19.2754, Disc: Review of 'Chomsky's Minimalism'

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Wed Sep 10 15:52:21 UTC 2008


LINGUIST List: Vol-19-2754. Wed Sep 10 2008. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 19.2754, Disc: Review of 'Chomsky's Minimalism'

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1)
Date: 09-Sep-2008
From: Wolfram Hinzen < wolfram.hinzen at dur.ac.uk >
Subject: Review of 'Chomsky's Minimalism'

 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2008 11:51:05
From: Wolfram Hinzen [wolfram.hinzen at dur.ac.uk]
Subject: Review of 'Chomsky's Minimalism'
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One would like to see the empirical evidence for the 'fact' that semantics
goes before syntax, or that we first 'think', and then 'speak', as stated
in LINGUIST discussion issue number 19.2747 (link below). There is, as far
as I know, no evidence, in fact, that semantics of the human kind is
possible in the absence of a suitable syntax or generative system that
supports such a semantics. If so, semantics, not only cannot, but must come
after syntax, and it is a genuine insight of the generative tradition that
what kinds of semantic interpretations we get, systematically depends on
which syntactic structures a mind can and does compute. The idea that
thoughts can be generated in a language-less mental nirvana, and then get
somehow 'translated' into language, is a philosophical myth that arose with
the Cartesian rationalist tradition. 

To see the previous thread(s) in this discussion, please visit:
http://linguistlist.org/issues/19/19-2747.html 


Linguistic Field(s): Linguistic Theories
                     Syntax






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