linguistic axioms

[lesleyne at msu.edu]

Paul,

I think that functionalists are prone to this type of debate, if some of our exchanges back in '06 are any guide.  I am glad that Shannon, my friend and former colleague from a very repressive formal department is finding it lively here.  Functionalist departments can also be quite ideologically driven, but are more tolerant of debate, and are less prone to driving out students that raise issues with theoretical orthodoxy.

Diane

Quoting "Paul Hopper" <hopper at cmu.edu>:

> WOW! "post-modernist ploy," "logical fallacy", "dubious", "just this 
> type of reasoning", "illicit trick", "less-then-respectable 
> argument"...
>
> This is the rhetoric of a threatened and angry person. I honestly 
> don't think we've sen this kind of rage on Funknet since it was 
> founded. What's gotten into you, Tom?
>
> Paul
>
>
>
>
>
>
>>
>
>>
>> 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
>>
>> =======
>>
>>
>> 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
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Prof. Dr. Paul J. Hopper
> Senior Fellow
> Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies
> Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
> Albertstr. 19
> D-79104 Freiburg
> and
> Paul Mellon Distinguished Professor of Humanities
> Carnegie Mellon University
> Pittsburgh, PA5213
>
>
>