The Status of Linguistic Theories

(2008). Meta-Linguistics: Methodology and Ontology in Devitt's Ignorance of Language. Australasian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 86, No. 4, pp. 643-656.

I review and challenge the views on simplicity and its role in linguistics put forward by Ludlow. In particular, I criticize the claim that simplicity—in the sense pertinent to science—is nothing more than ease of use or “user-friendliness”, motivated by economy of labor. I argue that Ludlow’s discussion fails to do justice to the diversity of factors that are relevant to simplicity considerations. This, in turn, leads to the neglect of crucial cases in which the rationale for simplification is unmistakably (...) epistemic, as well as instances where simplicity is part of the content of substantive, empirical hypotheses. I illustrate these points with examples from the history of generative linguistics, such as: the shaping influence exerted by simplicity, via its involvement in the notion of “linguistically significant generalization”, its methodological and substantive contribution to the goal of explanatory adequacy, and its central role in the Minimalist Program’s search “beyond explanatory adequacy”. (shrink)

The enigma of the Emergence of Natural Languages, coupled or not with the closely related problem of their Evolution is perceived today as one of the most important scientific problems. The purpose of the present study is actually to outline such a solution to our problem which is epistemologically consonant with the Big Bang solution of the problem of the Emergence of the Universe}. Such an outline, however, becomes articulable, understandable, and workable only in a drastically extended epistemic and scientific (...) oecumene, where known and habitual approaches to the problem, both theoretical and experimental, become distant, isolated, even if to some degree still hospitable conceptual and methodological islands. The guiding light of our inquiry will be Eugene Paul Wigner's metaphor of ``the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in natural sciences'', i.e., the steadily evolving before our eyes, since at least XVIIth century, ``the miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics''. Kurt Goedel's incompleteness and undecidability theory will be our guardian discerner against logical fallacies of otherwise apparently plausible explanations. John Bell's ``unspeakableness'' and the commonplace counterintuitive character of quantum phenomena will be our encouragers. And the radical novelty of the introduced here and adapted to our purposes Big Bang epistemological paradigm will be an appropriate, even if probably shocking response to our equally shocking discovery in the oldest among well preserved linguistic fossils of perfect mathematical structures outdoing the best artifactual Assemblers. (shrink)

The Minimalist Program for linguistic theory is Noam Chomsky's boldest and most radical version of his naturalistic approach to language. Cedric Boeckz examines its foundations, explains its underlying philosophy, exemplifies its methods, and considers the significance of its empirical results. He explores the roots and antecedents of the Program and shows how its methodologies parallel those of sciences such as physics and biology. He disentangles and clarifies current debates and issues around the nature of minimalist research in linguistics and shows (...) how the aims and ambitions of the Minimalist Program lie at the centre of the enterprise to understand how the human language faculty operates in the mind and is manifested in the world's languages.Professor Boeckx writes for advanced and graduate students of linguistics and for all those, in fields such as cognitive science and evolutionary biology, who want to know more about current developments in theoretical linguistics. (shrink)

This paper presents a simple model to estimate the number of languages that existed throughout history, and considers philosophical and linguistic implications of the findings. The estimated number is 150,000 plus or minus 50,000. Because only few of those remain, and there is no reason to believe that that remainder is a statistically representative sample, we should be very cautious about universalistic claims based on existing linguistic variation.

In this paper I address the issue of the subject matter of linguistics. According to the prominent Chomskyan view, linguistics is the study of the language faculty, a component of the mind-brain, and is therefore a branch of cognitive psychology. In his recent book Ignorance of Language Michael Devitt attacks this psychologistic conception of linguistics. I argue that the prominent Chomskyan objections to Devitt's position are not decisive as they stand. However, Devitt's position should ultimately be rejected as there is (...) nothing outside of the mind of a typical speaker that could serve to fix determinate syntactic rules of her language or constitute the supervenience base of her connection to any such rules. (shrink)

Probabilistic methods are providing new explanatory approaches to fundamental cognitive science questions of how humans structure, process and acquire language. This review examines probabilistic models defined over traditional symbolic structures. Language comprehension and production involve probabilistic inference in such models; and acquisition involves choosing the best model, given innate constraints and linguistic and other input. Probabilistic models can account for the learning and processing of language, while maintaining the sophistication of symbolic models. A recent burgeoning of theoretical developments and online (...) corpus creation has enabled large models to be tested, revealing probabilistic constraints in processing, undermining acquisition arguments based on a perceived poverty of the stimulus, and suggesting fruitful links with probabilistic theories of categorization and ambiguity resolution in perception. (shrink)

Biolinguistic inquiry investigates the human language faculty as an internal biological property. This article traces the development of biolinguistics from its early philosophical origins through its reformulation during the cognitive revolution of the 1950s and outlines my views on where the biolinguistic enterprise stands today. The growth of language in the individual, it is suggested, depends on (i) genetic factors, (ii) experience, and (iii) principles that are not specific to the faculty of language. The best current explanation of how language (...) is recursively generated is through Merge, an operation that takes objects already constructed, and reconstructs a new object from them, generating a 'language of thought', perhaps in a manner close to optimal (relying on principles of category (iii)), with externalization (hence communication) a secondary process. The concluding section of the article offers several objectives for future research in the field. (shrink)

The book from which these sections are excerpted is concerned with the prospects for assimilating the study of human intelligence and its products to the natural sciences through the investigation of cognitive structures, understood as systems of rules and representations that can be regarded as These mental structui′es serve as the vehicles for the exercise of various capacities. They develop in the mind on the basis of an innate endowment that permits the growth of rich and highly articulated structures along (...) an intrinsically determined course under the triggering and partially shaping effect of experience, which fixes parameters in an intricate system of predetermined form. It is argued that the mind is modular in character, with a diversity of cognitive structures, each with its specific properties arid principles. Knowledge of language, of the behavior of objects, and much else crucially involves these mental structures, and is thus not characterizable in terms of capacities, dispositions, or practical abilities, nor is it necessarily grounded in experience in the standard sense of this term. (shrink)

Silent and language in The horizonts of decline of metaphisics.

The focus of this study is on the methodological aspects of Chomsky's linguistic theory. By explicating the philosophy of science implicit in Chomsky's work, a framework is provided that not only clarifies the logical structure of Chomsky's thought but also places his philosophical assumptions on a firm foundation. ;Chomsky's philosophy of science is interpreted as a rationalist synthesis of four basic conceptions of the natural and human sciences. From logical positivism Chomsky derives his formalism, which asserts that explanations in science (...) are deductive-nomological in form and that scientific theorizing relies on the construction of mathematical-theoretical models. From Weltanschauungen analysis Chomsky derives his views on the theory-laden nature of scientific knowledge and his emphasis on a logic of discovery as the model for hypothesis formulation. Chomsky accepts both the classical empiricist thesis that a methodological unity exists between the natural and human sciences and the classical interpretationist thesis that the analysis of social and psychological phenomena requires the postulation of mentalistic states. ;These four themes are developed and synthesized in this study by a detailed comparison of the Chomskyan corpus with the works of Hanson, Peirce, and Lakatos. The resulting methodological framework is then applied to a defense of Chomsky's major epistemological themes. Chomsky's technical, historical, and philosophical writings are then systematized and strengthened by the resulting analysis. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a renewal of the perennial debate concerning innate ideas: Noam Chomsky has argued that much of our knowledge of natural languages is innate; Jerry Fodor has defended the innateness of most concepts. ;Part One concerns the historical controversy over nativism. On the interpretation there developed, nativists have defended two distinct theses. One, based on arguments from the poverty of the stimulus, is a psychological theory postulating special-purpose learning mechanisms. The other, deriving from arguments entailing that learning (...) from experience is impossible, is the meta-psychological view that we can hope for no real explanation of how learning occurs. ;In Part Two, the views of contemporary nativists are discussed against this background. Fodor's claim that our concepts are 'triggered' rather than 'learned' provides no account of concept-acquisition. Instead, it expresses his view that concept-acquisition resists any psychological explanation. But while 'brute-causal' interaction with the world may be necessary to the fixation of reference--and hence to the attainment of concepts--it is insufficient. Mind-world interaction is 'cognitively mediated' and it is in explaining the nature of this mediation that psychology will play a role. ;Chomsky holds that we have a special-purpose faculty for learning language. His 'a posteriori' arguments from the poverty of the stimulus, being based on unsubstantiated empirical claims about the pld and the course of learning, are rejected. Another 'a priori' argument exists, however, involving only the general observation that since the pld contain little information about what is not a sentence, a special mechanism is required to prevent overgeneration. But negative data are lacking in every learning domain. So since it is implausible that all learning requires special faculties, there must be a general-purpose strategy that can skirt the 'negative evidence' problem. Whether it is used for language-learning remains moot. But what really motivates the Chomskian is his awe at what children achieve, namely, 'cognizance' of a grammar. Grammars prove, however, to be 'psychologically real' in such a weak sense that the phenomena of language mastery provides little grist to the nativist's mill. (shrink)

Evans & Levinson (E&L) perform a major service for cognitive science. The assumption of Chomskyan generative linguistics is empirically untenable. However, E&L are too reluctant to abandon word classes and grammatical relations in syntax. Also, a cognitive scientist can already draw on a substantial linguistics literature on variationist, evolutionary models of language.

In the first part of this paper, two arguments, one by Chomsky, and one by Bar-Hillel and Shamir, are examined in detail and rejected. Both arguments purport to show that the structure of English precludes its having a finite state grammar which correctly enumerates just the well formed sentences of English. In the latter part of the paper I consider the problem of supporting claims about the structure and properties of a natural language when no grammar for the language has (...) yet been accepted. (shrink)

This book deals with the need to rethink the aims and methods of contemporary linguistics. Orthodox linguists' discussions of linguistic form fail to exemplify how language users become language makers. Integrationist theory is used here as a solution to this basic problem within general linguistics. The book is aimed at an interdisciplinary readership, comprising those engaged in study, teaching and research in the humanities and social sciences, including linguistics, philosophy, sociology and psychology.

This volume presents the semiotic and linguistic theory of extended axiomatic functionalism, focusing on its application to linguistic description.