Читать книгу The Historiography of Generative Linguistics - András Kertész - Страница 13

Keith AllanAllan, Keith’s (2003), (2007) contribution to the historiographyhistoriography of generative linguistics belongs to those which explicitly combine the historical and the philosophical perspective. He takes the KuhnianKuhnian revolutionrevolutionKuhnianaryrevolutionary nature of Syntactic StructuresSyntactic Structures for granted, and combines it with the analysis of the relationship between neo-Bloomfieldianneo-BloomfieldianBloomfieldian inductivisminductive and ChomskyChomsky, Noam’s deductivismdeductive. We reconstruct his main claim as follows:

(T2)	(a)	Syntactic StructuresSyntactic Structures led to a paradigmparadigm shift in the KuhnianKuhnian sense, from an inductivistinductive paradigm to a hypothetico-deductivistdeductive one whereby the core of Chomsky’Chomsky, Noams revolution is the replacement of discovering grammars by their justification and evaluation.
	(b)	Although a theorytheory of languagelanguage must be a hypothetico-deductivedeductive theory, it also needs inductiveinductive datadata gathering.

As regards (T2)(a), AllanAllan, Keith (2003: 134ff., 2007: 269ff.) starts his train of thought by reflecting on how the classification of natural objects works. By relying on considerations based both on philosophical insights and the natural sciencesciencenaturals, he concludes that

 reality can be perceived only through the constraints and distortions of the physicalphysics and cognitivecognitive structures of human beings,

 classifications are based on group-internal conventions, and

 scientificscientific theories work along the same lines.

Therefore, there are many possible classifications of natural phenomena and there are no rational grounds to claim that only one of these is the ›truth‹. The same applies to the study of languagelanguage. So, there must be criteria by which one can choose among the possible models of language.

In doing so, two macro-paradigmsparadigm have developed in the course of the historyhistory of linguistics, namely, phenomenological inductivisminductive and hypothetico-deductivismdeductive. In revealing the relationship between these two models, AllanAllan, Keith (2003: 538) uses the term ›paradigm‹ in the sense of KuhnKuhn, Thomas S.:

In the middle of the twentieth century there was a shift from a phenomenological inductivistinductive paradigmparadigm in American linguistics to a hypothetico-deductivistdeductive paradigm; a shift known as ›the ChomskyChomsky, Noam revolutionevolution‹ because it came about through Chomsky’s work. (AllanAllan, Keith 2003: 538; 2007: 284)

As we know, inductivisminductive follows a bottom-up method of reasoning by inferring generalizations from the observation of individual datadata. BloomfieldianBloomfieldian and neo-Bloomfieldianneo-Bloomfieldian linguistics typically applied inductive reasoning.1 Bloomfieldian and neo-Bloomfieldian analyses assumed a hierarchy of levels on the basis of which they proceeded from phones to phonemesphoneme, from phonemes to morphs, from morphs to morphemesmorpheme, and from morphemes to syntactic units.

Hypothetico-deductivismdeductive is the inverse of the inductiveinductive model and follows a top-down reasoning. The latter postulates an abstract theorytheory consisting of general hypotheses and infers from the latter the properties of the individual phenomena it investigates. Thereby, Syntactic StructuresSyntactic Structures introduced a hypothetico-deductive model of languagelanguage. ChomskyChomsky, Noam rejected not only induction, but the discovery of grammars as practiced by Zellig S. HarrisHarris, Zellig S. and others as well, and replaced it by the justification and evaluation of grammars.2 It is the latter that AllanAllan, Keith (2003: 547; 2007: 286) calls »[t]he true revolution that Chomsky bequeathed«.

AllanAllan, Keith (2003: 547) also assumes that neo-Bloomfieldianneo-BloomfieldianBloomfieldian linguists resisted ChomskyChomsky, Noam’s early views, and this resistance is one of the indications of KuhnianKuhnian revolutionrevolutionKuhnians.3 In this respect, Allan maintains the opposite of NewmeyerNewmeyer, Frederick J.’s (1986a), HarrisHarris, Randy Allen’ (1993a) and MurrayMurray, Stephen O.’s (1994) claim, according to which the young Chomsky was supported by the most prominent personalities of American linguistics (see Sections 2.1.1.2.2, 2.1.2.6.1, 2.1.2.6.2)

With respect to (T2)(b), AllanAllan, Keith (2003: 558) emphasizes that although ChomskyChomsky, Noam’s early work rests on a hypothetico-deductivedeductive basis, it cannot dispense with inductiveinductive datadata gathering. On the one hand, Chomsky and his followers assume that since languagelanguage universals are assumed to be biologicallybiology given, and are thus represented in the mind of all humans whatever their particular mother tongue is, it is sufficient to investigate one language in order to reveal these universals. On the other hand, »even this project requires an adequate data base from the one language that is the object of analysis; and that data base presupposes inductive investigation« (Allan 2003: 558). So, Allan concludes:

Linguistic theorizing needs both macro-paradigmsparadigm of linguistics in order to achieve its proper end. The bottom-up datadata-gathering and preliminary classification from phenomenological inductivisminductive, and the top-down hypothesis construction from hypothetico-deductivismdeductive cannot be related in neat temporal sequence: experience tells us that the linguistic researcher must expect to go to and fro between them, reviewing the data to intuit hypotheses, and then checking the hypotheses against the data using the evaluative procedures […] We are into a chicken and egg argument if we try to rigidly determine which is prior. The significant lesson is that the two paradigms are complementary, and both are essential to the advancement of linguistic science. They are as tightly integrated as the double helix of DNA (AllanAllan, Keith 2003: 558; see also Allan 2007: 294–296).

In sum, AllanAllan, Keith’s solution to (P) is:

(SP2)

The basic terms of the historiographyhistoriography of generative linguistics with respect to Syntactic StructuresSyntactic Structures are ›scientificscientific revolution‹revolutionscientificevolutionscientific, ›paradigm‹paradigm, ›inductivism‹inductive and ›hypothetico-deductivism‹deductive, its central thesis is (T2) and its framework is KuhnKuhn, Thomas S. (1970) [1962].