[Lingtyp] discovery procedures vs. diagnostics

[Frederick J Newmeyer]

Dear Adam,

I believe that the term 'discovery procedure' was first used by Chomsky in
the early 1950s to characterize the goals and methodology that were
prevalent among many American structuralists at the time. As he noted,
their goal was to 'discover' the grammar of a language by applying a set of
procedures to the raw data. He argued that science doesn't work that way.
Rather, the most we could hope for, Chomsky said, is an 'evaluation
procedure' for deciding between two candidate grammars that had been
constructed by the researcher. The term 'discovery procedure' was later
adopted by at least some structuralists. As you noted, it appeared in a
book title by Longacre.

Best wishes for the holidays.

Fritz

Frederick J. Newmeyer
Professor Emeritus, University of Washington
Adjunct Professor, U of British Columbia and Simon Fraser U


On Thu, 24 Dec 2020 at 02:21, TALLMAN Adam <Adam.TALLMAN at cnrs.fr> wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> I wonder if anyone has read any sources that explicitly discuss the
> difference or relation between (in theory and/or in practice) between
> 'diagnostics', which are used to link up theoretical models with new data,
> and 'discovery procedures', which are disparaged, but seem to be, in some
> ways, ancestors of the former notion.
>
> Attached are some relevant citations if you've never heard of the notion
> 'discovery procedure'.
>
> best & happy holidays,
>
> Adam
>
>
>
>
>
> Adam James Ross Tallman (PhD, UT Austin)
> ELDP-SOAS -- Postdoctorant
> CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596)
> Bureau 207, 14 av. Berthelot, Lyon (07)
> Numero celular en bolivia: +59163116867
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