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22 - Theories All the Way Down

Remarks on “Theoretical” and “Experimental” Linguistics

from Part IV - Experimental Syntax beyond Acceptability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2021

By
Colin Phillips ,
Phoebe Gaston ,
Nick Huang  and
Hanna Muller
Edited by
Grant Goodall
Grant Goodall
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
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Summary

It is common in linguistics to contrast “theoretical” and “experimental” research. Researchers who pursue experimental research are often asked about the theoretical consequences of their work. Such questions generally equate “theoretical” with theories at a specific high level of abstraction, guided by the questions of traditional linguistic theory. These theories focus on the structural representation of sentences in terms of discrete units, without regard to order, time, finer-grained memory encoding, or the neural circuitry that supports linguistic computation. But there is little need for the high-level descriptions to have privileged status. There are interesting theoretical questions at all levels of analysis. A common experience is that we embark on a project guided by its apparent relevance to high-level theoretical debates. And then we discover new theoretical questions at lower levels of analysis that we had not been aware of previously. We illustrate this using examples from many different lines of experimental research.

Keywords

acceptabilitylexical accessanaphoraprimingmemoryillusionsresumptive pronounsagreement
Type
Chapter
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The Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Syntax , pp. 587 - 616
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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