<div dir="ltr"><div><font size="4"><span style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">Dear Adam,</span></font></div><div><span style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><font size="4">Yes, there is lots of textual support. If you want to see discovery procedures carried to an extreme, then read anything by Zellig Harris, for example:</font></span></div><div><span style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><font size="4"><br></font></span></div><div><span style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><font size="4">Harris, Zellig S. (1955). 'From Phoneme to Morpheme', Language 31: 190-222.</font></span></div><div><span style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><font size="4">Harris, Zellig S. (1946). 'From Morpheme to Utterance', Language 22: 161-83.</font></span></div><div><span style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><font size="4"><br></font></span></div><div><span style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><font size="4">Harris's book wasn't (originally) entitled '<i>METHODS in Structural Linguistics</i>' for nothing. The whole book is devoted to discovery procedures.</font></span></div><div><span style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><font size="4"><br></font></span></div><div>
<span style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><font size="4">For the most empiricist of the descriptivists, the
goal was to arrive at a grammar of a language by performing a set of operations
on a corpus of data, each successive operation being one step farther removed
from the corpus. It followed then that the levels of a grammatical description
had to be arrived at in the order: first, phonemics, then morphemics, then
syntax, then discourse: ‘There is no circularity; no grammatical fact of any
kind is used in making phonological analysis’ (<span>Hockett 1942</span>:
20). Martin Joos's comments after many of the papers in his edited volume <i>Readings in Linguistics</i> (1957) will give you a flavour of discovery procedures. He approves of Bernard Bloch's 'Phonemic Overlapping' article, even though he himself recognized that Bloch's analysis was counterintuitive. But Bloch had to discover the phonemes directly from the phones without using any other sort of information, so his final analysis was weird.</font></span></div><div><span style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><font size="4"><br></font></span></div><div><span style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><font size="4">There were less extreme structuralists in the US in this time period. Those with a Prague School background, like Jakobson, of course. And Kenneth Pike argued -- to the scorn of many of his colleagues -- that you had to use grammatical information in a phonemic analysis. But even Pike did not really break from operationalism, as he proposed discovery procedures to 'find' the grammatical information.</font></span></div><div><span style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><font size="4"><br></font></span></div><div><span style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><font size="4">I think that in <i>Chomsky's Current Issues in Linguistic Theor</i>y (1964), you will find a number of references to post-Bloomfieldian discovery procedures.</font></span></div><div><span style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><font size="4"><br></font></span></div><div><span style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><font size="4">Fritz<br></font></span>
</div><div><span style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><font size="4"><br></font></span></div><div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><span style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><font size="4"><br>Frederick J. Newmeyer<br>Professor Emeritus, University of Washington<br></font></span></div><font size="4"><span style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">Adjunct Professor, U of British Columbia and Simon Fraser U</span><br></font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, 24 Dec 2020 at 09:50, TALLMAN Adam <<a href="mailto:Adam.TALLMAN@cnrs.fr">Adam.TALLMAN@cnrs.fr</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
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<div>Dear Bill (if I may),</div>
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<div>Thanks for your response and directing us to the passage where this issue is addressed. In fact, I see Seuren's response as a way of evading the methodological problems you highlight by conflating discovery procedure with diagnostic or criterion.</div>
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<div>Dear Fritz (if I may),</div>
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<div>Is there any obvious textual support for Chomsky's interpretation? I have not found any, but perhaps I am misreading things with a hindsight vision. After reading Longacre's book, I feel that the tagmemicist notion of 'discovery procedure' is very similar
to the way 'diagnostic' or 'criterion' is typically used today (e.g. affix diagnostic, word diagnostic) - not just in generative literature, but in Dixon's presentation of 'Basic Linguistic Theory', for instance. Perhaps the notion articulated by Chomsky was
an idea 'in the air' so to speak and was not put on paper.</div>
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<div>best,<br>
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<div>Adam<br>
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<div><font size="2" face="Verdana">Adam James Ross Tallman (PhD, UT Austin)</font></div>
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<div id="gmail-m_3629936666452562391divRpF226292" style="direction:ltr"><font size="2" face="Tahoma" color="#000000"><b>De :</b> William Croft [<a href="mailto:wcroft@unm.edu" target="_blank">wcroft@unm.edu</a>]<br>
<b>Envoyé :</b> jeudi 24 décembre 2020 18:04<br>
<b>À :</b> TALLMAN Adam<br>
<b>Cc :</b> <a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a><br>
<b>Objet :</b> Re: discovery procedures vs. diagnostics<br>
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Adam's quotation from Seuren's review of <i>Radical Construction Grammar </i>prompts me to cite a passage of the book (pp 10-11) which Seuren ignored in his review:</div>
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<p><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"GaramondPage0a"">"It has been suggested to me that the methodological question is of relatively
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<span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"GaramondPage0a"">minor importance. In particular, reference is made to Chomsky's argument that it is unreasonable to ask linguistic theory for a discovery procedure for identifying the right grammar for a particular
language (Chomsky 1957: 50</span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"GaramondPage0b"">–</span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"GaramondPage0a"">3). However, the problem which I am referring to is more basic than that. It is what
Chomsky calls the condition of generality (ibid., 50), necessary for any adequate theory of grammar:
</span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"GaramondPage0b"">‘</span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"GaramondPage0a"">we must characterize the form of grammars in a general and explicit way so that we can actually propose grammars
of this form for particular languages</span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"GaramondPage0b"">’
</span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"GaramondPage0a"">(ibid., 53</span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"GaramondPage0b"">–</span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"GaramondPage0a"">4). That is, for a particular
language we can argue for and thus justify the analysis of that language's structures as an instance of the structures found in Universal Grammar.
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<p><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"GaramondPage0a"">It is the condition of generality that I believe current syntactic theories fail. That is, the methods that linguists use to argue for their syntactic theories carry hidden fallacies which
are largely unremarked upon. When these fallacious assumptions are uncovered, their abandonment leads us to a very different approach to syntactic theory than that advocated by formalist theories and even the functionalist syntactic theories referred to above."</span></p>
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I've written about those hidden assumptions and fallacies in numerous places besides the book, particularly in the references cited below.<br>
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Happy Holidays,</div>
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Bill</div>
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<a><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times","serif""><span>Croft, William. 2009. “Methods for finding language un</span></span></a><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times","serif"">iversals in syntax.”
<i>Universals of language today</i>, ed. Sergio Scalise, Elisabetta Magni and Antonietta Bisetto, 145-64. Berlin: Springer.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times","serif"">Croft, William. 2010.
<span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times","serif"">“Ten unwarranted assumptions in syntactic argumentation.”
<i>Language usage and language structure,</i> ed. Kasper Bøye and Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen, 313-50. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
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<span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times","serif"">Croft, William. <span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times","serif"">
“Word classes in Radical Construction Grammar.” <i>The Oxford handbook of word classes,
</i>ed. Eva Van Lier. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Draft at <a href="http://www.unm.edu/~Papers/WordClassesRCG.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.unm.edu/~Papers/WordClassesRCG.pdf</a></span></span><br>
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<div id="gmail-m_3629936666452562391divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font style="font-size:11pt" face="Calibri, sans-serif" color="#000000"><b>From:</b> Lingtyp <<a href="mailto:lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>> on behalf of TALLMAN Adam <<a href="mailto:Adam.TALLMAN@cnrs.fr" target="_blank">Adam.TALLMAN@cnrs.fr</a>><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Thursday, December 24, 2020 3:50 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> <a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a> <<a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [Lingtyp] discovery procedures vs. diagnostics</font>
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<div>Oh there was one more source I meant to attach by Seuren, in his review of Croft's 'Radical Construction Grammar'. It is really the only source that directly brings up the relationship (that I know of it), but its very succint (and silly).</div>
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<div>"<span style="font-size:16.6043px;font-family:serif">Croft then proceeds to show (pp. 29–47) that, on this premiss, distributional</span><span style="font-size:16.6043px;font-family:serif">analysis
leads to a quandary caused by the fact that no two elements have </span><span style="font-size:16.6043px;font-family:serif">exactly the same distribution under any system of categorization in any</span><span style="font-size:16.6043px;font-family:serif">language,
which makes it hard to establish syntactic categories. Moreover,</span><span style="font-size:16.6043px;font-family:serif">once categories have been established for one language, as a result of</span><span style="font-size:16.6043px;font-family:serif">‘methodological
opportunism’, a further appeal must be made to this ‘op</span><span style="font-size:16.6043px;font-family:serif">portunism’ to establish cross-linguistic categories, such as those of noun,</span><span style="font-size:16.6043px;font-family:serif">adjective,
adverb, or subject, direct object, etc., which all have non-identical</span><span style="font-size:16.6043px;font-family:serif">distributions in di</span><span style="font-size:16.6043px;font-family:serif">ff</span><span style="font-size:16.6043px;font-family:serif">erent
languages. Therefore, established linguistic meth</span><span style="font-size:16.6043px;font-family:serif">odology is at fault and RCG will put things right.</span><span style="font-size:16.6043px;font-family:serif"><br>
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<div><span style="font-size:16.6043px;font-family:serif">The first thing a professional linguist will say, at this point, is that this</span><span style="font-size:16.6043px;font-family:serif">quandary
has been well-known since at least the 1950s. It was precisely the</span><span style="font-size:16.6043px;font-family:serif">reason why the inductive method of distributional analysis meant to yield so-</span><span style="font-size:16.6043px;font-family:serif">called</span><span style="font-size:11.623px;font-family:serif"><span>
DISCOVERY </span>PROCEDURES</span><span style="font-size:16.6043px;font-family:serif">was abandoned as a method for discovering</span><span style="font-size:16.6043px;font-family:serif">correct
linguistic analyses and replaced with the deductive method of the</span><span style="font-size:16.6043px;font-family:serif">formation and testing of descriptive hypotheses. That is, one just posits</span><span style="font-size:16.6043px;font-family:serif">categories
for each specific language and assigns them certain structural</span><span style="font-size:16.6043px;font-family:serif">and/or semantic properties, and one then sees to what extent the machinery</span><span style="font-size:16.6043px;font-family:serif">(or
module)</span><span style="font-size:16.6043px;font-family:serif">
</span><span style="font-size:16.6043px;font-family:serif">that is based on them yields the right results, according to</span><span style="font-size:16.6043px;font-family:serif"> an agreed set of
eliminative adequacy criteria."</span></div>
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<div><font face="Verdana">Any other sources that try to draw out the relationship would be appreciated (even if they are not particularly informative or accurate, like the one above).<br>
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<div><font face="Verdana">best,</font></div>
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<div><font face="Verdana">Adam<br>
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<div><font size="2" face="Verdana">Adam James Ross Tallman (PhD, UT Austin)</font></div>
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<div id="gmail-m_3629936666452562391x_divRpF430816" style="direction:ltr"><font size="2" face="Tahoma" color="#000000"><b>De :</b> Lingtyp [<a href="mailto:lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>] de la part de TALLMAN Adam [<a href="mailto:Adam.TALLMAN@cnrs.fr" target="_blank">Adam.TALLMAN@cnrs.fr</a>]<br>
<b>Envoyé :</b> jeudi 24 décembre 2020 11:20<br>
<b>À :</b> <a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a><br>
<b>Objet :</b> [Lingtyp] discovery procedures vs. diagnostics<br>
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<div>Hello all,</div>
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<div>I wonder if anyone has read any sources that explicitly discuss the difference or relation between (in theory and/or in practice) between 'diagnostics', which are used to link up theoretical models with new data, and 'discovery procedures', which are disparaged,
but seem to be, in some ways, ancestors of the former notion.</div>
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<div>Attached are some relevant citations if you've never heard of the notion 'discovery procedure'.<br>
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<div>best & happy holidays,<br>
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<div>Adam<br>
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<div><font size="2" face="Verdana">Adam James Ross Tallman (PhD, UT Austin)</font></div>
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<div><font style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><font size="2" face="Verdana">Numero celular en bolivia: +59163116867</font><br>
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