Volume 21, Issue 3-4

This article aims to be a contribution to the methodological foundations of linguistics. To answer the question of “what are scientific data?”, a semiotic conception of data is proposed according to which they are representations of properties of the object area of a science that serve certain purposes for their users. Kinds of data are distinguished by their ontological status, degree of abstractness, the type of sign representing them and their originality. The methodological status of data in the history of linguistic science is briefly reviewed, and their functions in scientific argument are specified. Various methods of data provision by generation of data or by use of available data are discussed. Since data are representations, they are per se a linguistic issue which, however, is even more complicated for linguistic data proper, because here diverse linguistic levels and diverse levels of abstractness have to be controlled. Apart from the principal necessity to have clarity on the methodological bases of a science, the issue of the nature and function of data in linguistics acquires increased urgency in a world where the documentation of endangered languages is, first and foremost, one of adequate data provision.

The article discusses the problematic relationship between linguistic data and theories. First it presents data as characterized by different forms of internal and external complexity. Then it shows special kinds of data, such as empty categories, as an example of ‘theory-laden’ data, and clitics as examples of interface or cross-level items. Finally it discusses data according to the twentieth century distinction between competence and performance. Throughout the article interest for the richness and diversity of linguistic data is considered methodologically relevant for linguistics both in comparative and in one-language studies of data. It is the author's belief that, to take into account the complexity of linguistic data, theoretical linguistics should rely less on overly-rigid architectures in order to allow diversity as much as regular behavior of data to emerge. Finally it is suggested that one way to make theories more flexible is offered by optimality theory. Only by adopting this line of research can theoretical approaches allow both universal and language-specific aspects of language to coexist and be accounted for.

This paper deals with the problem of the linguist's cognition, which is to say the manner in which linguists proceed in their work, the tools they operate with, and the cognitive status of their claims. Saussure had dreamt in his time of providing linguistics with a method of its own which, albeit not borrowed from other sciences, had the rigor of scientific methodology (of mathematics in particular). At the same time, he had clearly understood that methodological issues in linguistics could not be separated from the issue of understanding what the object of linguistics is; the adequacy of the method will depend on the correct assessment of what language is. Language is presented here as a “meso-object”, that is, one made of, and interlaced with, different and not homogeneous components. This causes linguistics itself to be a “meso-science”, at least insofar as it must remain homologous to its object. The epistemological status of linguistic objects and abstraction is also discussed, with the final conclusion that linguistics is not an empirical science at all – as it generally claims to be – but something more theoretically oriented.

The question this paper tries to answer is: What does it mean for linguists to do linguistics? The first part of the paper examines categories used by linguists as belonging to languages, but also to linguistic theories. It appears that while some of these categories are understood more or less in the same way by all linguists, there is a wide variation in the ways others are conceived of. The second part of the paper shows that the same applies to the notion of linguistic rule, whose interpretation is far from uniform across theoretical models. The paper finally studies the interfaces which link together the various levels of languages, from phonology to semantics. Again, the interfaces, although recognized by all linguists, are treated along different lines.

This paper will focus on two of the many concepts and instruments linguists need to work independently of their theoretical tenets: categories and interfaces. Both would appear fundamental for the understanding of language organization. The paper will argue in favor of a limited number of categories and the necessity of their definition in terms of explicit criteria and well-defined parameters. The study of interfaces, on the other hand, seems to offer a key to understanding the way language works, since the different levels of analysis posited for our descriptions are not independent, working together to make the interaction between sound and meaning possible.

This paper discusses the problem of variation in linguistics and the ways in which linguists try to take it into account. First the notion of variation in linguistics is defined and the different levels of importance given to phenomena of variation by various groups of linguists is highlighted. Many linguists see these phenomena as irrelevant or negligible, whereas they are in fact fundamental to fully understand language. The relationship between theoretical models and variational data is then discussed, with examples of data (covering phonetics, verbal morphology, code switching, and derivation) that appear resistant to rigorous modelization; also discussed is the nature of the fundamentally functional and probabilistic models used to theorize about and analyze variation and the sociolinguistic objects in which it appears. Finally mention is made of the problem of incorporating variation into grammar, and a number of key concepts for a linguistic theory of variation are introduced (sociolinguistic variable, continuum , sociolinguistic levels of analysis).

The study of the language faculty pursued within the tradition of generative grammar focuses on a natural object, the cognitive capacity that our species possesses for knowledge, acquisition, and use of natural languages. This line of research investigates a component of the human mind/brain, and is pursued within the federating framework of the cognitive neurosciences. Three major steps of this research trend are examined here: the modeling of the language faculty as a computational capacity, the study of language invariance and variation through parametric models, and the guidelines of the Minimalist program. After a presentation of the logic of the parametric approach to language variation, some properties of the micro-versus macro-comparative study of syntax are examined. The basic guidelines of the Minimalist program are illustrated, with special reference to the role of economy principles; some consequences of minimalist ideas for general issues such as innateness and task-specificity of the language faculty are discussed.

This article tries to show some specifically linguistic weak points in the Poverty of-the-Stimulus Argument (PSA). Besides some quantitative considerations, from a qualitative point of view it is shown that the innatist tradition underestimates analogy as a resource for children to build their own grammars from the incomplete stimuli they receive from the environment; that knowledge and consciousness of reality surrounding the speech acts are also underestimated, and in fact play a major role in allowing children to build their internal grammars; that the role of “negative information”, conceived as the fact that some structures simply (but systematically) do not occur in the stimulus, is also underestimated. It is also suggested that the high degree of convergence of all known grammars does not need to be explained by means of one grammar in the brain, but simply results from a series of constraints that are pragmatic in nature, or directly derive from the definition of a system designed for communication.

It seems that a need for clarifying the theoretical basis of linguistics is presently more or less widely felt. The aim of linguistic theory is to specify in what ways natural languages differ and in what ways they are all alike. This article advocates a kind of structuralist functionalism inspired by the Saussurean doctrine, which is claimed to be apt to help linguists to get a clearer view of what they are doing in contradistinction to other cognitive scientists, and to bring linguistics closer to the status of a science. In particular, the main problem of typological research and the quest for empirical universals, which is the lack of an objective independent standard for comparing languages, is examined and a way out of that difficulty is suggested. In conclusion, a few thoughts are given to the question of how explanation is or should be conceived in linguistics.

This paper deals with the concept of internal versus external explanation in linguistics and the difficulty of drawing a clear-cut dividing line. Crosslinguistic comparison helps us to understand what may be considered as strictly pertaining to the linguistic dimension or to a larger cognitive frame. Linguistic categories are then discussed in this frame of reference and a scheme is proposed where the notion of “category” does not apply to concepts such as “passive”, “perfect”, or “subject”. Finally it is maintained that the classical “parts-of-speech” theory is still a valuable tool for crosslinguistic comparison in a typological perspective.