linguistic axioms

[Tom Givon]

Well, Roy Harris's "questioning" is a typical post-modernist ploy based 
on the logical fallacy that "if meaning is not 100% absolute, it must 
therefore be 100% relative". Many functionalists have indulged in this 
dubious mode of reasoning, and some of us have even recanted leter. 
Hopper's "emergent grammar" thesis is based on just this type of 
reasoning. Sandy Thompson's theoretical conclusions about the status of 
V-complements are founded on such reasoning. And I myself used this 
illicit trick in an article  titled "Logic vs. pragmatics, with human 
language as a referee" (J. of Pragmatics 1981). Nice title, but it was 
an intellectually less-than-respectable argument then, and it still is 
now.  Best,  TG

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Ellen Contini-Morava wrote:
> Re axioms:  There's Bloomfield's classic "A set of postulates for the 
> science of language", Language 2 (1926), pp. 153-64.  The main one, 
> slightly rephrased in his 1933 Language (p. 159):  "In a 
> speech-community some utterances are alike or partly alike in sound 
> and meaning".  Though some have questioned the assumption of a "shared 
> code" (e.g. Roy Harris, "On redefining linguistics". In Hayley Davis 
> and Talbot Taylor (eds.), Redefining Linguistics. London: Routledge 
> 1990, pp. 18-52.)
>
> Happy new year,
>
> Ellen
>