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From: zohrab_p@atlantis.actrix.gen.nz (Peter Zohrab)
Subject: Re: Chomksy, Significance, and Current Trends
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Date: Sat, 12 Aug 1995 22:07:07 GMT
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In article <40isba$67n@ruccs.rutgers.edu>,
Jay Rifkin <jirifkin@ruccs.rutgers.edu> wrote:
> zohrab_p@atlantis.actrix.gen.nz (Peter Zohrab) writes:
> 
> > >In fact, the bases of Generative Grammar (the Competence-Performance
> > >distinction, and native-speaker intuitions) won't stand up to one minute's
> > >intelligent analysis.
> I responded:
> > I'd be very interested in seeing your analysis.
> 
> >Noam Chomsky: "Aspects of the
> >Theory of Syntax" MIT Press 1965, pp 3-4.
> >"Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener, in a
> >completely homogeneous speech-community, who knows its language perfectly and
> >is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory
> >limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, and errors
> >(random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of the language in actual
> >performance....
> 
> >The fallacy in the quoted passage is the statement that there is only one
> >distinction/idealisation involved.  In fact, there are several, mutually
> >independent ones involved:
> 
> >1.  the distinction between an "ideal" and various kinds of "non-ideal"
> >subjects of study (including some listed below, and possibly others);;
> 
> Peter goes on to list a bunch of perfectly valid distinctions.  Unfortunately,
> he doesn't support his argument that generativist can't isolate these
> distinctions. Nor does he even demonstrate that not doing so creates a fatal
> flaw; instead he merely states this as an unsupported fact:

You are arguing against a point I never made.  I never said that Generativists
cannot isolate these distinctions.  However, what you say below does address
what I actually said:> 

> >A Generativist cannot, in practice, do that, because it is all presented as
> >one single "package", and once you start unravelling it, as I do, the whole
> >edifice of Generative Grammar (whose main value is as a "sexy" drawcard in the
> >world of academic politics, etc., rather than its theoretical merits) starts
> >inexorably to crumble.
> 
> So, while he has certainly given us a number of interesting distinctions,
> he has by no means successfully dismantled generative grammar. To do so,
> he'd need to expand on the above paragraph, which I'd still be interested
> in seeing him do (even if takes more than a minute).
> 
Yes, I'm afraid this is going to turn into a drawn-out discussion !

The point is that Generative Grammar makes all these idealisations
simultaneously, and it only gets away with it by pretending that they are
actually only one distinction (Chomsky is on record, in a talk to the Royal
Society, as saying that he studies grammar, as opposed to language).

Once Generativists are forced to acknowledge that these various distinctions
are logically independent of each other, then the quasi-mathematical, and
practically irrelevant system of Generative Grammar will emerge plainly for
what it is.

Now, you can look at this as unsupported assertion if you like -- or you can
look at it as a prediction.  It is really a statement about the sociology of
Linguistics.

What I want to hear from you is *your* opinion on whether these distinctions
are really mutually independent, and what follows from that fact.  Will the
real Competence/Performance Distinction please stand up ?

> As I was writing this, I happened to think about fluid mechanics.  In
> developing some of the underlying theory in fluid mechanics, mathematicians
> employ a number of idealizations. they assume that the fluid flow is smooth,
> has constant viscosity, subsonic speeds, etc. And they come up with a
> basic understanding of how fluids move. In practice, fluids aren't so nice,
> and to be exact requires further exploration by taking apart our assumptions
> and idealizations one at a time.  But that doesn't mean that the theory
> about ideal fluids isn't valid, nor does it mean that we can't study ideal
> fluids by examining real ones. Likewise in language.

Again, you've missed the point.  I never argued against idealisations -- I
argued against lumping lots of idealisations together as one single
abstraction.

The analogy with fluid mechanics would be if you posited the
Platonic/Empirical distinction between smooth, constant-viscosity, subsonic
fluid movement on the one hand, and irregular, variable-viscosity, supersonic
fluid movement on the other -- AS ONE SINGLE DISTINCTION.

Obviously, fluid mechanics would get absolutely nowhere unless it treated
these three distinctions as separate, and was able to hold, say, two of them
constant, while investigating the third.

Peter Zohrab
> 
>  - Jay Rifkin				(jirifkin@ruccs.rutgers.edu)
> 


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