Foundations of Linguistic Theory
語言學理論本質
Fall
2013 Wednesday
14:10-17:00
文學院306*
課碼: 1309003
UPDATED 2013/11/14
Research &
Writing Links
Grammar & Evidence
website
Fall 2005 Empirical
Methods class
Fall 2007 Empirical
Methods class
Fall 2009 Empirical
Methods class
Fall 2011 Foundations
class
James Myers (麥傑)
Office: 文學院247
Tel: 31506
Email: Lngmyers at the university address
Web: http://www.ccunix.ccu.edu.tw/~lngmyers/
Office hours: Thursday 10 am - 12 noon, or by appointment
*The class will actually be in 文學院409.
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)
Discussion readings
Anderson, S R. (1985). Phonology in the twentieth century: Theories of rules and theories of representations, Chapter 1: Ferdinand de Saussure (pp. 17-32). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bailey, C.-J. N. (1996). Variation theory and so-called sociolinguistic grammars. In C.-J. N. Bailey (Ed.) Essays on time-based linguistic analyses (pp. 57-81). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Behme, C. (2013). Remarks on Recursive misrepresentations by Legate et al. (2013). Dalhousie University ms. <http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/001840>
Berent, I., Colin, W., Marcus, G. F., & Bemis, D. K. (2012). On the role of variables in phonology: Remarks on Hayes and Wilson 2008. Linguistic inquiry, 43 (1), 97-119.
Biq, Y.-O., Tai, J., & Thompson, S. (1996). Recent developments in functional approaches to Chinese. In C.-T. J. Huang & Y.-H. A. Li (Eds.), New horizons in Chinese linguistics (pp. 97-140). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Breva-Claramonte, M. (1983). Sanctius' theory of language: A contribution to the history of Renaissance linguistics, Chapter 10: Logical structure and logical rules (pp. 209-220). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Chalmers, A. F. (1999). What is this thing called science? (Third edition), Chapter 5: Introducing falsificationism & Chapter 7: The limitations of falsificationism (pp. 59-73, 87-103). University of Queensland Press.
Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax, Chapter 1: Methodological preliminaries (pp. 3-62). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Chomsky, N. (2005). Three factors in language design. Linguistic inquiry, 36 (1), 1-22.
Cormier, K., Schembri, A., & Woll, B. (2010). Diversity across sign languages and spoken languages: Implications for language universals. Lingua, 120 (12), 2664-2667.
Graffi, G. (2001). 200 years of syntax: A critical survey, Chapter 2: The rise and fall of "psychologistic" syntax (pp. 15-72). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Guy, G. R. (2011). Sociolinguistics and Formal Linguistics. In R. Wodak, B. Johnstone, & P. Kerswill (Eds.) The SAGE handbook of sociolinguistics (pp. 249-264). London: SAGE Publications.
Harris, R A. (1993). The linguistics wars, Chapter 3: The Chomskyan revolution (pp. 35-73). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hovdhaugen, E. (1982). Foundations of Western Linguistics: From the beginning to the end of the first millennium A.D, Chapter 3: Where it all started: Greek linguistics (pp. 19-67). Oslo: Universitetsforlaget A/S.
Hunter, L. (1982). Silence is also language: Hausa attitudes about speech and language. Anthropological Linguistics, 24 (4), 389-409.
Johnson, K. (2004). Gold's theorem and cognitive science. Philosophy of Science, 71 (4), 571-592.
Kiparsky, P. (1993). Paninian linguistics. In R. E. Asher & J. M. Y. Simpson (Eds.) The encyclopedia of language and linguistics (pp. 2918-2923). Pergamon Press.
Legate, J. A., Pesetsky, D., & Yang, C. (2013, to appear). Recursive misrepresentations: A reply to Levinson (2013). Language. <http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/001822>
Levinson, S. C. (2013). Recursion in pragmatics. Language, 89 (1), 149-162.
Levinson, S. C., & Evans, N. (2010). Time for a sea-change in linguistics: Response to comments on "The myth of language universals". Lingua, 120 (12), 2733-2758.
Mei, T.-L. (1961). Subject and predicate, a grammatical preliminary. The Philosophical Review, 70 (2), 153-175.
Myers, J. (2012). Cognitive styles in two cognitive sciences. In N. Miyake, D. Peebles, & R. P. Cooper (Eds.), Proceedings of the 34th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 2067-2072). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
Newmeyer, F. J. (1998). Language form and language function, Chapter 3: Internal and external explanation in linguistics (pp. 95-164). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Overton, J. A. (2013). "Explain" in scientific discourse. Synthese, 190, 1383-1405.
Peverelli, P. J. (1986). The history of modern Chinese grammar studies, Chapter 1: Introduction (pp. 1-55). PhD dissertation, Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden.
Pullum, G. K. (1983). The revenge of the methodological moaners. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 4, 583-588. Reprinted 1991 in G. K. Pullum, The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax and other irreverent essays on the study of language (pp. 123-130). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Reiner, E. (1994). Linguistics in the ancient Near East. In G. Lepschy (Ed.) History of linguistics, vol. I: The eastern traditions (pp. 61-96). London: Longman.
Rooryck, J., Smith, N. V., Liptak, A., & Blakemore, D. (2010). Editorial introduction to the special issue of Lingua on Evans & Levinson's "The myth of language universals". Lingua, 120 (12), 2651-2656.
Sandler, W. (2010). The uniformity and diversity of language: Evidence from sign language. Lingua, 120 (12), 2727-2732.
Stokhof, M., & van Lambalgen, M. (2011a). Abstractions and idealisations: The construction of modern linguistics. Theoretical Linguistics, 37 (1-2), 1-26.
Stokhof, M., & van Lambalgen, M. (2011b). Comments-to-comments. Theoretical Linguistics, 37 (1/2), 79-94.
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 |
|
9/18 |
NO CLASS (James at conference)** |
|
|
|
9/25 |
Approaches to linguistics |
Myers (2012) |
Myers |
|
10/2 |
Philosophy of science |
Overton (2012) |
|
|
10/9 |
Non-Western linguistics |
Hunter (1982) |
|
|
10/16 |
Chinese linguistics |
Peverelli (1986) |
|
|
10/23 |
History of Western linguistics I |
Hovdhaugen (1982) |
|
|
10/30 |
History of Western linguistics II |
Graffi (2001) |
|
|
11/6 |
Generative linguistics |
Harris (1993) |
|
|
11/13 |
Controversy Ia: Formalism |
Biq et al. (1996) |
|
|
11/20 |
Discuss research progress |
|
|
|
11/27 |
Controversy Ib: Functionalism |
Levinson (2013), Legate et al., 2013, [Behme 2013: just for background], |
|
|
12/4 |
Controversy II: Universals and nativism |
Johnson (2004) |
|
|
12/11 |
Controversy III: Sociolinguistics |
Guy (2011) |
|
|
12/18 |
Controversy IV: Rationalism |
Chomsky (2005) |
|
|
12/25 |
Presentations I |
|
|
|
1/1 |
NO CLASS (New Year's Day) |
|
|
|
1/8 |
Presentations II [last class] |
|
|
|
1/15 |
Journal acknowledgment due |
|
|
**To make up this class, you must visit me in my office to discuss the class and/or your own research, sometime between the mid-term discussion of research progress (11/20) and the final presentations (12/25).