Theory, data, and the epistemology of syntax
- Syntactic theory has tended to vacillate between implausible methodological extremes. Some linguists hold that our theories are accountable solely for the corpus of attested utterances; others assume our subject matter is unobservable intuitive feelings about sentences. Both extremes should be rejected. The subject matter of syntax is neither past utterance production nor the functioning of inaccessible mental machinery; it is normative - a system of tacitly grasped constraints defining correctness of structure. There are interesting parallels between syntactic and moral systems, modulo the key difference that linguistic systems are diverse whereas morality is universal. The appropriate epistemology for justifying formulations of normative systems is familiar in philosophy: it is known as the method of reflective equilibrium.
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| Author: | Geoffrey K. PullumGND |
|---|---|
| URN: | urn:nbn:de:bsz:mh39-100215 |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110518214-016 |
| ISBN: | 978-3-11-051821-4 |
| Parent Title (German): | Grammatische Variation. Empirische Zugänge und theoretische Modellierung |
| Series (Serial Number): | Jahrbuch / Institut für Deutsche Sprache (- 2016 -) |
| Publisher: | de Gruyter |
| Place of publication: | Berlin [u.a.] |
| Editor: | Marek Konopka, Angelika Wöllstein |
| Document Type: | Part of a Book |
| Language: | English |
| Year of first Publication: | 2017 |
| Date of Publication (online): | 2020/08/16 |
| Publicationstate: | Zweitveröffentlichung |
| Reviewstate: | (Verlags)-Lektorat |
| GND Keyword: | Epistemische Logik; Methodologie; Normativität; Sprachvariante; Syntax |
| First Page: | 283 |
| Last Page: | 298 |
| DDC classes: | 400 Sprache / 400 Sprache, Linguistik |
| Open Access?: | ja |
| Linguistics-Classification: | Sprachphilosophie |
| Linguistics-Classification: | Syntax |
| Licence (German): |  Urheberrechtlich geschützt |