Re: Nattiki (was: Re: speaking and saying)

Ed Heil wrote:

>> I don't know.  The purpose of the project was to allow me to introduce
>> the concept of principles and parameters to the students - i.e., what
>> kinds of variation are found in natural languages, versus what sorts of
>> features seem to be universal.
>
>Do you mean by this the sort of typological univerals empirically
>discovered by Greenberg, Haiman, Comrie, et al, or the sort of
>universal grammar principles and parameters rationalistically
>postulated by Chomsky?
Both interchangeably.  The linguist's job, as I see it, is to match
up the empirical generalisations with the theoretical generalisations.
After all, a theory is meaningless unless it's supported by carefully
collected data, and carefully collected data is meaningless unless
you have a theory that can explain it insightfully.  Gotta have both!

>I'm curious because the term 'principles and parameters' is so
>strongly associated with Chomsky, but that the sort of work on
>universals that is concrete enough to be actually usable for language
>construction is done by more Greenbergistical types, and the
>theoretical and methodological chasm between the two yawns deep and
>wide.
So I've been told.  Personally, I refuse to forsake either the
'Chomskyans' and the 'Greenbergians'.  I've learned a tremendous
amount from both.

If I were forced to choose, I guess I'd say that I find Universal
Grammar explanations of the language faculty more persuasive than
General Cognitive explanations, and principles-and-parameters-type
accounts of linguistic phenomena more intuitive and insightful than
functionalist-type accounts.  But I also deeply admire the empirical
rigour and data-centric focus of people like Comrie and Dixon.

Matt.

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Matt Pearson
mpearson@ucla.edu
UCLA Linguistics Department
405 Hilgard Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543
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