From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com (Richard Wojcik,snake)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Cognitive Phonology (was Cognitive Linguistics...)
Date: 28 Sep 92 19:07:10 GMT
Reply-To: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com
Organization: Research & Technology




In article <83649@bcsaic.boeing.com> rwojcik@atc.boeing.com writes:
>My view that generative theory attempts to
>account in some direct fashion for well-formedness judgments has been under
>attack.  I think.  Nobody has yet said what it is that generative theory is
>trying to account for instead of that.  I always thought that the competence/
>performance dichotomy was devised primarily to justify the nature of the data
>in generative theory.

David Pesetsky (DP) writes:

DP> "Generative theory" tries to determine the structures underlying
DP> something linguistic that people do...

"Something linguistic that people do" is not quite as specific as I'd like you
to get, but it does ground the theory in behavior.  I hope we can agree that
the theory explains principles underlying the psychology of linguistic
behavior.  Where we get stuck is that I can't seem to get a clear description
of what the "something linguistic" is.  Also, when you talk about "structures,"
you must have some idea of how those structures affect the "something linguistic."
It is a clarification of that that I seek.  I have tried to give my own "simple"
view of how the theory works at a psychological level, and nobody has yet pro-
duced a more sophisticated one.

DP> For syntax, judgments of
DP> acceptability and judgments of interpretation have so far furnished the
DP> most plentiful and reliable data, so syntactic theory has mostly been
DP> built around trying to account for judgments.  But syntactic theory has
DP> never been *about* judgments, any more than cell biology has been about
DP> optical microscope slides or astronomy about what you see through an
DP> optical telescope...

Yet cell biology purports to explain things that you see on microscope slides
and astronomy purports to explain things that you see through optical
telescopes.  I can understand the point that you are trying to make, but I
think that you are deliberately not trying to see mine.  A biologist or an
astronomer, if pressed, could justify using the instruments that they use to
collect data.  I'm looking for a way that linguists can justify the use of
patterns of intuitive judgments.  There should be some kind of psychological
model that you could articulate which would license your claims about the
data.  

DP> As I already wrote somewhere here, now that we can
DP> get data from Event Related Potentials in the brain that bear directly
DP> on matters related to syntactic processing (e.g.  extraction from
DP> islands), we have data other than judgments that can be put to use.  And
DP> who would want to say that we are suddenly not doing generative grammar
DP> if we use types of brain activity rather than judgments of "??"  and "*"
DP> to push through an analytic point?

I might--especially if the data did not correlate with "??" and "*" judgments.
I think that ERP data has an exciting potential, but it is a red herring in
this discussion.  I am beginning to fear that literally anything can be used
to push analytic points, even ouija boards.  You still have to say, in the
clearest possible terms, how your theory explains the data you collect.  First
establish a correlation between ERP data and linguistic rules.  Then we'll
talk about whether basing your analyses on it is still doing generative theory. 

DP> As for the competence/preformance dichotomy, that was an attempt to sort
DP> some data, not to justify the nature of some data.

Just so.  It tells you what sort of data the theory explains.  I am happy to
retract my wording and replace it with yours.

-----
Disclaimer:  Opinions expressed above are not those of my employer.

    Rick Wojcik   (rwojcik@atc.boeing.com)   Seattle, WA