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From: misrael@scripps.edu (Mark Israel)
Subject: Re: WARNING  Popperesque Paradigm shift approaches
Message-ID: <misraelE2KMvD.8HD@netcom.com>
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Organization: The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California, USA
References: <misraelE2Dpzn.GxJ@netcom.com> <ALDERSON.96Dec16141807@netcom16.netcom.com> <5968gv$9v8@lastactionhero.rs.itd.umich.edu>
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 1996 18:47:37 GMT
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In article <5968gv$9v8@lastactionhero.rs.itd.umich.edu>, jlawler@umich.edu (John M. Lawler) writes:

> Yes, the use of starred sentences to test the boundaries of rules, and 
> the study of ungrammaticality generally, is one of Chomsky's many
> Bahnbrechende Erfindungen.

   I like the second-last syllable!

> As for the "huge tomes", Mark, most of them are too abstruse for anybody
> to find much use in.  At least for long.  They're certainly not mostly
> intended to be of assistance to the ordinary public, [...]

   That's for sure.

> But they are mostly harmless; just boring, is all. 

   No, they are harmful.  Intrinsically, they are harmless; but they are
harmful because they are the basis of linguists' professional reputation,
and it is that reputation that gives teeth to statements like the 
following, which you also posted today:

| [...] it's foolishly categorical prescriptions addressed to everybody 
| that are annoying, and misleading for those innocent of grammar.

   In one breath you admit that linguists' grammar is mostly useless,
and in the next breath you call us prescriptivists "foolishly" 
"innocent of" it!  Either tell us *specifically* what *useful* grammar
we're "innocent of", or else don't accuse us.  Put up or shut up.

> If you have a complaint against some syntacticians, it might be better to
> identify them (almost certainly they represent a small group within
> linguistics), rather than to tar all linguists for tolerating their
> existence.

   My good friend Rich Alderson quoted me out of context.  On seeing the
context, you might (or might not) agree that the onus is on linguists to
show that they've done something useful.

   I had said that I had a hunch that linguists were "too interested in
syntax".  Mike Wright misinterpreted me as asserting that syntax didn't
matter *at all*, and said:

| Without knowing the part played by word order in English syntax, 
| how would one distinguish the meanings of "the dog bit the man" 
| and "the man bit the dog"? [...]
| On the other hand, I understand that word order is irrelevant to the
| classical Latin versions of these sentences, since the relationship of
| each of the nouns to the verb is shown by inflection.
 
   I replied:

|    It's partly inflections and partly word order.  If the subject and
| object are both neuter nouns ending in -um, then one assumes SOV word
| order.  Ancient Greek had freer word order than Latin.
| 
|    But that's *my* kind of syntax!  You can find all you need in a 19th-
| century prescriptive grammar, and you can summarize it on a set of Key
| Facts cards.  You don't need huge tomes full of starred and unstarred 
| sentences, which is what linguists have spent the 20th century writing.

> Perhaps you would care to suggest what you would prefer, as the proper 
> and natural written output of linguists, instead of those tomes with 
> starred and unstarred sentences?

   *I*'d like to see linguists do something *useful*!  The starred 
sentences might be all very well if they were all actual utterances 
representing typical mistakes made by foreigners learning English.  
Or how about comparing sentences in great authors' first drafts with 
the corresponding sentences in their published work?  *That* would 
be useful!

--
misrael@scripps.edu			Mark Israel
