lfg and functionalism - more

[bresnan at csli.stanford.edu]

Matt Shibatani and I have been having an exchange on lfg
and functionalism, which we decided to submit to this list,
to further the discussion.  I have edited out personal remarks and
long header info.

Joan

Date: Sun, 1 Oct 1995 09:40:06 -0700
To: bresnan at csli.stanford.edu
From: masayoshi shibatani <shibatan at ucla.edu>
Subject: LFG & Functionalism

Dear Joan: Many thanks for posting your remarks on the relationship between
LFG and fucntionalism. I am glad you aired that as I agree with you that LFG
has been giving more formalist impressions.  This is in part people are
using the term 'functionalism' in different senses. If you allow the term to
apply to grammar internal functional orientations, which I think is
legitimate and perhaps more orthodox, the recent Christian grammar is also
functional in that constituents are motivated functionally, via agreement,
via the head-complement relationship, though these relational or dependency
concepts do not figure directly in the tree representations. 
     And so, the distinction is more toward how one seeks grammar external
explanation, I suppose. 

[snip--personal news omitted]

Date: Sun, 01 Oct 1995 10:17:53 -0700
To: masayoshi shibatani <shibatan at ucla.edu>
From: Joan Bresnan <bresnan at Russell.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Re: LFG & Functionalism 

Hi, Matt.  It's good to hear from you.  I wouldn't call "grammar-internal
functional orientations" truly functional, unless they have a clear
relation to an external functional motivation.  What are you referring
to by the term " the recent Christian grammar"?

[snip--personal news omitted]

Date: Sun, 1 Oct 1995 20:46:27 -0700
To: Joan Bresnan <bresnan at Russell.Stanford.EDU>
From: masayoshi shibatani <shibatan at ucla.edu>
Subject: Re: LFG & Functionalism 

Dear Joan: Sorry the spell check had changed 'the recent Chomskyan
linguistics' to 'the recent Christian lingusitics'.  I suppose you can
always find external motivations for dependency relations such as ease of
identifying constituents forming a dependency relation, etc. 

[snip]

Date: Sun, 01 Oct 1995 22:44:25 -0700
To: masayoshi shibatani <shibatan at ucla.edu>
Subject: Re: LFG & Functionalism 
From: Joan Bresnan <bresnan at Russell.Stanford.EDU>

Actually, I think this is a very interesting point.  (I'm not
referring to the religious tranformation of "Chomskyan".)
I don't think you CAN find an external motivation for
Chomskyan dependency relations, because they really do not characterize
forms of expression of language (such as morphological paradigms for
agreement and case systems, etc.), but only abstract syntax from which
actual forms are encapsulated in PF.  Abstract dependency relations do
not help you identify constituents at all; in fact, they frequently go
against classical constituency tests grounded in overt syntax (see e.g.
Pesetsky's Zero Syntax on this).   If anything, Chomsky in his
Minimalist Program runs ever farther away from language--it's not of
interest to him at all.  Hence, his functional motivations are simply
internal motivations for an imaginary computational system almost
entirely disconnected from language as we know it.

[snip]

Date: Mon, 2 Oct 1995 08:27:01 -0700
To: Joan Bresnan <bresnan at Russell.Stanford.EDU>
From: masayoshi shibatani <shibatan at ucla.edu>
Subject: Re: LFG & Functionalism 

Dear Joan: I was really being more sympathetic with the 'traditional'
dependency syntax rather than with the current Chomsky and his followers. I
had in mind some of the work on Japanese syntax by traditional Japanese
grammarians who tried to work out syntax from a grammar-internal functional
perspective, which is more morphologically grounded such as verb inflections
associated with different kinds of verbal functions, e.g. predication,
modification, etc. (This is what I am trying to teach [with] a view toward
correlating grammatical functions and parts of speech --the topic not many
people are pursuing these days--in my seminar at UCLA.)

[snip]















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Joan Bresnan	bresnan at csli.stanford.edu      ______     _`\<,_    _`\<,_
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