<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<p>Dear all,</p>
<p>Adam poses the question ...<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 08/12/2021 13:10, Adam James Ross
Tallman wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAK0T6OgMNoYyejqSj-oixi-g1Da0jm9+N4vzgdH2UWj1yuqVsw@mail.gmail.com">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<div dir="ltr"><i>why </i>we appear to be in so much disagreement
about terminological issues. It's not as if any linguists are
purposely trying to obfuscate things - so how did we end up
where we are?<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>Adam proposes one answer, which is kind of specific to clitics,
and about which I have nothing to say. But I think that, in
addition, there is a more general answer to Adam's question.</p>
<p>Let's compare linguistics to physics. Although physics has
foundational questions every bit as far-reaching as those of
linguistics, to the best of my knowledge, physicists don't spend
their time fretting over terminological issues the way us
linguists do. So why is this the case? I think there's actually
a relatively straightforward reason why. Most of the things that
physicists deal with are either so small (sub-atomic particles) or
so large (galaxies etc.) that they have little or no interface
with our everyday experiential universe. So there's no big reason
to care what physicists choose to call things. On the other hand,
linguistics deals with stuff that impinges directly on our lives
on an everyday basis. So calling something a clitic, or a DP, or
an antipassive, seems to be saying something about the language
that is an integral part of our everyday lives. Of course, as
conscientious scientists we ought to be able to divorce our
technical analyses from our everyday experiences and reflections;
but in practice there seems to be seepage. And it is this
seepage, I would like to suggest, that may be at least one reason
why we seem to care so much more than say physicists about what we
call things.</p>
<p>(Of course, the seepage is not just terminological but also
substantive, a prime example of that being the notion of word. We
all deal with the layman's notion of word in our everyday lives,
every time we press the space bar on our keyboards, and then do a
word count of our texts; but then in many cases we uncritically
import the layman's notion of word into our grammatical analyses.)<br>
</p>
<p>David<br>
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
David Gil
Senior Scientist (Associate)
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig, 04103, Germany
Email: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:gil@shh.mpg.de">gil@shh.mpg.de</a>
Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-526117713
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091
</pre>
</body>
</html>