András Kertész - The Historiography of Generative Linguistics

In summary:

HymesHymes, Dell and FoughtFought, John (1981) [1975] is one of the historiographicalhistoriography approaches questioning the kind of historical account which attributes revolutionaryrevolutionary relevance to Syntactic Structures Syntactic Structures , and instead interprets the latter as an organic part of neo-Bloomfieldian structuralismstructuralism. Hymes and Fought (1981 [1975]: 155–156) argue for the following thesis, which TomalinTomalin, Marcus (2008: 11) calls »provocative«:

The authors emphasize that the ›climate of opinionclimate of opinion‹ did not change immediately after 1957 under the influence of the appearance of Syntactic Structures Syntactic Structures .1 ChomskyChomsky, Noam’s work was evaluated as one of the standpoints within neo-Bloomfieldianism. It was not considered as a challenge that might lead to the redefinition of the discipline (HymesHymes, Dell & FoughtFought, John 1981 [1975]: 154).

In their book on American structuralismstructuralism – in which ChomskyChomsky, Noam’s activity is only one episode – the authors devote much space to the methodologymethodology of linguistic historiographyhistoriography. They suggest the simultaneous consideration of a series of factors. Among others, referring to PercivalPercival, W. Keith (1976a) they reject the application of KuhnKuhn, Thomas S.’s approach to linguistics (HymesHymes, Dell & FoughtFought, John 1981: 24–25, 239–241, 245–246) and criticize KoernerKoerner, E.F. Konrad (1978). They also reject an approach which builds linguistic historiography on one basic term such as ›paradigmparadigm‹ and claim that »a single term will not suffice« (Hymes & Fought 1981 [1975]: 25). Much more complex and differentiated terms are needed in order to capture »the rich range of materials actually forming the datadata to be explained« which every »serious historiography« is expected to use (Hymes & Fought 1981: 25). These materials also include personal and institutional dynamics as well as unpublished documents. The authors discuss the range of data which they believe to be potentially relevant for historiographical research. Naturally, these principles apply to the historiography of linguistics in general and to that of generative linguistics in particular.

On the first pages of his book about American structuralismstructuralism, Peter MatthewsMatthews, Peter H., with heavy irony, criticizes the unreflected, mechanical applications of KuhnianKuhnian terms in oversimplifying didactic chronicles of the historyhistory of linguistics. He believes that »[…] the Worst Thing that has happened to the historiographyhistoriography of twentieth century linguistics« is the publication of Thomas S. KuhnKuhn, Thomas S.’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions because »it led so many of ChomskyChomsky, Noam’s supporters to make events fit Kuhn’s model« (Matthews 1993: 28). As a result of this, the application of Kuhn’s historiographical model to generative linguistics »partly obscured its real origins« (ibid).

MatthewsMatthews, Peter H. does not divide neo-Bloomfieldianneo-Bloomfieldianism into trends as HymesHymes, Dell and FoughtFought, John do. He scrutinizes Bloomfield’s texts and those of the neo-Bloomfieldians, and compares them to Syntactic Structures Syntactic Structures and other texts that ChomskyChomsky, Noam published before or right after it. He does not go into details about the Theory of Government and BindingGovernment and Binding, Theory of, and the Minimalist ProgramMinimalist Program was established only after the publication of Matthews’ book. His main thesis is the following:

MatthewsMatthews, Peter H. does not make his methodologymethodology explicit. Nevertheless, it is clear for the readers of his book that, in accordance with this thesis, he focuses on the role of distribution both in neo-Bloomfieldianneo-BloomfieldianBloomfieldian approaches and in Syntactic Structures Syntactic Structures . In his opinion, ChomskyChomsky, Noam

[…] did not abandon the essential goal of distributionalismdistributional, or […] the empiricism that pervaded it. […] In abandoning the requirement that linguistic theorytheory should provide what he called a ›discovery procedurediscovery procedure‹ he liberated distributionalism from a constraint that was inessential. But what replaced it was the requirement that alternative sets of distributional rules should be evaluated by a measure of simplicitysimplicity. This was an attempt to rescue the programme, not to destroy it (MatthewsMatthews, Peter H. 1993: 141; emphasis added).1

MatthewsMatthews, Peter H.’ (1993), (2001) method centers on philology and the historyhistory of ideas. Based on a careful, many-sided and differentiated philological analysis and comparison of texts written in different periods by different authors, it outlines the history of the ideas shaping American structuralismstructuralism. Thus:

SeurenSeuren, Pieter A.M. (1998) overviews the historyhistory of Western linguistics from the point of view of the philosophy of sciencephilosophy of science. According to Seuren (1998: 250, 252), the main achievement of ChomskyChomsky, Noam’s work is the following:

SeurenSeuren, Pieter A.M. does not consider ChomskyChomsky, Noam’s achievements revolutionaryrevolutionary. He argues that generative linguistics is basically rooted in the work of Zellig S. HarrisHarris, Zellig S., while Chomsky synthesized and improved his findings. They were thinking along the same lines and continuitycontinuity can be observed between their works. Seuren believes that besides Chomsky’s synthesizing work, his greatest achievement is that by raising and answering pivotal metatheoreticalmetatheoretical questions, he applied the terms and principles of the philosophy of sciencephilosophy of science to linguistics. Thus his greatest achievement is to have placed linguistics in the context of the philosophy of science. In Seuren’s view, »most of Chomsky’s work in theoretical linguistics deals with metatheoretical questions, which makes Chomsky a metalinguistmetalinguist rather than a linguist« (Seuren 1998: 252; emphasis added). He called attention to issues which had fallen outside the scope of neo-Bloomfieldianneo-Bloomfieldianism: the nature of linguistic datadata, realism vs. nominalism, the criteria of adequacy, formalization, explanation, causality etc. (Seuren 1998: 252ff.).