[Corpora-List] Do you think LINGUISTICS is SCIENCE or ARTS?

[Gilles Serasset]

Hi all,

On 23 mars 10, at 10:22, Yuri Tambovtsev wrote:

> Dear Corpora colleagues, Do you think LINGUISTICS is SCIENCE or  
> ARTS? I think the discussion about linguistics using either the  
> scientific or artistic methods, is quite interesting. Really, is it  
> ARTS (the Humanities) or Science. If we divide this man activity  
> into Sciences and Arts, then linguistics for the exception of  
> phonetics is Arts. Can linguistics reconstruct some parent language?  
> We know that all the Romance languages have the parent language,  
> i.e. Latin. But can linguists reconstruct Latin on the basis of  
> Italian, Spanish, French and other Romance languages? The answer is  
> NO. If linguistics had been SCience, then it would have been  
> possible. But it is ARTS, thus it is impossible. Or am I mistaken?  
> Looking forward to hearing from you either directly yutamb at mail.ru  
> or via the net. Be well, Yuri Tambovtsev


Well,

I do not know if there are any geneticians that ask themselves if  
genetics is science or arts... but, as far as I know, no genetician is  
able to reconstruct the genome of the ancestor of homo sapiens and  
chimpanzee...

So I would not say anything about what is possible or impossible with  
either alternatives.

And to continue with the jokes:
> After hearing a piece of music, Gauss reputedly asked "Nice, but what
> does it prove?" A preconception to mathematicians, of course.  But....


Well, in itself, maybe it does not prove anything, but if you add more  
assumption to the universe you are trying to build, then you could  
prove that "Gauss was not deaf".

Regards,

Gilles,

--
Gilles Sérasset
GETALP-LIG                         BP 53 - F-38041 Grenoble Cedex 9
Phone: +33 4 76 51 43 80                   Fax:   +33 4 76 63 56 86

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