analysis: unhappiness

[Lise Menn]

I wish we had better terminology for keeping track of whether, at a  
given time, we are talking about the patterns that are 'out there' in  
the language and might possibly be apprehended (subconsciously) by a  
speaker, and when we are talking about the patterns that a particular  
speaker actually does apprehend, as indicated by experiments, from  
simple 'wug tests' up to brain wave and eye-gaze studies.  And for  
distinguishing among the degrees of pattern apprehension that a person  
may have, from vague preferences detectable in reaction times or other  
behavior all the way up through clear metalinguistic insights.  Dick  
Hudson's note reminding us of the Gleitman and Gleitman study is right  
on target.

	Since we don't in fact have such an agreed-on terminology, we have to  
be quite careful in making clear what we are referring to when we talk  
about 'the correct analysis' of a form like 'unhappiness'.  We know,  
but tend to forget - and tend to forget to tell our students! - that  
it's an empirical question as to whether the formal simplicity and  
coherence of description of forms 'out there' (e.g. lovely abstract  
morphophonemics) is any kind of approximation to the way knowledge of  
the same forms is organized in a particular person's head.  If we  
remember that a very large proportion of what we know about our  
language is 'out there' when we are infants and has to be internalized  
through experience with the language (even if you believe in innate  
'core language'), the variation in internal knowledge from one person  
to another is more understandable.
	
	We especially need to consider (and try to test) the possibility that  
since
the brain can make multiple cross-connections, multiple patterns are  
involved
simultaneously in morphological and syntactic analyses. I suggest that  
that's the case with 'unhappiness' - and the linguistic analyses that  
I know about are not good at handling that kind of idea.

	Lise

On Sep 9, 2010, at 8:00 AM, Matthew S. Dryer wrote:

>
> Two comments.
>
> First (elaborating perhaps on Dick Hudson's comment), I think there  
> is an
> important distinction between low-level linguistic intuitions (like  
> whether a
> word or sentence is well-formed or what it means) and higher-level  
> intuitions
> (like what the structure of a word or sentence is).  One can take  
> the position
> that we need to account for the former (while recognizing that they  
> are not
> always reliable) but not the latter.
>
> Second, the tension here is not only between evidence from speaker  
> intuitions
> versus evidence from psycholinguistic experiments.  There is also a  
> tension
> between deciding on the correct analysis on the basis of a priori  
> simplicity
> arguments versus deciding on the correct analysis on the basis of
> psycholinguistic evidence (see Derwing 1973).  The bracketing  
> paradox that Dan
> referred to that arises with the word <unhappier> (semantics argues  
> for
> [[un+happi] + er], morphology and phonology argues for [un + [happi 
> +er]] (the
> comparative suffix can only be attached to adjectives containing one  
> or two
> syllables) is only a paradox if one assumes that speakers adopt the  
> simplest
> analysis.  For example, if speakers adopt a more complex rule for  
> either of these
> (e.g. perhaps the rule for attaching -er can apply exceptionally to  
> trisyllabic
> words beginning with un-), then the bracketing paradox disappears.
>
> Matthew
>
> On Thu 09/09/10  8:16 AM , Richard Hudson dick at ling.ucl.ac.uk sent:
>> Thanks Dan. I'm sure you're right, and I'd be the first to agree that
>> conscious judgements are only one kind of evidence that we need to  
>> take
>> into account. I admire Carson Schutze's work (which I reviewed in  
>> fact),
>> and of course I've been aware of complaints about judgements by  
>> people
>> like Labov for decades.
>>
>> But you're missing my main point, which is that all judgements aren't
>> equally reliable.  If you want to know how /unhappiness/ is  
>> structured,
>> ask a linguist, not a five-year old. And one of the by-products of
>> education may be increased sensitivity to syntax - which is one of  
>> the
>> many reasons why linguists need to pay more attention to education.
>>
>> Best wishes,  Dick
>>
>> Richard Hudson www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/home.htm
>> On 09/09/2010 11:39, Daniel Everett wrote:
>>> Dick,
>>>
>>> You raise an important issue here about
>> methodology. I believe that intuitions are a fine way to generate
>> hypotheses and even to test them - to a degree. But while it might  
>> not have
>> been feasible for Huddleston, Pullum, and the other contributors to  
>> the
>> Cambridge Grammar to conduct experiments on every point of the  
>> grammar,
>> experiments could have only made the grammar better. The use of  
>> intuitions,
>> corpora, and standard psycholinguistic experimentation (indeed,  
>> Standard
>> Social Science Methodology)  is vital for taking the field forward  
>> and for
>> providing the best support for different analyses. Ted Gibson and Ev
>> Fedorenko have written a very useful new paper on this, showing  
>> serious
>> shortcomings with intuitions as the sole source of evidence, in their
>> paper: "The need for quantitative methods in syntax and semantics
>> research".>
>>> Carson Schutze and Wayne Cowart, among others,
>> have also written convincingly on this.>
>>> It is one reason that a team from Stanford, MIT
>> (Brain and Cognitive Science), and researchers from Brazil are  
>> beginning a
>> third round of experimental work among the Pirahas, since my own  
>> work on
>> the syntax was, like almost every other field researcher's, based  
>> on native
>> speaker intuitions and corpora.>
>>> The discussion of methodologies reminds me of
>> the initial reactions to Greenberg's work on classifying the  
>> languages of
>> the Americas. His methods were strongly (and justifiably) criticized.
>> However, I always thought that his methods were a great way of  
>> generating
>> hypotheses, so long as they were ultimately put to the test of  
>> standard
>> historical linguistics methods. And the same seems true for use of
>> native-speaker intuitions.>
>>> -- Dan
>>>
>>>> We linguists can add a further layer of
>> explanation to the judgements, but some judgements do seem to be more
>> reliable than others. And if we have to wait for psycholinguistic  
>> evidence
>> for every detailed analysis we make, our whole discipline will  
>> immediately
>> grind to a halt. Like it or not, native speaker judgements are what  
>> put us
>> linguists ahead of the rest in handling fine detail. Imagine  
>> writing the
>> Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (or the OED) without  
>> using native
>> speaker judgements.>>
>>>> Best wishes,  Dick Hudson
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>

Lise Menn                      Home Office: 303-444-4274
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Professor Emerita of Linguistics
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