Dick:
> Dear Nik,
> Sorry - I'm not good at picking up fine points in other people's opinions
> when they involve a world view that's different from my own.
Me too.
> If participating in a system is enough for autonomy, then yes, syntax is
> autonomous - just like the days of the week, the London underground network
> and the universe.
I agree. But maybe we can distinguish between things that spontaneously
fall into systematicity, such as the movement of crowds across a station
concourse, and things that work according to a predefined system, such as
the flow of traffic along roads or trains along the rail network. I have
the sense that some functionalists/cognivists see language as like the
station concourse, while formalists see it as like road/rail traffic.
The difference is an aetiological one, and it is perfectly possible
to work out the laws of the system without worrying about which of the
two sorts of system it is.
> But that's precisely why I'm a formalist in syntax and a
> functionalist in language, as And so nicely puts it. The whole of cognition
> is divided into little more or less autonomous systems, so syntax is just
> like everything else; QED. Incidentally, I suppose that makes me a
> functionalist because I say the form of language is more or less
> predictable from its function, just like the form of the London underground
> system etc. If that's all there is to it I really do wonder what the
> formalist/functionalist fuss is about.
Maybe that makes Chomsky the Minimalist a functionalist too? I'm only
the umpteenth person to have made that observation.
--And.
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