Essays on Linguistic Realism PDF
Preview Essays on Linguistic Realism
Essays on Linguistic Realism Edited by Christina Behme Martin Neef Essays on Linguistic Realism Studies in Language Companion Series (SLCS) issn 0165-7763 This series has been established as a companion series to the periodical Studies in Language. For an overview of all books published in this series, please see http://benjamins.com/catalog/slcs Founding Editor Werner Abraham University of Vienna / University of Munich Editors Werner Abraham Elly van Gelderen University of Vienna / University of Munich Arizona State University Editorial Board Bernard Comrie Elisabeth Leiss University of California, Santa Barbara University of Munich William Croft Marianne Mithun University of New Mexico University of California, Santa Barbara Östen Dahl Heiko Narrog University of Stockholm Tohuku University Gerrit J. Dimmendaal Johanna L. Wood University of Cologne University of Aarhus Ekkehard König Debra Ziegeler Free University of Berlin University of Paris III Christian Lehmann University of Erfurt Volume 196 Essays on Linguistic Realism Edited by Christina Behme and Martin Neef Essays on Linguistic Realism Edited by Christina Behme Kwantlen Polytechnic University Martin Neef TU Braunschweig John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of 8 the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984. doi 10.1075/slcs.196 Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress: lccn 2018009335 (print) / 2018024926 (e-book) isbn 978 90 272 0092 1 (Hb) isbn 978 90 272 6394 0 (e-book) © 2018 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Company · https://benjamins.com Table of contents Introduction to Essays on Linguistic Realism vii Christina Behme & Martin Neef chapter 1 The ontology of natural language 1 Paul M. Postal chapter 2 What kind of science is linguistics? 7 David Pitt chapter 3 ‘Biolinguistics’:Some foundational problems 21 Robert Levine chapter 4 The relevance of realism for language evolution theorizing 61 Christina Behme chapter 5 Describing linguistic objects in a realist way 79 Hans-Heinrich Lieb chapter 6 Languages and other abstract structures 139 Ryan M. Nefdt chapter 7 Autonomous Declarative Phonology:A realist approach to the phonology of German 185 Martin Neef chapter 8 Explaining linguistic facts in a realist theory of word formation 203 Andreas Nolda chapter 9 Cognitive propositions in realist linguistics 235 Scott Soames vi Essays on Linguistic Realism chapter 10 Languages as complete and distinct systems of reference 255 D. Terence Langendoen chapter 11 The so-called arbitrariness of linguistic signs and Saussure’s ‘realism’ 271 Armin Burkhardt Index 297 Introduction to Essays on Linguistic Realism Christina Behme & Martin Neef Kwantlen Polytechnic University / TU Braunschweig 1. Three kinds of linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Agreement about the nature of linguistics may not go much further than to a statement of this kind. Not only is the set of methods linguists use to study language multifaceted; even the question what language actually is has received a number of different answers. In his 1981 book Language and other abstract objects, philosopher Jerrold J. Katz provided a typology regarding different views of the nature of language. In the history of linguistics, he identified three distinct approaches that he labeled – with reference to the problem of universals exhaustively discussed in antiquity and medieval times – nominalism, conceptualism, and realism. In different times and different frameworks, linguists have assumed that language is a set of physical facts (nominalism), an aspect of the human mind or brain (conceptualism), or an abstract object (realism). In the past 60 years, concep- tualism has been the dominant paradigm, particularly the form based on the work of Noam Chomsky (e.g. Chomsky 1959, 1966, 1975, 1986, 2000, 2012). Nominalism is a paradigm that always had a number of defenders during this period. Realism, on the other hand, has received scant attention in linguistics in the period under discussion. For that reason, realism is unfamiliar to many linguists and philosophers and remains profoundly underdeveloped. Katz has devoted a number of books and articles to the topic of Linguistic Realism (Katz 1985, 1990, 1996, 1998, 2004). From the linguistic side, it was particularly Paul M. Postal who defended and further developed this paradigm (e.g., Postal 2003, 2004, 2009, 2012). According to Katz and Postal (1991), most traditional areas of linguistic research can be subsumed under the realist framework: Realist linguistics requires not a new field, but merely a different interpretation of an existing one. What could remain and what would have to be eliminated require specification, but most of what generative linguistics takes to be syntax, seman- tics, phonology, etc., could be preserved. (Katz & Postal 1991: 531) doi 10.1075/slcs.196.001beh © 2018 John Benjamins Publishing Company viii Christina Behme & Martin Neef Because Linguistic Realism is the least explored linguistic paradigm, much discussion regarding the ontology of linguistics remains incomplete. Therefore, this collection of papers is an urgently needed first step towards filling this lacuna. Of course, supporters of Linguistic Realism do not argue in favor of this paradigm because it has not received more attention in the past. Realist linguists are con- vinced that this paradigm is superior to the other paradigms. Their argumentation can be summarized as follows: In the empirical world, we can observe that people behave in a certain way that we interpret as using language. If people have the ability to use language, they must have knowledge of language. In other words, knowledge of language is a require- ment for using language. This insight was (according to Katz 1981) Chomsky’s motivation for replacing the dominant framework of the 1950s (nominalism) with a novel framework (conceptualism). Chomsky provided extensive arguments that convinced many linguists and philosophers that conceptualism was the superior framework. However, Katz and Postal reasoned that if it is the case that people have knowledge of language, then the object known must have a different onto- logical status than the knowledge of it (e.g. Katz & Postal 1991). What kind of an object language is and how it can be known and be made use of, is what Linguistic Realism is focused on. According to this paradigm, language is an abstract object comparable to the objects of mathematics and logics, for example. Studying lan- guage as an abstract object means reconstructing language as an abstract system by giving an explicit model of a particular language. If language is neither an empirical nor a mental object, this does not mean that linguists should not study any empirical or mental objects. On the contrary, both the use of language and the knowledge of language are important topics in linguistics. These topics are part of a comprehensive study of linguistics. But study- ing the use people make of linguistic objects is not studying language. It is studying language use (or performance in Chomsky’s terms). Similarly, studying the knowl- edge people have of linguistic objects is not studying language but studying knowl- edge of language (or competence). Studying language as an abstract object, then, is the core of linguistics; it is here where linguistics is a science of its own, while the study of both language use and knowledge of language are highly interdisciplinary. 2. The chapters of the volume The chapters of this book offer different perspectives on Linguistic Realism, either supporting this paradigm or taking it as a starting point for developing modified conceptions of linguistics, best characterized as a kind of modified realism. The initial chapters of the book deal with the foundations of linguistics, particularly Introduction to Essays on Linguistic Realism i concerning the ontological status of language and the character of linguistics as a science. Paul M. Postal, one of the most dedicated and explicit proponents of Linguistic Realism in the past 35 years, wrote the first chapter. In The ontology of natural language, he reflects on the ontological status of words and sentences, reviewing several approaches to that question since the advent of American Struc- turalism. Covering both nominalism and conceptualism under the term natural- istic view, he claims that such an approach is flawed because it assumes that words and phrases are time/space particulars, which leads to an incoherent conception of linguistics. Linguistic Realism – or in Postal’s terms the Platonist view – can provide the foundation for a coherent conception of linguistics by taking words and phrases as abstract objects. In the second chapter, David Pitt asks: What kind of science is linguistics? Dis- tinguishing between empirical and formal sciences, he doubts that the ontological nature of the objects a science is dealing with exclusively determines the nature of this science. In other words: Empirical sciences do not study exclusively concrete but also abstract objects. If all sciences have the goal of discovering generaliza- tions, then they deal with abstract objects. That is because the objects of gener- alizations are types and types are abstract objects. In Pitt’s view, the nature of a science is determined by its methodology. This evaluation leads to a plea for the ontological diversity of linguistics. Robert Levine discusses in ‘Biolinguistics’: some foundational problems two notions of the term ‘biolinguistics’: In one sense – that he regards as scientific credible – this term denotes the inquiry into identifying neurological structures corresponding to the human capacity of language. In another sense, the biological base of language is interpreted literally and mental grammars are regarded as real objects. Generative Linguistics since the early 1980s is based on the second inter- pretation. Levine argues that the frequently cited progress in the study of visual cognition does not support this kind of biolinguistics. He furthermore reflects critically on the assumed domain specificity of linguistic knowledge, and proposes an alternative (a set-theoretical model) that takes the abstract nature of language for granted. In the next chapter, The relevance of realism for language evolution theoriz- ing, Christina Behme argues that reconsidering the ontological status of natural languages might lead to novel approaches to language evolution puzzles. Contem- porary work on language evolution, focused on brain evolution, language acqui- sition, and communication systems of other primates, has provided a rich body of knowledge. Yet, so far such approaches have been unable to account for some aspects of grammar. Paying closer attention to the distinction between language and knowledge of language, as insisted upon by realists, could move language evo- lution research beyond the existing impasse.
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