something to take note of

[Paulo Chagas de Souza]

Dear colleagues,

I read Levine's message and I have a few comments about it. In his 1986 book
(Knowledge of Language), Chomsky discusses two important issues, which he
names Plato's Problem (how do we know so much given that the evidence
available to us is so sparse?) and Orwell's Problem (why do we know and
understand so little given that the evidence available to us is so rich?).

Most of the book is devoted to discussing Plato's Problem. I haven't read
Chomsky's writing on sociological issues, but I gather that's where he
discusses Orwell's Problem, which is one instance of the so called
"manufacture of consent" or "engineering of consent".

In my view, Orwell's Problem is just as important for linguistic theorists
as Plato's Problem is deemed to be.

One illustration of its importance is the unscientific revolution commented
upon in Johnson, Lappin and Levine's paper, after which a phenomenon such as
government and its proper definition, which were central concerns of the
previous paradigm, are now non-existent issues which play no role in the
theory of grammar. I wonder if I'm stretching things a bit too far or I am
right in thinking this is reminding of wars with Eurasia or Eastasia.

Another one is the curious disappearance of some authors from the lists of
references appearing in articles stemming from the Chomskyan paradigm (I
won't mention any names, but some linguists who work on the West Coast are
clear examples). I wonder if they suddenly become unlinguists .

A closely related issue is the absence of any mention of notions such as
unification in the Minimalist Program, even though it has been around for
quite some time, at least for the sake of refuting it altogether (I presume
scientists should at least acknowledge the existence of related work in
their fields, even if they do not adhere to those other views). Well, if
Government and Binding Theory was fundamentally wrong but gets some credit
in Chomsky's recent papers nonetheless, shouldn't he give the devil his due
and acknowledge the existence of others who have been working basically on
the same issues, even if they turn out to be wrong? Or are some mistakes
more equal than the others?

One last point is the massive translation of research conducted in GB into a
new format, even if this format apparently has no empirical gain. Quia
magister dixit? Isn't that to some extent a form of Newspeak, i.e., a new
way of saying the same thing without using unwords?

These notes are not too well-thought or well-written but I think they are
pretty much on the right track. I'll be looking forward to comments on these
thoughts.

Paulo


Paulo Chagas de Souza
Linguistics Department
Universidade de São Paulo
São Paulo - Brazil
pcsouza at usp.br


-----Mensagem Original-----
De: Robert Levine <levine at ling.ohio-state.edu>
Para: <hpsg at ling.ohio-state.edu>
Cc: <levine at ling.ohio-state.edu>
Enviada em: Sexta-feira, 2 de Junho de 2000 12:02
Assunto: something to take note of


>
>
> Dear colleagues:
>
> You might be interested in the following story. The editors of the
> journal Lingua recently instituted an opinion/viewpoints column and
> invited us to submit an essay on a topic of our choosing as the
> inaugural column. We accepted and sent them a short essay, titled `The
> structure of unscientific revolutions', which some of you have already
> seen, containing our observations on the wholesale and extremely
> rapid adoption of Chomsky's minimalist speculations as the default
> paradigm by many derivational theorists in the absence of even mild
> debate about its theoretical or empirical advantages. After our piece
> was accepted, we made inquiries about how the editors intended to to
handle
> replies and our response to them. The editors were not particulary
> forthcoming, but what emerged was that they had recruited two replies
> (in accordance with the number of people who they claim that we
> attacked in our piece). At one point we were notified that Lingua
> would only publish our responses to the replies if they contained "new
> points". We began to feel uneasy and suspected an ambush in which our
> piece would be lined up against a panel of recruited
> critiques. Subsequently, the editors informed us that our piece would
> appear with the two replies, and we could respond, but only in the
> subsequent issue. We objected on the grounds that standard editorial
> practise in both scientific and general interest journals involves
> permitting the authors to repond to critiques of their piece in the
> same issue as the replies, and that, while we certainly agreed that
> anyone should be allowed to reply, we did not want our piece published
> with a series of unanswered replies. A response from us in a
> subsequent issue would lose all effect and not be understood in the
> context of the original discussion.
>
> A survey among a number of colleagues and friends in the academic and
> publishing world confirms that the format which Lingua has insisted on
> significantly deviates from normal editorial practise for a scientific
> journal. In the end, we decided to withdraw the piece to prevent it
> from becoming the target of an orchestrated attack in which we are
> being denied an effective procedure for responding. In our view, it is
> difficult to escape the conclusion that we are dealing here with an
> attempt(perhaps inadvertant) to direct opinion rather than engage in
> genuinely free discussion. It is precisely this phenomenon that we
> discuss in our paper. Those of you who are interested in the piece can
> download it from
>
> http://semantics.phil.kcl.ac.uk/lapp_lev_johns/...ps
>
> And, of course, we do welcome any comments or feedback.
>
> David Johnson
> Shalom Lappin
> Bob Levine
>
>
>
>