LL-L "Linguistics" 2012.10.02 (02) [EN]

[Lowlands-L]

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 L O W L A N D S - L - 02 October 2012 - Volume 02
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From: Brooks, Mark mark.brooks at twc.state.tx.us

Subject: LL-L "Linguistics" 2012.10.01 (03) [EN]

Good morning Michael:



Thanks for your response.



I have worked for the State of Texas for close to 28 years, and I’m going
to retire at the end of this year. I thought it would be nice to
re-acquaint myself with linguistics after all this time.



I’ll have to check into some of these items. Thanks again.


Mark

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From: Mike Morgan mwmbombay at gmail.com <hannehinz at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Linguistics" 2012.10.01 (03) [EN]

In answer to Mark's question regarding linguistic paradigms..

hmmmm, I am not so sure that the other Michael (Montgomery that is)'s
safe ground is all that safe.

BUT, before I let me say that it is always a question of where you are
standing, and how far outside your own neighbourhood you are looking:
which paradigm/theory predominates depends a lot on where you are:
geographically (Japan is probably more generative than America even),
in terms of language specialization (Slavicists don't necessarily
follow the same theories and pardigms as Semiticists), and even
departments (I can imagine that students in some graduate departments
in the States never even hear about Generative theory at all... or at
least, never hear anything good about it ;-)

In individual subfields of linguistics (phonology for one), what can
vaguely be called a "generative paradigm" (including Optimality
theory) are still going rather strong. In others, (Michael mentions
syntax), well yes, there still are a lot of people STILL doing
generative stuff, but there is a much more healthy diversity of
theories and paradigms than there were when I was studying linguistics
in the early 1980s.

Two of the other broad paradigms which are quite strong are Functional
Grammar and Cognitive Grammar.

Moral of the story, life is good and linguistics is healthily a
diverse field with no single dominant paradigm or theory (a statement
that I would NOT have made 30 years ago... when you more or less HAD
to be a generativist if you wanted to get a  job in a Linguistics
department... though thankfully language departments were not so
prejudiced).

> In contrast to Europe one finds
> virtually no attention to typology here in the U.S. (the subject seems
> mainly to be a continental European one)

As a language typologist who lives and works in Asia but who WAS an
American "once upon a time", I'll have to beg to differ with you. We
had our biannual conference time before last at UC Berkeley and it was
very well attended (and not just by "Europeans"), and when we had the
last one in Hong Kong, there were many many Americans (in fact,
Association of Linguistic Typology conference are maybe the ONLY time
I hear  real live Americans talking). In fact, some of the BIGGEST
names in typology (Comrie, Dyer, Nichols, Croft, Payne) are either
Americans or have taught for lengthy periods in the US.

I think the BIGGEST problem STILL is that many linguists rarely attend
conferences or read journals outside their own limited fields and
theoretical frameworks (especially and infamously guilty of biased
linguistics are some generative journals which have a terribly bad
record for citing ANY work by non-generativists). And departments of
linguistics (again, as opposed to language departments) tend to NOT go
for theoretical diversity... with the result that linguistics graduate
students RARELY coem out with a rounded view of what linguistics is.

mwm || *U*C> || mike || माईक || мика || マイク (aka Dr Michael W Morgan)
sign language linguist / linguistic typologist
academic adviser, Nepal Sign Language Training and Research
NDFN, Kathmandu, Nepal

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