Re: Word Order in typology

I was going to reply to this yesterday - but I had used up my quota.

On Tuesday, October 12, 2004, at 11:29 , Elliott Lash wrote:

[snip]
>   I really think that Linguistics is rather more
> scientific than you seem to; it just means that the
> theories are theories not Laws. This whole thing about
> "language laws" is misleading I suppose.
I think this a very valid point. It is misleading to talk about "language
laws" as tho they are laws 'set in stone'.

At one time scientists talked of "laws" like the "law of gravity". But we
have now become more circumspect since experience has shown that these
"laws" usually have to be amended in light of later experimentation &
findings. We do not, for example, talk about the _law_ of relativity, but
the _theory_ of relativity.

In an article published a a mont or so back in the Guardian newspaper in
Britain, Umberto Eco began with an anecdote telling how recently at some
meeting or other (I forget the details) Stephen Hawkin had explained why
an idea he had put forward a few years back was wrong and that many of the
non-scientists (presumably journalists) had been taken by surprise at a
public admission of error. But Eco developed the article to explain that
the essence of science is _fallibilism_; a scientist experiments, observes
and so on and produces a theory to account for the observations; but s/he
will test the theory or expect others to test the theory and will expect
the theory to be modified or may be even proved false.

The main thesis of his article BTW was that properly understood, the
fallibilism of science provides the antidote to religious & political
fundamentalism.

[snip]
>   Also, in linguistics a subject relation has not
> actually been defined unambiguously defined yet, as
> far as I know. That's one of the debates in syntax.
Yes, indeed. In fact if linguistics is a science - and I believe that it
should be and is a science - we should not be at all surprised. As our
understanding of language increases and newly investigated languages are
analyzed and documented such definitions are likely to change anyway.

What I sometimes find a little suspicious are the apparently watertight
definitions given to concepts like Agent & Patient.

I have read with interest Chris's reply to my mail, and other mails in the
thread. But i feel I need to re-read them again carefully to do justice in
any reply I may make. So I'll write no more here   :)

Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com
===============================================
Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason."      [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]