Foundations of Linguistic Theory
語言學理論本質
Fall
2015 Thursday
14:10-17:00 文學院413
課碼: 1309003
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
Fall 2013 Foundations
class
UPDATED 2015/12/13
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: Wednesday 2-4 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)
Discussion readings
Abler, W. L. (1989). On the particulate principle of self-diversifying systems. Journal of Social and Biological Structures, 12(1), 1-13.
Allan, K. (2004). Aristotle's footprints in the linguist's garden. Language Sciences, 26(4), 317-342.
Boltz, W. G., Renn, J., & Schemmel, M. (2003). Mechanics in the Mohist canon and its European counterpart: Texts and contexts. Preprint 241 of the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte.
Chomsky, N., & Halle, M. (1965). Some controversial questions in phonological theory. Journal of Linguistics, 1(2), 97-138.
De Bot, K. (2015). Moving Where? A Reaction to Slabakova et
al.(2014). Applied Linguistics, 36(2), 261-264.
Fisher, S. E., & Vernes, S. C. (2015). Genetics and the language sciences. Annual Review of Linguistics, 1(1), 289-310.
Gries, S. Th. (2012). Corpus linguistics, theoretical linguistics, and cognitive/psycholinguistics: towards more and more fruitful exchanges. In J. Mukherjee & M. Huber (Eds.) Corpus linguistics and variation in English: Theory and description (pp. 41-63). Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Harris, R. (1981). The grammarians' legacy. In The language myth (pp. 54-85). New York: St. Martin's Press.
Householder, F. W. (1965). On some recent claims in phonological theory. Journal of Linguistics, 1(1), 13-34.
Jacobsen, T. (1974). Very ancient texts: Babylonian grammatical texts. In D. Hymes (Ed.) Studies in the history of linguistics: Traditions and paradigms (pp. 41-61). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Keeler, L. (2008). Linguistic reconstruction and the construction of nationalist-era Chinese linguistics. Language & Communication, 28(4), 344-362.
Langacker, R. W. (2010). How not to disagree: The emergence of structure from usage. In K. Boye & E. Engberg-Pedersen (Eds.) Language usage and language structure (pp. 107-144). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Laurence, S. (2003). Is linguistics a branch of psychology? In A. Barber (Ed.) Epistemology of language (pp. 69-106). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Li, A. Y.-H. (2015). Facilitating language learning: A generative perspective. In Hongyin Tao, Yu-Hui Lee, Danjie Su, Keiko Tsurumi, Wei Wang, & Ying Yang (Eds.), Proceedings of the 27th North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics, Vol. 1, 1-21. Los, Angeles: UCLA.
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. (2010). What conversational English tells us about the nature of grammar: A critique of Thompson's analysis of object complements. In K. Boye & E. Engberg-Pedersen (Eds.) Language usage and language structure (pp. 3-44). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Passos, M. L. R. F., & Matos, M. A. (2007). The influence of Bloomfield's linguistics on Skinner. The Behavior Analyst, 30(2), 133-151.
Pearson, B. Z. (2004). Theoretical and empirical bases for dialect-neutral language assessment: Contributions from theoretical and applied linguistics to communication disorders. Seminars in Speech and Language, 25 (1), 13-26.
Pedersen, H. (1931). The methods of comparative linguistics: A survey of their development. In The discovery of language: Linguistic science in the nineteenth century (pp. 240-310). Translated by J. W. Spargo. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Reprinted 1962, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Piantadosi, S. T., & Gibson, E. (2014). Quantitative standards for absolute linguistic universals. Cognitive Science, 38(4), 736-756.
Principe, L. M. (2005). Evidence for transmutation in seventeenth-century alchemy. In P. Achinstein (Ed.) Scientific evidence: Philosophical theories and applications (pp. 151-164). Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Rowe, J. H. (1974). Sixteenth and seventeenth century grammars. In D. Hymes (Ed.) Studies in the history of linguistics: Traditions and paradigms (pp. 361-379). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Sapir, E. (1921). The elements of speech. In Language: An introduction to the study of speech (pp. 24-41). New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.
Seuren, P. A. M. (1999). The subject-predicate debate X-rayed. In D. Cram, A. Linn, & E. Nowak (Eds.) History of linguistics 1996, volume 1: Traditions in linguistics worldwide (pp. 41-55). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Slabakova, R., Leal, T. L., & Liskin-Gasparro, J. (2014). We
have moved on: Current concepts and positions in generative SLA. Applied
Linguistics, 35(5), 601-606.
Smith, K. D. (1973). Denasolaryngealization in Sedang folk-linguistics. The Mon-Khmer Studies Journal, 4, 53-62.
Staal, J. F. (1974). The origin and development of linguistics in India. In D. Hymes (Ed.) Studies in the history of linguistics: Traditions and paradigms (pp. 63-74). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Stross, B. (1989). Speaking of speaking: Tenejapa Tzeltal metalinguistics. In R. Bauman & J. Sherzer (Eds.) Explorations in the ethnography of speaking, second edition (pp. 213-239). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Tai, J. H.-Y. 戴浩一. (2000). 新世紀臺灣語言學研究之展望. 《漢學研究》第18卷特刊, 511-519.
Walker, W. (1970). The retention of folk linguistic concepts and the ti'yči̵r caste in contemporary Nacireman culture. American Anthropologist, 72 (1), 102-105.
Wang, W. S. (1989). Language in China: A chapter in the history of linguistics. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 17(2), 183-222.
Worrall, J. (2002). Philosophy of Science: Classic debates, standard problems, future prospects. In P. Machamer and M. Silberstein (Eds.) The Blackwell guide to the philosophy of science (pp. 18-36). Oxford: Blackwell.
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 |
|
9/17 |
Approaches to linguistics |
Myers |
|
|
9/24 |
NO CLASS (James at conference)* |
|
|
|
10/1 |
History and philosophy of science |
Principe (2005) |
|
|
10/8 |
Folk linguistics |
Walker (1970) |
|
|
10/15 |
Non-Western linguistics |
Jacobsen (1974) |
|
|
10/22 |
Chinese linguistics |
Wang (1989) |
|
|
10/29 |
History of Western linguistics I |
Allan (2004) |
|
|
11/5 |
History of Western linguistics II |
Pedersen (1962) |
|
|
11/12 |
History of Western linguistics III |
Sapir (1921) |
|
|
11/19 |
Discuss research progress |
|
|
|
11/26 |
Generative linguistics |
Householder (1965) |
|
|
12/3 |
What is modern linguistics about? |
Tai (2000) |
|
|
12/10 |
Functionalism |
Langacker (2010) |
|
|
12/17 |
Universals and nativism |
Piantados & Gibson (2014) |
|
|
12/24 |
Applications of linguistic theory |
Li (2015) |
|
|
12/31 |
Presentations I |
|
|
|
1/7 |
Presentations II [last class] |
|
|
|
1/14 |
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 (11/19) and the final presentations (12/25).