Re: theory (was: Re: Greenberg's Word Order Universals)

"SMITH,MARCUS ANTHONY" wrote:

> On Fri, 15 Sep 2000, J Matthew Pearson wrote:
>
> > Maybe I'm naive, but I don't recall ever hearing one of my fellow theoristical linguists
> > characterize fieldworkers this way--except in knee-jerk defense against the accusation on
> > the part of said fieldworkers that linguistic theory is a load of crap.
>
> Note Dixon's comments on the matter in "Rise and Fall of Languages".  He
> seems rather irritated that theorists consider their work more difficult
> than his field work, and his rebutle that he finds fieldwork more
> difficult than theorizing.  Seems to me an indication that he has heard
> negative comments from theorists, but he never says so directly.
Yes, I remember that passage.  I can't imagine anybody saying that theoretical work is more
difficult that fieldwork, but what do I know?  I guess my real frustration is dealing with
linguists who treat theoretical and descriptive work as mutually exclusive.  It's a false
dichotomy, and an extremely unproductive one.

I remember attending a typology conference at the University of Oregon and being fascinated by
all the wonderful data everybody was presenting, but also totally frustrated that nobody seemed
at all interested in trying to explain *why* the data was the way it was, except in the most
superficial manner.  When I talked to people during the breaks and told them I was attending
UCLA where I specialized in syntactic theory, they would give me these suspicious looks, and
make comments implying that I wasn't doing 'real' linguistic work.  I've never gotten that kind
of cool reception when I've gone to theoretical conferences and told people I do lots of
fieldwork and aspire to write reference grammars...

Anyway, that's my personal experience, and it's made me a little defensive when it comes to
theory-bashers.

Matt.