[Lingtyp] A plea for productive & respectful rhetoric

Tue Apr 1 10:16:31 UTC 2025

In case you have not watched this yet: Science is in trouble and it worries me, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtxjatbVb7M 

This one is also highly relevant: I was asked to keep this confidential, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shFUDPqVmTg 

About the author: Sabine Hossenfelder has a PhD in physics. She is author of the books "Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray" (Basic Books, 2018) and "Existential Physics: A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions" (Viking, 2022); and at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabine_Hossenfelder 

Best, 
Stela

> On 01.04.2025, at 10:24, PONSONNET Maia via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> wrote:
> 
> Dear Patrick, dear all, 
> 
> I agree that it is useful to question our activities, and that it must be done constructively. 
> 
> One first question I'd have for you Patrick (and others as well): are your criticisms addressed to linguistics specifically, or would they also apply to other scientific disciplines? Social sciences and humanities? Hard sciences? 
> 
> Cheers and thanks for the debate, Maïa    
> 
> Maïa Ponsonnet
> Chargée de Recherche HDR @ CNRS Dynamique Du Langage
> 14, avenue Berthelot, 69007 Lyon, FRANCE  -- +33 4 72 72 65 46
> Adjunct @ University of Western Australia
> + + + + +
> Co-rédactrice en chef du Journal de la Société des Océanistes
> https://journals.openedition.org/jso/
> Membre du Comité d'Ethique de la Recherche, Université de Lyon
>  <https://www.universite-lyon.fr/recherche/comite-d-ethique-de-la-recherche/comite-d-ethique-de-la-recherche-245561.kjsp>https://tinyurl.com/cerunivdelyon
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> De : Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org <mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>> de la part de Patrik Austin via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>>
> Envoyé : mardi 1 avril 2025 09:51
> À : lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> Objet : Re: [Lingtyp] A plea for productive & respectful rhetoric
>  
> Yes, let us discuss it constructively. What is the problem in linguistics that led to broken research, in your opinion?
> 
>  
> Am 31/03/2025 00:07, schrieb Adam Singerman via Lingtyp:
> > I am writing in response to Patrik Austin's message to LingTyp from
> > Tuesday, March 25th, in which several different research traditions
> > were disparaged using rhetoric that is at best simply not collegial
> > and at worst counterproductive to our collective efforts as linguists.
> > Patrik's message contained several comments which I think need to be
> > called out, since if we allow this kind of rhetoric to take hold on
> > LingTyp (or in our scholarly spaces in general) we will be unable to
> > make progress towards our overall goal as linguists, which is to
> > understand individual languages as well as capitalized Language in all
> > its richness and complexity.
> >
> > I should say at the outset that I have been trained primarily in
> > formal analysis & theory (generative syntax, generative phonology,
> > Distributed Morphology) and while I agree with many of the goals of
> > formal analysis & theory, I often find diachronic explanations for
> > synchronic patterns to be more convincing and satisfying than
> > formalist ones. (I enjoy teaching historical linguistics much more
> > than I enjoy teaching syntactic analysis, for example.) So please do
> > not think that I am writing this message because I am a practicioner
> > of any particular formalist school of thought. On the contrary, I
> > think that we ned to approach questions from different angles using
> > the analytic tools provided by different schools of thought.
> >
> > Here are two comments from Patrik's message which bothered me:
> > (1) "A summary shows that syntactic typology is BS, to put it politely"
> > (2) "Figure 3... shows how not just syntactic typology but also
> > Generative Grammar is BS, which everyone of course always knew"
> >
> > Both "syntactic typology" and "Generative Grammar" are *scientific
> > research programs* in the sense of Lakatos. Hundreds if not thousands
> > of linguists have made contributions to each of these research
> > programs over the course of many, many decades, and some linguists
> > have worked in both of these programs. In my experience the best
> > linguists are ones who recognize that we will need formal AND
> > functional explanations; it is an open question whether a given
> > phenomenon is best explained formally or functionally, which is where
> > a lot of the most interesting debate happens. Now, it is definitely
> > the case that many individual *hypotheses* that have been formulated
> > within the research program known as syntactic typology, just as it is
> > surely the case that many individual *hypotheses* formulated within
> > the research program of formal analysis/theory ("Generative Grammar")
> > are false. This is how science progresses: hypotheses are formulated,
> > are tested, and are falsified, and we discard the falsified ones. But
> > to say that all of syntactic typology and all of Generative Grammar
> > are BS is far too coarse and far too negative a judgment. Both of
> > these research programs contain valuable insights, and to call them
> > both bull**** is to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
> >
> > Finally, I want to respond to the following comment:
> > (3) "linguistics is a farce, a status game, a broken system, and
> > people doing it are hostages to the system with little will of their
> > own. It is a sad, pathetic world, and no one can fix it because all
> > participants are economically and emotionally tied to it."
> >
> > Once we make this kind of assertion, which disparages not only the
> > research being done but also the people who do the research, we leave
> > the territory of collegial, civil scientific discourse and enter a
> > world of ad hominem attacks.
> >
> > I do think it is fair for someone to say that, in their opinion, too
> > many resources (jobs, grants, PhD scholarships, publications in top
> > journals, etc) have been devoted to a particular school of linguistics
> > over another, and that our entire field would do better if there were
> > to be more balance between the subfields. (For example, I think that
> > more departments in the US should have historical linguists on
> > faculty, and I think that all graduate students being trained in
> > synchronic phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, etc should have
> > to take at least one semester of historical linguistics, too.) But to
> > say that our entire field is "a farce, a status game, a broken system"
> > ? and that all the researchers who work within this field are
> > "hostages" who lack free will ? is not respectful or productive.
> >
> > Best,
> > Adam
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> > https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
> 
> 
>> 
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