Language, Grammar and Linguistic Theory(1) grammar
models provides data
I-language E-language
defines
So, a linguist goes out amongst language speakers and listens to what they produce and
perhaps tests what they can understand and formulates a grammar based on these
observations.
It is the way of the universe that no truths are given before we start our
investigations of it. But until we have some way of separating what is relevant to our
investigations from what is irrelevant there is no way to proceed: do we need to test
the acidity of soil before investigating language? It seems highly unlikely that we
should, but if we know nothing from the outset, how can we decide? It is necessary
therefore, before we even begin our investigations, to make some assumptions about
what we are going to study. Usually, these assumptions are based on common sense,
like those I have been making so far. But it is important to realise that they are
untested assumptions which may prove to be wrong once our investigations get under
way. These assumptions, plus anything we add to them as we start finding out about
the world, we call a theory.
Linguistic theories are no different from any other theory in this respect. All
linguists base themselves on one theory or another. One group of linguists, known as
generativists, claim that in order to do things properly we need to make our theories
explicit. This can be seen as a reaction to a more traditional approach to linguistics
which typically claims to operate atheoretically, but, in fact, makes many implicit
assumptions about language which are themselves never open to investigation or
challenge. Generative linguists point out that progress is unlikely to be made like this,
as if these assumptions turn out to be wrong we will never find out, as they are never
questioned. In order to find out if our assumptions are correct, they need to be
constantly questioned and the only way to do this is to make them explicit.
Because of this, it is my opinion that the generative perspective is the one that is
most likely to provide the best framework for a description of language. We will
therefore adopt this perspective and so certain aspects of the theory will form part of
the content of the book, but only in so far as they help to achieve the main goal of
explaining why English is as it is. In true generative style, I will take the rest of this
chapter to try to make explicit some of the basic assumptions that we will be making in
the rest of the book.