The appeal of P&P

[Raúl Aranovich]

Andreas -- I think you touch on some important issues, but you are holding
a sword with two edges. First, I think what you say below is true:

>Chomskyan linguistics
>is at some level engaged in a different enterprise than many of its
>alternatives. More than questions such as whether LF or traces exist,
>the Chomskyan enterprise is characterized by the persistent belief in
>the innateness hypothesis and its implementation in the form of the
>principles and parameters model. Part of what has attracted so many
>people to the P&P model (and keeps them loyal to it, even in times of
>great intellectual uncertainty) is that as a practitioner of Chomskyan
>linguistics, one is made to believe that one is part of a Grand Quest
>for the very essence of what has been portrayed to be the Great
>Mystery, namely what makes language learnable.

Chomskyan linguistics is broader than just another theory of syntax, or a
theory of grammar: it *tries* to be a theory of language. And, frankly,
that was what attracted me to it when I was an undergraduate. I don't think
anyone declares a major in linguistics because they need to find an answer
to the question of whether word order patters reflect structural
asymmetries or not, but rather out of curiosity for the prevasiveness of
language in the human experience. By tying the formal properties of
language that they thought were being captured with their models of syntax
to issues of language acquisition, philosophy of language, and even second
language learning, Chomskyan linguists managed to give their enterprise a
relevance that it may not have had otherwise.

But what does this have to do with HPSG? Well, here is the other edge of
the sword. You seem to imply that the only thing that keeps Chomskyan
lingusitics alive is its dubious claim that it represents some aspect of
the human cognitive ability. Without it, the masses would immediately see
what a hoax their whole set of formal claims was:

>At the danger of stepping on the toes of those adherents of HPSG that
>actually (still) harbor sympathies for the P&P view of linguistic
>knowledge, I think that Chomskyan linguistics will only begin to lose
>market share when it becomes clear that the P&P model is truly
>untenable as a theory of language acquisition. At that point, it will
>no longer be possible to defend the kind of hypertrophied analyses
>that characterize P&P/MP by appealing to innate linguistic knowledge
>that would make those analyses cognitively plausible.

But suppose you *do* have a formal theory of syntax that is formally
unimpeachable. Will that drag the masses towards its light? Well, no.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but I think one of the dangers HPSG faces
is to become a theory that is only relevant for language processing by
solid-state agents (I don;t know if the characterization is right, just
trying to add some color). At some point we will have to figure out what is
the connection between HPSG as a theory of grammar and the broader
questions that are being asked about language (where does it come from? how
does it relate to me as a person? etc.). Otherwise, I am afraid that the
whole enterprise of formal linguistics will become an academic game, or
that it will be practiced only in Computer Science Departments.

But don't get me wrong: I don't mean to imply that we need an 'HPSG theory
of language innnateness', because it may be that the innateness hypothesis
is not true, or even that it is not a legitimate scientific hypothesis. But
starting to ask questions about HPSG and language acquisition could be a
start. I am sure there is some people doing this already, it will be
interesting to know who (even if you have to self-promote).

There is yet another sense in which the P&P model has tried to become
relevant beyond a formal theory of grammar, which is by proposing a theory
of language universals and a way to deal with typological differences.
Again, their aim may be flawed from the start, but the preoccupation with
the question of "how languages differ, and to what extent they are similar"
is something I give them credit for (this is not just a worry of the P&P
model, Relational Grammar is also concerned with this question).

Correct me if I am wrong again, but my impression is that work in HPSG has
concentrated too much on analyses of a single phenomenon in a single
language, too much for my taste, that is. Very little has been done in
contrastive linguistics in HPSG, *even though all the elements are already
there*. Some exceptions that I know of are Gert Webelhuth's work on
causatives, and Rob Malouf's swing at Optimality Theory (I would think the
Verbmobil project must have produced some results in this direction, but I
don't know enough about it). The hierarchical lexicon is a very powerful
tool to do typology and contrastive linguistics, and when one adds defaults
to it one can have a beautiful theory of markedness. This, in turn, can be
used to research language acquisition and language development, and
perhaps, down the road, to participate in another Great Quest.

But first we should figure out whether phrases have ARGST or not...