Re: Word Order in typology

Elliott Lash wrote at 2004-10-12 15:29:18 (-0700)
 > Please read the book Atoms of Language by Mark Baker who's a big
 > name in linguistics, and is one of the proponents of Principles and
 > Parameters.
 >
 >  Basically, in these languages where you say the "subject" is not a
 > meaningful category, Baker and other linguists who work within P&P
 > would probably argue that there is a parameter which can be set to
 > "on or off" (metaphorically) that determines whether a language has
 > a "subject relation" or not. Then, if a language does, the various
 > types of ways a subject can be realised will be other parameters
 > that can be turned on and off. On pages 183 of the book, there's a
 > hypothetical list of these parameters and their various settings.
 >

For another perspective on that, see the late Larry Trask's review of
the book, here: http://human-nature.com/nibbs/02/trask.html

 >   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 would argue that the tendencies that do exist are rather
 > widely followed in human languages and do seem to be somehow
 > hardwired in our brain.


This is possible.  But many statistical universals can be explained
functionally or diachronically without reference to any kind of
hardwiring.

E.g.
http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/papers/glt.html
http://linguistics.buffalo.edu/people/faculty/dryer/dryer/metalanguage.pdf