Article published In:
What Counts as Evidence in Linguistics?: The case of innatenessEdited by Martina Penke and Anette Rosenbach
[Studies in Language 28:3] 2004
► pp. 554–579
Edited by Martina Penke and Anette Rosenbach
[Studies in Language 28:3] 2004
► pp. 554–579
Does linguistic explanation presuppose linguistic description?
I argue that the following two assumptions are incorrect: (i) The properties of the innate Universal Grammar can be discovered by comparing language systems, and (ii) functional explanation of language structure presupposes a “correct”, i.e. cognitively realistic, description. Thus, there are two ways in which linguistic explanation does not presuppose linguistic description.
The generative program of building cross-linguistic generalizations into the hypothesized Universal Grammar cannot succeed because the actually observed generalizations are typically one-way implications or implicational scales, and because they typically have exceptions. The cross-linguistic generalizations are much more plausibly due to functional factors.
I distinguish sharply between “phenomenological description” (which makes no claims about mental reality) and “cognitively realistic description”, and I show that for functional explanation, phenomenological description is sufficient.
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