Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T14:58:15.593Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Issues in Linguistics: A View From the Outside

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Jayant K. Lele
Jayant K. Lele*
Affiliation:
Queen’s University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

To an outsider looking at linguistic theory, the problem of internal vs. external evidence seems to arise out of a conflation of two relatively distinct enterprises. The first of these tries to establish a claim that there is a distinct, organic, language faculty (a language organ), that is, a species-specific characteristic common to all humans. The second is an attempt to abstract from the facts of diversity a structure that has equivalent universal characteristics and thus can be seen as an ideal type or as an ideal initial state condition (of a pure and uniform experience) under which a language is acquired by a native speaker. As I understand it, the relationship between these two enterprises is yet to be fully determined given the fact that the physical mechanism that has been deduced to correspond to a property of mind is as of now largely unknown.

Type
Postscript
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 33 , Issue 4: Special Issue: Linguistic Theory and External Evidence , December 1988 , pp. 507 - 511
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Chomsky, Noam 1986 Knowledge of Language. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam 1988 Language and Problems of Knowledge. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jurgen 1984 The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Hesse, Mary 1980 Revolutions and Reconstructions in the Philosophy of Science. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul 1987 On Theory and Interpretation. Pp. 185–198 in Linguistics of Writing. Fabb, Nigel et al, eds. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Lele, Jayant, and Singh, Rajendra 1988 Language and Society: Steps Towards an Integrated Theory. Leiden: E.J. Brill.Google Scholar
Marcuse, Herbert 1969 Repressive Tolerance. Pp. 81–123 in A Critique of Pure Tolerance. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Rorty, Richard 1985 Habermas and Lyotard on Post-Modernity. Pp. 161–175 in Habermas and Modernity. Bernstien, Richard J., ed. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Singh, Rajendra 1987 On the Redundant Nature of Variable Rules. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 20:111–117.Google Scholar
Singh, Rajendra 1988 Phonology, Morphology and the Autonomy Thesis. Paper presented at Phonologica 1988. Krems, Austria, June 1988.Google Scholar