In her content-filled 118 pages of Formalism and Functionalism in Linguistics, Margaret Thomas provides a lucid, comprehensive and balanced history of a complex subject in contemporary linguistics. She impressively surveys and connects a broad range of studies, past and present, impartially presents the core issues of the debate and invites her readers to draw their own conclusions. Her introductory summary of each chapter forecasts its critical issues, her ample references at the end of each chapter underscore its primary and secondary sources, her appendix of the distinguishing characteristics of formalism and functionalism summarises her relevant points throughout the book and her copious index facilitates her reader’s continued research. The book is not only for linguists but anyone curious about the intricacies of language. In addition, the book would serve well as a supplementary textbook for general and specialised courses in linguistics, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Thomas’s rationale is that to understand contemporary linguistics, the history of linguistics matters. This approach enables her to move from the narrow confines of the current debate, and it allows her to offer a broader perspective than if she were focused on a specific time. While recognising that ‘Functionalists seem more willing than formalists to inquire into their own forerunners and more open to viewing their work as part of a stream of research, as opposed to emphasizing the novelty of their ideas about language’ (16), she cogently discusses both emphases, highlights their meaningful differences and respects the scholarly integrity of those contributing to the debate.
In her introduction, she notes that ‘[t]he diversity of sub-specialization, exposure, and stance (among other factors) keeps modern linguistics lively’ (1). A principal strength of the book is that in documenting the differences and similarities of each position, she enables her readers to assess and relate them to their own analyses of language. Given the limited length of the book, she sensibly omits phonology because, as she notes, it has been less debated; and excludes grammaticalisation because, as she points out, it has been well treated by Newmeyer (Reference Newmeyer1998) and Fischer (Reference Fischer2007).
In the first chapter, ‘Defining “formalism” and “functionalism”’, Thomas prepares the reader for the difficulty of working with these terms that do not have either-or boundaries; instead, she compares it to political discourse, in which terms such as ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ are subject to varying viewpoints. Drawing on the language of architecture, she contends that ‘for formalists, form transcends function’ and ‘for functionalists, form derives from function’ (6). This leads her to an overriding comparison throughout her book of regarding formalists as engineers, and functionalists as collectors. Towards the end of the chapter, she devotes several pages to persuasively contrasting two books that exemplify the approaches: Moro’s Impossible Languages (2016) for the engineers, and Everett’s Language, the Cultural Tool (2012) for the collectors.
In Chapter 2, ‘Background to the current debate’, Thomas offers a brief history of the concepts of formalism and functionalism, claiming that ‘Remarkably, there has been little reflection on whether the comparison between formalism and functionalism has much of a past’ (15). She notes that while Noam Chomsky has drawn on the history of linguistics, few generativists have followed his lead. While the terms were coined in the late twentieth century, she sketches a history that starts much earlier. She maintains that formalism started with Pãnini (fl 400–350 BCE) and Plato (428/427–348/347 BCE), pointing out that Leonard Bloomfield (1887–1949) modeled his work on Pãnini’s grammar and that Noam Chomsky refers to ‘Plato’s Problem’. On the functionalist side, she references Givón (Reference Givón1995), citing Aristotle (384–322 BCE) as the starting point.
While most of the chapter is devoted to documenting the dominance of formalism in the United States and functionalism in Europe during the first half of the twentieth century, Thomas concedes that ‘None of this earlier work precisely foreshadows how formalism and functionalism developed after the 1950’s’ (28). However, she justifies her history by concluding that ‘the existence of the work prepares us to better understand how more recent work arose, and to notice what is novel in it’ (28). Thomas contends that ‘Bloomfieldian formalism…had a major impact on linguistics in the first half of the twentieth-century America’ (22), and Chomsky’s formalism dominated the second half.
The chapter continues with a discussion of the formalism of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913), Franz Boas (1858–1942) and Leonard Bloomfield (1887–1949), and the functionalism of Edward Sapir (1884–1939), André Martinet (1908–1999), Kenneth Pike (1912–2000), as well as the members of the Prague Circle. Throughout, she recognises that the formalist and functionalist positions of these linguists tend to be debatable. For example, ‘Saussure’s Cours was a major stimulus, although each group defined its own position relative to Saussurean doctrine, and relative to the powerful model of Prague Circle functionalism’ (23). As prime examples of studies of Saussure reflecting the difficulty of arriving at definitive interpretations of his work, she cites Dirven and Fried (Reference Dirven, Fried, Dirven and Fried1987) on the side of functionalism and Joseph (Reference Joseph and Joseph2002) on the side of formalism.
In Chapter 3, ‘Contemporary formalist linguistics,’ Thomas recognises the dominance of generative grammar centred on the output of a single scholar, Noam Chomsky, noting that even ‘[t]hose who oppose Chomsky tend to define their own work relative to his’ (32). The chapter is devoted to a study of the three progressive phases of generative grammar: early transformational grammar, Principles and Parameters and the Minimalist Program. To keep her chapter manageable, Thomas focuses on how the formalist character of generative grammar specifically evolved over the years.
Thomas provides a succinct history of the three phases. She points out that by studying under the leading structuralist, Zellig Harris (1909–1992), Chomsky was introduced to the dominant theories and practices of American linguistics in the first half of the twentieth century. While he was drawn to the structuralist’s emphasis on formalism, he moved away from its behaviourism by maintaining that grammaticality was determined by a speaker’s intuition rather than a corpus of utterances. Although much in Syntactic Structures (1957) and Aspects of a Theory of Syntax (1965) became irrelevant in the later development of generative grammar, Chomsky’s emphasis on formalism steadfastly continued throughout his later work. In the second phase, Principles and Parameters, ‘generative grammar significantly increased its scope and sophistication, and the ambition of the theory to account for what makes languages both resemble and differ from each other’ (35) via Universal Grammar. Thomas notes that because Chomsky’s analysis in the 1980s was on competence rather than performance, it ‘became increasingly removed from actual language data’ (36). The third phase, the Minimalist period, is summarised as signaling ‘an intention to define the most general possible account of structure-building operations, reducing the mechanism of the grammar to its barest necessary content’ (38).
In Chapter 4, ‘Contemporary functionalist linguistics,’ Thomas notes that while it ‘does not have the centripetal organization of formalist linguistics’, it is ‘more heterogeneous as a class’ (45). She limits her focus by referring to three major linguists and their approaches: Michael A.K. Halliday’s (1925–2018) systemic functional linguistics, Ronald Langacker’s cognitive grammar and Talmy Givón’s functionalist work. She views these as representing three lively approaches that contrast dramatically with formalist approaches. In selecting these approaches, she aligns herself with Newmeyer (Reference Newmeyer1998, Reference Newmeyer2001), devoting a couple of pages to his relevant analysis. She closes her chapter with an astute observation in drawing attention to the contrast in the graphic styles of the two approaches: ‘While formalists represent linguistic generalizations in pictorial models and formulas, a common feature of functionalist texts is the extensive citation of language data’ (57).
In Chapter 5, ‘Formalism and functionalism in action,’ Thomas shifts to singling out for comparison how various understandings of formalism versus functionalism treat relevant language issues. She shows the complexity of comparing the two approaches because they often vary, disagree and even support each other. She chooses three areas of language study: analysis of syntactic phenomena, conceptualisation and child language learning and debate on the origins of human language. In discussing these areas, she is more restricted by the scholarship in the first and second, and far less in the third regarding the ‘dramatic, unwieldy, interdisciplinary question at the nexus of linguistics, evolutionary biology, neurophysiology, primatology, and cognitive science: how did human language first arise, and how it has evolved?’ (72).
In all three areas, she delves into a considerable number of approaches and draws on leading edge research to document her conclusions. She shows how formalists and functionalists ‘sometimes examine the same language phenomenon but perceive them differently [and] with different questions in mind’ (67). For example, in her lively discussion of the origins of language, she contrasts Chomsky’s biological non-evolutionary explanation of human language with not only the functionalists but also other formalists. Thomas insightfully notes that ‘Chomsky’s anti-gradualist, anti-selective position is bold and coherent with his overall linguistic theory’ but that ‘[i]t is in direct competition with the better developed, default, neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, which even some formalists find persuasive’ (78). Given that non-evolutionary and evolutionary theories cannot co-exist, Thomas argues that one will replace the other as the history of linguistics moves forward.
In her final chapter, ‘Formalism and functionalism juxtaposed’, Thomas takes an imaginative and effective approach to do more than simply sum up her book. She presents contrasting positions of the formalists and functionalists as if they were in engaged in three types of conversation: talking face to face, discussing a critical issue side by side or recognising their asymmetrical positions back to back. For example, in face-to-face, she draws on the imagined dialog in Newmeyer (Reference Newmeyer1998); in side-by-side, she refers to Hyams (Reference Hyams, Moravcsik, Darnell, Newmeyer, Noonan and Wheatley1999) and cites others including Givón and Newmeyer; and in back-to-back, she draws on Everett (Reference Everett2012) and Moro (Reference Moro2016) among others. This approach allows her to considerably deepen and sharpen the juxtapositions she has been developing throughout the book. She contends that ‘formalist versus functionalist tendencies have been in tension for a long time in linguistics; what rises to the surface at any one moment isn’t a judgement on its overall adequacy as an account of the nature of language’ (100).
In her ‘Conclusion,’ Thomas once again states the goal of the book: ‘observers, as well as participants who identify as either linguist-engineers or linguist-collectors, can all profit from better insight into what is at stake in the debate between formalism and functionalism’ (110). Her underlying theme throughout is that linguists greatly benefit by understanding, if not appreciating, opposing perspectives.
In dealing with the constraints imposed by the brevity of the book, Thomas decided to elaborate on the work of a few rather than to outline the work of many. To avoid the risk of misrepresenting the field, she provides extensive references to many works that were not discussed to guide the reader to most, if not all, the relevant studies available on formalism and functionalism. While she could be criticised for not arguing in favor of one side or the other, as do most of the works that she cites, I find her balanced view very effective pedagogically, especially if the book is serving as textbook. She invites students to consider the core points of the debate and to determine for themselves the strengths and weaknesses of each position. All things considered, Thomas succeeds in providing a thoughtful introduction to a complex subject that cannot be simply defined in binary terms because linguists often use terms with multiple meanings.
