Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T02:54:43.370Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The External Reality of Linguistic Descriptions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Probal Dasgupta*
Affiliation:
Deccan College, Pune, India

Extract

Many working syntacticians or phonologists do not care about what all linguists tend to call philosophical issues, such as “What kind of object is a language?” They are happy to leave the ontological basis of their work unanalyzed. It is possible to accept this situation. We may choose to inquire directly and separately in what way pieces of external evidence from Acquisition, Borrowing, Change, and Damage may have an impact on ideas considered seriously by working linguists. However, the moment we decide to group the ABCD of these four domains together under the E of Externality, thus trying to organize them into an area of inquiry, this decision leads naturally to a more general type of question. Unless we grapple with such a question, our ABCD list begins to look like the well-known Borges quotation from a fictitious Chinese encyclopaedia stating that animals are divided into:

(a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camel hair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies, (quoted by Foucault 1974:xv)

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bever, Thomas G., Katz, Jerrold J., and Langendoen, D. Terence 1976 An Integrated Theory of Linguistic Ability. New York: Crowell.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam 1964 Current Issues in Linguistic Theory. Pp. 50118 in The Structure of Language: Readings in the Philosophy of Language. Fodor, Jerry A. and Katz, Jerrold J., eds. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam 1969 Quine’s Empirical Assumptions. Pp. 5368 in Words and Objections: Essays on the Works of W.V. Quine. Davidson, Donald and Hintikka, Jaakko, eds. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, Noam 1981 Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam 1982 Some Concepts and Consequences of the Theory of Government and Binding. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam 1986 Knowledge of Language. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam 1987 Language in a Psychological Setting. Sophia Linguistica 22. Tokyo: Sophia University.Google Scholar
Davidson, Donald, and Hintikka, Jaakko, eds. 1969 Words and Objections: Essays on the Works of W. V. Quine. Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar
Fodor, Jerry A., Katz, Jerrold J. 1964 The Structure of Language: Readings in the Philosophy of Language. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel 1974 The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. London: Tavistock.Google Scholar
Itkonen, Esa 1983 Review of Katz Language and Other Abstract Objects (1981). Lingua 60:238244.Google Scholar
Katz, Jerrold J. 1981 Language and Other Abstract Objects. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lakatos, Imre 1987 Proofs and Refutations: The Logic of Mathematical Discovery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Marantz, Alec 1984 On the Nature of Grammatical Relations. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Nozick, Robert 1984 Philosophical Explanations. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Quine, Willard Van Orman 1960 Word and Object. New York: Wiley and The Technology Press of MIT.Google Scholar
Safir, Ken 1986 Relative Clauses in a Theory of Binding and Levels. Linguistic Inquiry 17:663689.Google Scholar
Schane, Sanford 1973 Generative Phonology. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar