LL-L "Linguistics" 2012.10.01 (03) [EN]

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 L O W L A N D S - L - 01 October 2012 - Volume 03
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From: Montgomery Michael ullans at yahoo.com

Subject: LL-L "Linguistics" 2012.10.01 (02) [EN]


Hello Mark

I think that it's quite safe to say that in the U.S. generative theory
retains the same primacy in the study of syntax.  In some domains, such as
historical linguistics, it has increased (e.g. a trans-Atlantic group of
mainly syntacticians has since 1990 held a biennial meeting called DiGS,
Diachronic Generative Syntax).  As a very broad generalization, formal
approaches to language analysis are dominant rather than functional ones.
Generative syntax seems to have less and less room for semantics, but more
and more for cognitive psychology and computational-based models.  In
phonology the ruling paradigm is Optimality Theory.  Once one steps outside
formal analysis, one sees vastly more linguists interested in and working
on language acquisition (especially second language acquisition), discourse
analysis, and some areas of sociolinguistics.  Phonetics, historically far
less prominent in the U.S. than in the U.K. is experiencing very rapid
growth (usually under the rubric "socio-phonetics") in large part because
of the proliferation of software for instrumental analysis.  In other
words, acoustic phonetics is replacing impressionistic phonetics for more
and more linguists, with the benefit of reintroducing phonetics at some
institutions where it had disappeared.  In contrast to Europe one finds
virtually no attention to typology here in the U.S. (the subject seems
mainly to be a continental European one) and far less corpus linguistics,
though interest in the latter is steadily growing.  So when Linguist List
announces conferences on typology, corpus linguistics, multilingualism, and
a few other topics, they are almost never ones held in North America.

I will now run for cover from those left out of these generalizations.

All the best

Michael Montgomery
Univ. of South Carolina


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