GG and change

[bwald]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Before I forget, I have some comments on Robert Ratcliff's last message.
He states:
 
>... if one takes seriously the generative claim that the
>goal of formal linguistic analysis is the discovery of an innate,
>biologically determined language faculty, then you sever the link
>between historical and formal linguistics.
 
I would like to offer a different perspective.  It is not about "severing
the link", but about distinguishing between what is innate and thus
presumably immutable, unchangeable, universal etc etc, VS. everything else
in language.  The "everything else" is what is relevant to historical
linguistics, because it is what varies and changes within and across
particular languages from one time to another.  Therefore, the search to
isolate what is innate or invariant in all languages also serves historical
linguistics by revealing those aspects of language, or of any particular
language, which are subject to change.  The two programs complement each
other, and work together.
 
Stated differently, GG, and no doubt any serious synchronic framework for
analysis which claims to be applicable to all observable (and "possible")
human languages, seeks to provide the invariant parameters of language
within which variation and change are possible -- and to which variation
and change are *limited*.  This is quite different from severing the link
between historical and formal (i.e., "universal") linguistics.  So, despite
the difference in emphasis, synchronic linguistics continues its historic
mission to provide a grounding for the study of linguistic change.  One
need not be misled by what some GGists claim they are trying to do (not to
mention what they claim is "important").  It is no different from what
historical linguists are trying to do when they compare two changes and say
they reflect the SAME process of change.
 
Having said that, then, it turns out that virtually every substantive
proposal that GG has made for something invariant in language turns out to
be too concrete, and the exceptions in some language or other show that
those features of language are indeed subject to change.  And so the search
goes on, as proposals for concrete universals retreat into greater
abstraction as the data from more and more languages accumulate.  Each
failed universal is an opportunity for the historical linguist to
contemplate and try to determine how it is that languages can evolve in one
way or the other.