autonomous syntax

[Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D.]

At 05:46 PM 1/9/97 -1000, Ellen F. Prince wrote:
>well, i guess it all depends on where you're looking. for quite a few
>years now i've been looking at cases of language contact where the
>discourse functions associated with a syntactic form in one language
>come to be associated with an 'analogous' syntactic form in a contact
>language (and where the analogy is statable in purely syntactic terms)
>and where the two forms in question may have originally had totally
>unrelated discourse functions. in fact, it is precisely by studying
>such cases that i have come to believe in autonomous syntax, since, if
>the form-function connection were permanent or driven by iconicity, i
>could simply not begin to explain the data.


This discussion of autonomous syntax has me somewhat baffled.  For my
thinking the discussion of whether or not syntax is autonomous is a little
like asking if
a skeleton is autonomous from the body it supports.  Certainly, in some sense
it is.  But of course the body cannot survive without a skeleton and the
skeleton cannot survive without the rest of the body.  Thus, it is not at
all autonomous.  Given this rather ordinary observation, it strikes me as
rather odd that there should be any discussion at all of the autonomy of
syntax.  It is just as autonomous to language as a skeleton is to the body.
Taking either side of this issue is just missing the point and missing the
reality of what language is.

Phil Bralich




Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D.
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