Against taking linguistic diversity at “face value

• Main Author: David Pesetsky
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: tlingit
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.646.2878; http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/people/faculty/pesetsky/Against_Taking_Linguistic_Diversity_at_Face_Value.pdf

Abstract: E&L advocate taking linguistic diversity at "face value". Their argument consists of a list of diverse phenomena, and the assertion that no non-vacuous theory could possibly uncover a meaningful unity underlying them. I argue, with evidence from Tlingit and Warlpiri, that E&L's list itself should not be taken at face value — and that the actual research record already demonstrates unity amidst diversity. From a distance, the structures of the world's languages do look gloriously diverse and endlessly varied. But since when is it sound strategy to take diversity at "face value"? All other sciences have progressed precisely by taking nothing at face value — diversity included. E&L claim, in effect, that linguistics is fundamentally different from all other fields. If they are right, the search for deeper laws behind linguistic structure is a fool's errand, and languages are just as inexplicably diverse as they seem at first glance. Given their sweeping objections to an entire field of inquiry, it is particularly surprising that E&L's paper contains no discussion of the actual research to which they supposedly object. Instead, the paper offers only (1) a parade of capsule descriptions of phenomena from the world's languages, coupled with (2) repeated assertions that each phenomenon falls outside the scope of all (non-vacuous) general theories of linguistic structure. The argument must therefore rest on two premises: (1) that the capsule descriptions of