Comments on: But is it grammar? http://ideophone.org/but-is-it-grammar/ Sounding out ideas on African languages, sound symbolism, and expressivity Sun, 01 Jan 2012 03:40:29 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Mark Dingemanse http://ideophone.org/but-is-it-grammar/comment-page-1/#comment-3008 Mark Dingemanse Wed, 30 Jun 2010 08:22:35 +0000 http://ideophone.org/?p=1995#comment-3008 Nigel, thanks for responding. I'd be interested to hear more about the Modern Irish/Vietnamese stuff. Many recurrent commonalities could of course be chalked up to the "stable engineering solutions" of cultural evolution that E&L talk about — there seems to be no a priori reason to invoke a universalist ontology for that kind of thing. So I suppose the "quirky" and "dysfunctional" are crucial to your argument. Nigel, thanks for responding. I’d be interested to hear more about the Modern Irish/Vietnamese stuff. Many recurrent commonalities could of course be chalked up to the “stable engineering solutions” of cultural evolution that E&L talk about — there seems to be no a priori reason to invoke a universalist ontology for that kind of thing. So I suppose the “quirky” and “dysfunctional” are crucial to your argument.

]]> By: Nigel Duffield http://ideophone.org/but-is-it-grammar/comment-page-1/#comment-3001 Nigel Duffield Tue, 22 Jun 2010 11:52:41 +0000 http://ideophone.org/?p=1995#comment-3001 Mark, I agree with your unease about the implications of my assertions about the ontology of UG: I'm not convinced either that radical Minimalism has much to say any more about grammar. My criticism of E&L was not a defence of UG, simply an observation that claims about the validity (or otherwise) of UG are logically independent of claims about Language Universals. My own view, having worked with researchers on both sides of the debate —including MPI colleagues— is that UG/FL as an object of inquiry is not terribly interesting, nor is it as well-motivated by language acquisition facts as its practitioners maintain: in that respect I side with more descriptive typologists (and with less rhetorical generativists!) in preferring to explore relatively superficial syntactic variation. And yet my own specialist research on languages as apparently diverse as Modern Irish and Vietnamese—the two languages I have focussed most on over the last 20 years—convinces me, contra E&L, of the reality and substance of (formal) Language Universals: there are simply too many quirky, and "dysfunctional" commonalities between grammatical systems not to reasonably suspect the operation of universal principles. (I discuss this further in a chapter of my manuscript on Vietnamese, which—God willing—will be finished in the middle of next year. Meantime, I'll post the relevant chapter soon.) Mark, I agree with your unease about the implications of my assertions about the ontology of UG: I’m not convinced either that radical Minimalism has much to say any more about grammar. My criticism of E&L was not a defence of UG, simply an observation that claims about the validity (or otherwise) of UG are logically independent of claims about Language Universals.

My own view, having worked with researchers on both sides of the debate —including MPI colleagues— is that UG/FL as an object of inquiry is not terribly interesting, nor is it as well-motivated by language acquisition facts as its practitioners maintain: in that respect I side with more descriptive typologists (and with less rhetorical generativists!) in preferring to explore relatively superficial syntactic variation.

And yet my own specialist research on languages as apparently diverse as Modern Irish and Vietnamese—the two languages I have focussed most on over the last 20 years—convinces me, contra E&L, of the reality and substance of (formal) Language Universals: there are simply too many quirky, and “dysfunctional” commonalities between grammatical systems not to reasonably suspect the operation of universal principles. (I discuss this further in a chapter of my manuscript on Vietnamese, which—God willing—will be finished in the middle of next year. Meantime, I’ll post the relevant chapter soon.)

]]> By: Tweets that mention But is it grammar? — The Ideophone -- Topsy.com http://ideophone.org/but-is-it-grammar/comment-page-1/#comment-2821 Tweets that mention But is it grammar? — The Ideophone -- Topsy.com Thu, 08 Apr 2010 06:37:39 +0000 http://ideophone.org/?p=1995#comment-2821 [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by mckay e.. mckay e. said: But is it Grammar? http://ideophone.org/but-is-it-grammar/ [...] [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by mckay e.. mckay e. said: But is it Grammar? http://ideophone.org/but-is-it-grammar/ [...]

]]>