


1.  Introduction

  “According to Chomsky, a visiting Martian scientist would surely  
conclude that aside from their mutually
unintelligible vocabularies, Earthlings speak a single  
language” (Pinker 1994, p.232)

Languages are much more diverse in structure than cognitive scientists  
generally appreciate.
A widespread assumption among cognitive scientists, growing out of the  
generative tradition
in linguistics, is that all languages are English-like, but with  
different sound systems and
vocabularies. The true picture is very different: languages differ so  
fundamentally from one
another at every level of description (sound, grammar, lexicon,  
meaning) that it is very hard
to find any single structural property they share. The claims of   
Universal Grammar, we will
argue, are either empirically false, unfalsifiable, or misleading in  
that they refer to tendencies
rather than strict universals. Structural differences should instead  
be accepted for what they
are, and integrated into a new approach to language and cognition that  
places diversity at
centre stage.

The rest is at:
http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Evans-08042008/Referees/Evans-08042008_preprint.pdf
---------