Linguistics and Philosophy: Essays in Honor of Rulon S. Wells

491 Pages·1985·12.382 MB·English

by  Adam Makkai, Alan K. Melby (Eds.)

LINGUISTICS AND PHILOSOPHY
AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND
HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE
General Editor
E.F. KONRAD KOERNER
(University of Ottawa)
Series IV - CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY
Advisory Editorial Board
Henning Andersen (Copenhagen); Raimo Anttila (Los Angeles)
Thomas V.Gamkrelidze (Tbilisi); Hans-Heinrich Lieb (Berlin)
J.Peter Maher (Chicago); Ernst Pulgram (Ann Arbor, Mich.)
E.Wyn Roberts (Vancouver, B.C.); Danny Steinberg (Tokyo)
Volume 42
Adam Makkai and Alan K. Melby (eds.)
Linguistics and Philosophy
Essays in honor of Rulon S. Wells
LINGUISTICS AND
PHILOSOPHY
ESSAYS IN HONOR OF
RULON S.WELLS
Edited by
ADAM MAKKAI
University of Illinois at Chicago
and
ALAN K. MELBY
Brigham Young University
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
1985
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Linguistics and Philosophy.
(Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series IV, Current
issues in linguistic theory, ISSN 0304-0763; v. 42)
Bibliography: p.
1. Linguistics -- Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Wells, Rulon. I. Makkai, Adam. II. Melby,
Alan K. III. Wells, Rulon. IV. Series.
P26.W45E8 1985 410 85-20099
ISBN 90-272-3536-8 (alk. paper)
© Copyright 1985 - 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.
Professor Rulon S. Wells

CONTENTS
PREFACE iii
WORKS OF RULON S. WELLS vii
1. ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE AND
GENERAL THEORETICAL ISSUES
Innate Capacity, Know-How and Use in Language
Robert A. Hall, Jr 3
Language, Cognition and Linguistics
Raimo Anttila 11
Kuhnian Paradigms as Systems of Markedness Conventions
James D. McCawley 23
Hierarchy in Conceptual Space
John Robert Ross 45
Imperfect Models and Their Uses
Fred J. Damerau 55
Rask's Lecture on the Philosophy of Language
William M. Christie, Jr 77
Contrast
John Fought 85
II. PHONOLOGY
Phonolgoical "Neutralization" in Classical and
Stratificational Theories
David G. Lockwood 99
III. SYNTAX AND BEYOND
Grammatical Phrases and Lexical Phrases
André Martinet 127
On Grammars of Science
Zeitig Harris 139
Constituency, Dependency and Applicative Structure
Sebastian Shaumyan 149
Structure and Function in Syntactic Analysis:
Rulon Wells As a Paleo-Synthesizer of European
and American Syntax
William J. Sullivan 205
Come on Up
Eldon G. Lytie 223
Why "Junction" Theory
Jill E. Peterson-Boogaard 241
Generalization and Prediction of Syntactic Patterns
In Junction Grammar
Alan K. Melby 253
'Activity-'Accomplishment'-'Achievement'-A Language
That Can't Say 'I Burned It But It Didn't Burn' and
One Than Can
Yoshihiko Ikegami 265
Positional Tendencies of English Relative Clauses As
Evidence for Processing Strategies
Gary D. Prideaux 305
IV. HISTORICAL AND TYPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS
Knowledge of the Past
C. F. Hockett 317
Lexical Reconstruction and the Semantic History
Hypothesis
Isidore Dyen 343
Hymonymy, Heteroclysis, and History in the
Japanese Verb
Roy Andrew Miller . 393
V. ON DIACHRONIC AND SYNCHRONIC DERIVATION
Some Characteristics of Back-Formation
Henry M. Hoenigswald 421
How to Become a Kwa Language
Kay Williamson 427
Where Do Exclamations Come From?
Adam Makkai 445
ii
PREFACE BY THE EDITORS
Rulon S(eymour) Wells III was born in Salt Lake City,
Utah, on April 30, 1919, the son of a Mormon family of
pioneer stock. He was graduated from the University of
Utah with a B.A. degree in philosophy in 1939.
After moving to the East Coast, he received his Ph.D. in
philosophy from Harvard University in 1942. His dissertation
director was Willard van Orman Quine. His topic was "The
Correspondence of Language to Fact". In 1945 Rulon mar­
ried the former Miss Virginia Halcomb Bennett; they have
two sons, Seymour and David.
From 1942 to 1945 Rulon was employed at the University
of Pennsylvania, first teaching Bengali for the Army Spe­
cialized Training Program (ASTP) and then Japanese for the
Office of Strategic Services. In the summer of 1945 he
accepted an invitation from Bernard Bloch, Chairman of
Linguistics and editor of Language, to assist him in teaching
Japanese for the ASTP at Yale, but this engagement termi­
nated not long after the end of the war with Japan. He
had studied Sanskrit under W. Norman Brown at Pennsylva­
nia and continued at Yale under Franklin Edgerton; and the
good offices of Professor Edgerton put him in touch with F.
S. C Northrop and the Philosophy Department. He was
appointed instructor in Philosophy in 1946, becoming assis­
tant professor in 1948.
In 1955-56, when he was made tenured associate pro­
fessor, Philosophy also decided to share him with the Lin­
guistics department. In 1962, due to his already formidable
international reputation, he was made full professor in both
departments.
He won the Bechtel Prize at Harvard University in
1940-41 and in 1941-42. In 1944-46 he was a Fellow of the
American Council of Learned Societies. In 1951-52 he was a
Guggenheim & Morse Fellow. He held the prestigious Mahlon
Powell lecturership at Indiana University in 1967. He is a
member of the American Philosophical Association, the Lin­
guistic Society of America (President in 1976), and the Lin­
guistic Association of Canada and the United States. We will
not go into his publications here as a separate section is