Foundations
of Linguistic Theory
語言學理論本質
Fall
2011 Thursday
9:10-12:00
文學院413
課碼: 1309003
UPDATED
2011/9/24
Fall 2005 Empirical
Methods class
Fall 2007 Empirical
Methods class
Fall 2009 Empirical
Methods class
James Myers (麥傑)
Office: 文學院247
Tel: 31506
Email: Lngmyers at you-know-where
Web: http://www.ccunix.ccu.edu.tw/~lngmyers/
Office hours: Thursday 3-5 pm, or by appointment
Goals
You have already had experience with linguistic theory and linguistic analysis. Now we'll put this experience into philosophical and historical context, and practice the logic of linguistic argumentation at a higher level.
Evaluation
30% Participation (saying interesting stuff in the
discussions)
40% Discussion leading (two leaders per week)
20% Presentation of own research (one hour; last two weeks of class)
10% Journal submission (must show editor's acknowledgment of receipt of
manuscript)
Schedule [there may be changes along the way]
Readings must be done prior to class. Discussion leaders should actively guide the discussion, using a handout of questions that encourage us to explore the ideas in the readings. Don't lecture us: The more you encourage other people to express their thoughts, the better!
|
Week |
Topic |
Discussion readings |
Leader |
|
|
9/15 |
NO CLASS (James at conference) |
|
|
|
|
9/22 |
Welcome |
Jackendoff (1988) |
All |
|
|
9/29 |
History of science |
Gribbin (2002) |
Myers |
|
|
10/6 |
Philosophy of science |
Carruthers (2002) [for background] |
楊振宗 |
|
|
10/13 |
Folk linguistics |
Niedzielski & Preston (2003) |
陳美秀 |
|
|
10/20 |
Non-Western linguistic theories |
Cardona (1994) |
邱妙津 |
|
|
10/27 |
History of Western linguistics I |
Hovdhaugen (1982) |
楊振宗 |
|
|
11/3 |
History of Western linguistics II |
Kiparsky (1974) |
陳美秀 |
|
|
11/10 |
Generative linguistics |
Randy Harris (1993) [for background] |
邱妙津 |
|
|
11/17 |
Discuss research progress |
|
|
|
|
11/24 |
Linguistics and philosophy |
|
Carlson (2003) |
楊振宗 |
|
12/1 |
Linguistics and social science |
Hymes (1974) |
陳美秀 |
|
|
12/8 |
Linguistics and cognitive science |
Gibbs (2007) |
邱妙津 |
|
|
12/15 |
Linguistics and biology |
Christiansen & Chater (2008) |
楊振宗 |
|
|
12/22 |
Linguistics and mathematics |
Moore (1956) [skim] |
Myers |
|
|
12/29 |
Presentations I |
|
|
|
|
1/5 |
Presentations II [last class] |
|
|
|
|
1/12 |
Journal acknowledgment due |
|
|
|
Discussion readings
Anderson, Stephen R. 1985. Phonology in the twentieth century: Theories of rules and theories of representations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [selections]
Ayala, Francisco J. 2009. Darwin and the scientific method. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106: 10033-10039.
Blake, Ralph M. 1960. Isaac Newton and the hypothetico-deductive method. In Edward H. Madden (Ed.) Theories of scientific method: The Renaissance through the nineteenth century (pp. 119-143). University of Washington Press. Reprinted 1989 by Gordon and Breach.
Bloomfield, Leonard. 1926. A set of postulates for the science of language. Language 2:153-164. Reprinted 1995 in Eric P. Hamp, Martin Joos, Fred W. Householder, and Robert Austerlitz (Eds.) Readings in linguistics I & II: Abridged edition (pp. 8-13). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Cardona, George. 1994. Indian linguistics. In Giulio Lepschy (ed.), History of linguistics: Volume I: The Eastern traditions of linguistics (pp. 25-60). London: Longman.
Carlson, Greg. (2003). On the notion "showing something". In John Moore and Maria Polinsky (Eds.) The nature of explanation in linguistic theory (pp. 69-82). Center for the Study of Language and Information.
Carruthers, Peter. 2002. The roots of scientific reasoning: Infancy, modularity and the art of tracking. In Peter Carruthers, Stephen Stich, and Michael Siegal (Eds.) The cognitive basis of science (pp. 73-95). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Chalmers, A. F. 1999. What is this thing called science? (Third edition). University of Queensland Press. [selections]
Chomsky, Noam. 1965. Aspects of the theory of syntax. Chapter 1: Methodological preliminaries. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Christiansen, Morten H., and Nick Chater. 2008. Language as shaped by the brain. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 31:489-558. [includes peer commentary and reply]
Derwing, Bruce L. 1979. Psycholinguistic evidence and linguistic theory. In Gary D. Prideaux (Ed.) Perspectives in experimental linguistics (pp. 113-138). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Devitt, Michael and Kim Sterelny. 1989. Linguistics: What's wrong with "the Right View." Philosophical Perspectives 3:497-531.
Fodor, Jerry A. 1981. Introduction: Some notes on what linguistics is about. In Ned Block (Ed.) Readings in philosophy of psychology, vol. 2 (pp. 197-207). London: Methuen.
Gibbs, Jr., Raymond W. 2007. Why cognitive linguists should care more about empirical methods. Gonzalez-Marquez, M., Mittleberg, I., Coulson, S., & Spivey, M. (Eds.). Methods in cognitive linguistics (pp. 2-18). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Gribbin, John. 2002. Science: A history. London: Penguin Books. [selections]
Guy, Gregory R. 2011. Sociolinguistics and Formal Linguistics. In Ruth Wodak, Barbara Johnstone, and Paul Kerswill (Eds.) The SAGE handbook of sociolinguistics (pp. 249-264). London: SAGE Publications.
Harris, Randy Allen. 1993. The linguistics wars. Chapter 3: The Chomskyan revolution (pp. 35-73). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Harris, Roy. 1993. What is philosophy of linguistics? In Rom Harré and Roy Harris (Eds.) Linguistics and philosophy: The controversial interface (pp. 3-19). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Harris, Roy, and Talbot J. Taylor. 1997. Landmarks in linguistic thought I: The Western tradition from Socrates to Saussure (second edition). Chapter 8: The Port-Royal Grammar: Arnauld and Lancelot on the rational foundations of grammar. (pp. 95-109). London: Routledge.
Hovdhaugen, Even. 1982. Foundations of Western Linguistics: From the beginning to the end of the first millennium A.D. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget A/S. [selections]
Hunter, Linda. 1982. Silence is also language: Hausa attitudes about speech and language. Anthropological Linguistics 24 (4):389-409.
Hymes, Dell. 1974. Foundations in sociolinguistics: An ethnographic approach. Chapter 8: Linguistic theory and functions in speech. (pp. 145-178). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Jackendoff, Ray. 1988. Why are they saying these things about us? Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 6 (3): 435-442.
Kiparsky, Paul. 1974. From paleogrammarians to Neogrammarians. In Dell Hymes (ed.) Studies in the history of linguistics: Traditions and paradigms (pp. 331-345). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Malmqvist, Göran. 1994. Chinese linguistics. In Giulio Lepschy (ed.), History of linguistics: Volume I: The Eastern traditions of linguistics (pp. 1-24). London: Longman.
Moore, Edward F. 1956. Gedanken-experiments on sequential machines. Automata Studies, Annals of Mathematical Studies 34:129-153.
Neeleman, Ad, and Hans van de Koot. (2010) Theoretical validity and psychological reality of the grammatical code. In Martin Everaert, Tom Lentz, Hannah De Mulder, Øystein Nilsen, and Arjen Zondervan (Eds.) The linguistics enterprise: From knowledge of language to knowledge in linguistics (pp. 183-212). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Niedzielski, Nancy A., and Dennis R. Preston. 2003. Folk linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. [selections]
Piattelli-Palmarini, Massimo & Juan Uriagereka. 2008. Still a bridge too far? Biolinguistic questions for grounding language on brains. Physics of Life Reviews 5, 207-224.
Pullum, Geoffrey K. and Barbara C. Scholz. 2010. Recursion and the infinitude claim. In Harry van der Hulst (Ed.) Recursion and human language (pp. 113-137). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Seuren, Pieter A. M. 1998. Western linguistics: An historical introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. [selections]