analysis: phenomenological vs. cognitive

[Esa Itkonen]

Dear Friends: These questions were given what I consider the definitive answer in the context of the 'psychological reality' debate in the mid and late 70's. But there is no harm in reinventing (or renaming) the wheel.
Esa 

Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen

----- Original Message -----
From: Martin Haspelmath <haspelmath at eva.mpg.de>
Date: Friday, September 10, 2010 2:19 pm
Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] analysis: phenomenological vs. cognitive
To: Funknet <funknet at mailman.rice.edu>


> Lise Menn wrote:
>  > I wish we had better terminology for keeping track of whether, at a 
> 
>  > given time, we are talking about the patterns that are 'out there' 
> in 
>  > the language and might possibly be apprehended (subconsciously) by 
> a 
>  > speaker, and when we are talking about the patterns that a 
> particular 
>  > speaker actually does apprehend, as indicated by experiments, from 
> 
>  > simple 'wug tests' up to brain wave and eye-gaze studies. 
>  I suggested two terms for these kinds of patterns in a 2004 paper 
>  (reference below):
>  
>  – phenomenological description (for what is "out there", or "grammars 
> 
>  that are based simply on the form-meaning correspondences", in Edith 
> 
>  Moravcsik's terms)
>  
>  – cognitive description (for what a speaker has in their head)
>  
>  In the paper my main claim is that we don't really need cognitive 
>  description in order to explain the patterns of languages in 
> functional 
>  terms (just as Darwin didn't need full descriptions of genomes to 
> come 
>  up with functional explanations of the phenomenological properties of 
> 
>  species).
>  
>  In generative linguistics, of course, one needs a unique "analysis" 
> for 
>  each structure, because explanation and description/analysis are the 
> 
>  same enterprise (just two different aspects of it), whereas in 
>  functional linguistics, description and explanation are separate. 
> Thus, 
>  the fact that the best cognitive description is somewhat elusive 
> doesn't 
>  matter to this approach.
>  
>  Martin
>  
>  
>  Reference:
>  Haspelmath, Martin. 2004. Does linguistic explanation presuppose 
>  linguistic description? Studies in Language 28. 554-579. 
>  (doi:10.1075/sl.28.3.06has)
>  
>  -- 
>  Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva.mpg.de)
>  Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Deutscher Platz 
> 6	
>  D-04103 Leipzig      
>  Tel. (MPI) +49-341-3550 307, (priv.) +49-341-980 1616
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  
>