管理人が学部3年の時に書いた大串ライティングの夏期休暇課題です。至らない点ばかりですが参考までにどうぞ。
Now The Time to Reflect on What is Linguistics.
For
those who study linguistics, Chomskyan Revolution in the 1950s assumes as much
significance as Copernican Revolution. In 1955, Noam Chomsky, now famous more
for his political activities than for his achievements in linguistics,
distinguished himself jauntily with his iconoclastic idea that focuses on the
creative aspect of ordinary use of language, and turned over the ideas of structural
linguistics that were mainstream at that time. Chomsky thought, and probably
still thinks, that the descriptions of the actual utterances and expressions,
however detailed, are not enough for the science of language and that the task
of linguistics is to render it clear what it is about human biological
mechanisms that enables us to acquire any natural language..
Every
revolutionary idea seems preposterous at first, and Chomsky’s idea was no
exception. Then behaviorism led by B.F
Skinner among others was at its best, and the common sense was that every human
behavior, including language, came not so much from human biological traits as
from experiences. Given the damage caused by eugenics that had laid too much
emphasis on biological inheritance, it is understandable that the behaviorist
thought that regarded every human feature as the product of experience and
environment was appealing then, but Chomsky was sufficiently bold to assert
that such a thought was wrong and give a critical review to Skinner’s Verbal
Behavior, which tried to explain human language only in terms of the
interplay of external stimuli and internal responses.
From
the viewpoints now available for us, many of which we owe Chomsky and Chomskyan
linguists, Skinner’s empiricist explanation of human language sounds rather
far-fetched, for, as Chomsky has pointed out, if a human child were born
neutral with his or her slate of mind blank, how could they acquire so much
with so little external evidence? This argument is called “Poverty of Stimulus”
argument. Not just Skinner’s theory. Any empiricist explanation about human
mind, derived from Locke’s concept of tabula rassa, now seems at some
point impossible in the face of Poverty of Stimulus argument. But then the
empiricist explanation was dominant and never questioned, probably because it
was so “self-evident” and so “fundamental”. In order for any thought to be
revolutionary, it must throws doubts on those ideas that are so fundamental
that no one stops to contemplate them. In this sense, Chomsky’s thought was
revolutionary enough.
Now
the school of generative grammar is so dominant in the field of linguistics
that it is almost impossible to study the subject without any influence from
Chomskyan thought. Those who call themselves Chomskyan, sometimes with a pride,
believe that it is only their methods that are worthy of the name of “the
science of language”. It is true that their work has revealed much about human
language, but I don’t think that only their work should be regarded as
linguistics. Language has surprisingly many aspects and those who are called
Chomskyan, including Chomsky, aim to reveal biological mechanisms of human
language. Indeed, Chomsky says:
Knowing
the language L is a property of a person H; one task of the brain sciences is
to determine what it is about H’s brain by virtue of which this property holds.
We suggested that for H’s brain to know the language L is for H’s mind/brain to
be in a certain state; more narrowly for the language faculty, one module of
this system, to be in a certain state SL. One task of the brain sciences, then,
is to discover the mechanisms that are the physical realization of the state
SL.
(Chomsky
1986)
What this statement suggests is that Chomskyan methods of linguistics ultimately
lead to the brain sciences. Certainly, the belief that only their style
of linguistics is worth studying is in a sense understandable because if
we regard linguistics as a natural science, the goal of it can be to formulate
the biological mechanisms that permits humans to acquire a language. Chomskyan
methods can be useful as an attempt with focuses on language to analyze
one of the most complex things in the world: human brain. But this doesn’t
mean that any attempt to approach language from other angles than biological
one should be regarded as pseudo-science or worthless. It is one thing
to reveal that part of human brain which is responsible for human linguistic
competence; it is another to reflect on the effects that the practical
applications of the linguistic competence have on our social and private
lives. These are different from each other not just in their methods but
in their subjects. This fact now seems to be overlooked.
One factor that contributes to our confusion
is the abuse of the word “grammar”. Grammar in generative grammar is completely
different from grammar in its traditional sense. When Chomskyan linguists use
the word grammar, it refers either to Generative Grammar, that is, a theory of
the structure of a particular language, or else to Universal Grammar, that is,
a theory of universal mechanisms that all of human languages bear; while when
we use the word in the domain of linguistic education, it refers to a
systematic explanation of the structure of the target language that enables
learners at an elementary or intermediate stage to improve with sufficient efficiency
their skills in the language. These two kinds of grammar aim at two different
goals and are incommensurable. If generative grammarians say that the latter
kind of grammar doesn’t deserve the name of science on the ground that it doesn’t
play any role in revealing what is essential to a human biological trait called
language, it can be asserted with the same extent of justifiability that
generative grammar is not worth the name of science on the ground that it
cannot serve any role in linguistic education.
So powerful and so outstanding have been the
influences of natural science on our lives that there has grown a tendency
among us to believe that in order for a subject to be authoritative it must be
a natural science. But this is an illusion. Social science and humanities deal
with complicated problems as well, and to solve such problems can benefit our
lives as much.
Linguistics
as a natural science has been, as is shown above, successful in discovering the
essence of language and I don’t deny this fact at all. But, if we limit our
focus to the creative use of ordinary language every human being is capable of
and studies of language from other angles are dismissed as worthless, through
the medium of what can it be that we take actions to stop terrorisms? Though
Chomsky says in Knowledge of Language that “Plato’s problem”, which here
roughly represent a natural science of language, “is deep and intellectually
exciting” but “Orwell’s problem”, which is mainly concerned with political
aspects of language, “in contrast, seems much less so”, he has devoted much of
his time to political activities since the Vietnam war and claimed against the
States. While he insists that the science of language must be about Plato’s problem,
he realizes how important other kinds of “linguistics” are.
Chomsky,
Noam(1966) Cartesian Linguistics
Cybereditions (2003)
Chomsky,
Noam(1986) Knowledge of Language Praeger
Pinker,
Steven(1994) The Language Instinct Penguin Books (1995)
Pinker,
Steven(2002) The Blank Slate Penguin Books
Plotkin,
Henry(1994) Evolution In Mind Penguin books