paradigms

[Daniel L. Everett]

For the record, I have (i) not tried to be provocative (though
apparently I was); (ii) not leveled any criticisms at DM. Just Martha's
view of what counts as metatheory.

It may very well be that paradigms should be rejected. Nothing I have
said was a criticism of DM. Just the confines of the particular
universe of discourse. And the problem is of my own making. That is
what was meant by my 'provocative' letter. I raised an issue. There
were several reasonable replies. However, I realized that the things I
found unsatisfactory about the replies were not things I could deal
with with an example sentence or word or two. This is not the fault of
DM or any theory.

So, to reiterate I did not criticize DM per se.


Thanks to Jonathan, Heidi, Martha and all for comments.

-- Dan

On Thursday, Mar 11, 2004, at 20:30 Europe/London, Martha McGinnis
wrote:

> Dan, I appreciate your efforts to be provocative, but you're
> seriously misrepresenting the discussion of paradigms.
>
> DM doesn't deserve the criticism you're levelling at it.  Defining a
> priori what the correct theory looks like may be metatheory.  More
> importantly, it's bad science.  But DM *doesn't* place a priori
> limits on the form of the correct theory.  It's just a framework of
> testable hypotheses.  Proposing a testable hypothesis isn't
> metatheory, it's just "theory", i.e. normal science.
>
> Anyway, I don't have any more time to devote to this discussion, so
> I'm afraid that's my last word on the subject.
>
> -M.
> --
> mcginnis at ucalgary.ca
>
>

------------------------------------------

Daniel L. Everett
Professor of Phonetics & Phonology
Postgraduate Programme Director
Department of Linguistics
The University of Manchester
Oxford Road
Manchester, UK M13 9PL
http://ling.man.ac.uk/info/staff/de
Fax: 44-161-275-3187
Office: 44-161-275-3158