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Studium Generale
Section for linguistics students
Lecture 2: Scientific reasoning and praxis 1
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Contents
Examination again
The rescheduled class
Todays topics
Pseudo-science and hoaxes
The philosophy of science
Scientific reasoning
Deduction
Induction
Inference to best explanation
Explanation
Causality
Conclusion2
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Examination
Confirming ...
3 questions each relating to both parts of the
course
From which you select 1
Essays are 10 pages
3
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The rescheduled class
We agreed last time to the following changes:
4
Lecture Date Topic Readings
1 8 March What is science, what is a scientific
approach?
Okasha 2002, Chapter 1; Principe
2011, Chapters 1-2
2 15 March Scientific reasoning and praxis Okasha 2002, Chapters 2-3; ;
Dixon 2008, Chapter 2
3 22 March History of the science of language Campbell 2001; Robins 1984
4 29 March Linguistics as a science: linguistic
theories and praxis
Sampson 1980; Butler 2003,
Chapters 1-2
5 10 April The culture of science Okasha 2002, Chapter 5; Dixon
2008, Chapters 4-5
6 12 April Science in culture Okasha 2002, Chapter 7; Oaks2001
This class will be in 1467-515
Tirsdag den 10.04.2012 fra kl.
9 til kl. 12
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Pseudo-science and hoaxes
An influential philosopher of science, Karl Popper wasconcerned in distinguishing science from pseudo-science
He suggested that a central feature of a scientific theory isthat it be falsifiable
That it makes predictions that can be tested against experience
That is, there are observations that could count against the theory
The theory is not compatible with every possible state of the world
Otherwise, if the theory is consistent with outcome, it cant be tested,and is pseudo-science
5
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One of his favourite whipping-horses was Freudspsychoanalysis
Popper argued that the theory could be reconciled with any
empirical finding
Whatever the behaviour of the patient, an explanation could be foundin terms of the theory
Nothing could show it is wrong
One of Poppers examples:
A man pushes a child into a river, intending to drown him
Another man dies trying to save the child
Freudian theory accounts for both behaviours equally easily
The first was repressed
The second had achieved sublimation
According to Popper concepts like repression and sublimation could
permit compatibility with any data the theory is unfalsifiable 6
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Popper argued that by contrast Einsteinstheory of gravitation makes very definitepredictions
These can be tested against observations
Arthur Eddington organised an expedition to the island ofPrncipe near Africa to observe the Solar eclipse of 29 May
1919 that provided one of the earliest confirmations ofrelativity
During the eclipse, he took pictures of the stars in the regionaround the Sun
According to the theory of general relativity, stars with light
rays that passed near the Sun would appear to have beenslightly shifted because their light had been curved by itsgravitational field.
This effect is noticeable only during eclipses, since otherwisethe Suns brightness obscures the affected stars.
Eddington showed that Newtonian gravitation could be
interpreted to predict half the shift predicted by Einstein 7
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Poppers ideas sound plausible
There is something wrong with a theory if it can be madeto fit any observational data
But there is a bit more to the story than this
There are other differences between Freuds theory and Einsteins
In particular controllability of context which is after all highly relevant
The social sciences have the problem that many variables are simplynot subject to experimental control
And sometimes if they are the unnaturalness makes the
findings less plausible and significant
Critiques of psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics aresometimes based on the apparent decontextualisedexperimental circumstances
This can result in difficulties in falsification of the theories 8
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Scientists frequently find empirical facts that dontexactly fit with the predictions of a theory
But rather than reject the theory, they attempt to save it
by postulating some other factor that needs to be takeninto account
In the case of Galileos falling objects experiment, if a lead balloonand a feather were dropped at the same time, they would not
reach the ground at the same time
Instead of rejecting his theory, he takes air resistance into account
A more complex case observations of the orbit of Uranusshowed some differences from the predictions of Newtonian
physics
Independently in 1846 Adams and Leverrier suggested the existence ofanother planet that provided the gravitational force that would beresponsible for the irregularity in the orbit of Uranus
This planet (Neptune) was subsequently discovered almost exactly wherepredicted
9
This is reminiscent of Saussures
postulation of proto-Indo-European
laryngeals to account for certain
otherwise inexplicable facts about
Greek morphology.
Subsequently vindicated by Hittite.
Note the obvious parallel to
Poppers critique of Freud:
By taking air resistance intoaccount we could explain
almost any empirical finding
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Especially in the case of social sciencesincluding linguistics theories are not alwayseasily falsifiable in practice
Even in physics falsifiability may be beyond presentmeans of measurement
I believe this is the case for string theory
It is an important part of the scientific endeavourto account for conflicts exceptional facts while
retaining the theory, and working within it
10
Linguists do on occasion critique one another on the
basis of the unfalsifiablity of the others claims.
Generally speaking I dont hold this critique in high
regard:
Extreme difficulties in applying this notion to the
linguistic sign
It is the less interesting claims that are more easilyfalsified claims not mediated by the sign
Compare two approaches to givennessGivns and
mine
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Popper attempted to characterise science in aPlatonic way in terms of an essential featurethat must be possessed
His approach to this task seems eminently reasonable:
Compare instances of pseudo-science with good science,and identify the differences
The point is he may have selected the wrong differences
Another possibility is that there is no such essentialfeature defining science
Like games according to Wittgenstein, there are looseclusters of features characterising things we call games, butno Platonic essence
Games show family resemblances to one another 11
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Of a rather different nature to pseudo-scienceare hoaxes and forgeries in science
Consideration of these may give us some inklingsinto the nature of science itself (when properly
done)
Remember my adage that it is when things go wrong
that we learn most about how things work rightly
This is implicit in what Popper attempted12
Hoaxes and forgeries
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One of the most famous hoaxes in the history ofscience was the Piltdown Man:
Bone fragments were presented as the fossilised remainsof a previously unknown early human.
Parts of a skull and jawbone, said to have been collected in 1912from a gravel pit at Piltdown, East Sussex, England
The Latin name Eoanthropus dawsoni("Dawson's dawn-man", after the collector Charles Dawson) was given to thespecimen
The significance of the specimen remained the subject ofcontroversy until it was exposed in 1953 as a forgery
The lower jawbone of an orangutan that had been deliberatelycombined with the skull of a fully developed modern human
Why? What was the point of this forgery?
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Scientific frauds and forgeries are not all that
infrequent
Recent examples:
Milena Penkowa (born 1973) is a Danish neuroscientist
who was a Professor at the Panum Institute at the
University of Copenhagen from 20092010
Her prolific research mainly concerned the protein
metallothionein
She received the Danish Elite Research prize in 2009. In 2010
she was accused of scientific misconduct and resigned her
professorship
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Marc D. Hauser (born 25 October 1959) is an Americanevolutionary biologist and a researcher in primate behaviorand animal cognition who taught in the PsychologyDepartment at Harvard University.
In August 2010, a committee of Harvard faculty found Hausersolely responsible for eight counts of unspecified scientificmisconduct.
On August 1, 2011 Hauser resigned his position at Harvard
Hwang Woo-suk (Korean:, born January 29, 1953) isa South Korean veterinarian and researcher, professor oftheriogenology and biotechnology at Seoul NationalUniversity (dismissed on March 20, 2006)
Became infamous for fabricating a series of experiments, whichappeared in high-profile journals, in the field of stem cell research
Until November 2005, he was considered one of the pioneeringexperts in the field, best known for two articles published in the
journal Science in 2004 and 2005 where he reported to have
succeeded in creating human embryonic stem cells by cloning. 15
I h i li i i
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It happens in linguistics too
Lanyon-Orgill (19242002) for a full story see Ross
Clark (2011). On the margins of Pacific linguistics: P.A.Lanyon-Orgill. Language & History54(2): 164-177.
In the midtwentieth century his name was quite well knownamong Pacific-area linguists, through a combination ofderivative publication with fictive enhancement both of hisown scholarly persona (degrees he never got, colleagueswho dont exist) and of the data he presented
Changes to his reputation following the exposure in the1980s of his falsification of alleged eighteenth-century
manuscripts, and the realization that fraudulent elementswere present in his work from the very beginning.
Nevertheless, some of his work (particularly a few dictionaries)has been found by experience to be sound
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C f f i t i i l d
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Consequences of forgeries to science include:
Waste of resources
Misdirection of research
For example, the Piltdown Man fraud:
The significance of the bona-fide fossils being found was mutedfor decades because they disagreed with Piltdown Man and thenotions that the faked fossils supported.
The paleontologist Arthur Smith Woodward spent time atPiltdown each year until he died trying to find more PiltdownMan remains.
The misdirection of resources kept others from taking the realfossils more seriously and delayed the reaching of a correct
understanding of human evolution.
The Taung Child, which should have been the death knell forthe view that the human brain evolved first, was insteadtreated very critically because of its disagreement with thePiltdown Man evidence.
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In the case of Lanyon-Orgill, I quote from Clarks article
Unexpected evidence of the potential of this material togenerate ideas even beyond linguistics appeared in 2003, ayear after Lanyon-Orgills death, and more than 20 yearsafter Geraghtys review. Australian journalist and historianKeith Vincent Smith, studying early contacts betweenEuropeans and Aborigines in the Sydney area, came uponLanyon-Orgillsbook with its three Lanyon manuscript
wordlists from Botany Bay. Whereas the narratives ofCooks first voyage state that the Aborigines werestandoffish, if not actually hostile, and that close contactproved impossible, here was evidence that three crewmembers in three different places had in fact sat downwith the indigenous people and learned something of theirlanguage.
This fed into an ongoing debate in Australia about thehistory of EuropeanAboriginal relations, so that both theUniversitys publicity apparatus and the magazine AQpicked it up (Jopson 2003; Smith 2003, 2004).
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Ho does science g ard against forger and
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How does science guard against forgery, anddetect it?
Results not replicable by other investigators
Results look too good to be true
Error analysis:
Measurements generally have a small amount of error, andrepeated measurements of the same item will generally result inslight differences in readings.
These differences can be analyzed, and follow certain knownmathematical and statistical properties.
If a set of data appears to be too faithful to the hypothesis, i.e.,
the amount of error that would normally be in suchmeasurements does not appear, a conclusion can be drawn thatthe data may have been forged.
Error analysis alone is typically not sufficient to prove that datahave been falsified, but it may provide the supporting evidencenecessary to confirm suspicions of misconduct
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In the case of Lanyon-Orgill the main give-aways were:
Problems with the dates of manuscripts:
one wonders, for example, how an English
translation of Humboldts TahitianEnglish vocabulary,dated 1845 (130) could have been inserted into a
volume bound in 18101815 (286), and whether theJohn Lanyon who catalogued the manuscript is thesame as the John Lanyon (183271) who was eaten by
a crocodile.
References to people and articles so obscure asnot to exist!
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Captain Cooks South Sea Island Vocabularies whichcontained, among other things:
Vocabularies from languages spoken in places where Cooknever landed
Wordlists that must have been gathered duringcircumstances of conflict with indigenes
Error analysis:
The canonical vocabularies showed the normal quota of errorsand inexplicable forms to be expected in such early lists,somewhat enhanced by Lanyon-Orgills ineptitude at identifyingmodern equivalents for the words. With the Lanyon vocabularies,by contrast, he scored 100 percent, and the resemblances
between manuscript and modern language were uncannilyclose. The apparently inescapable conclusion was that the Lanyonlists were created not by contemporaries of Cook, but on thebasis of later sources by a modern hand, using a linguisticequivalent of the distressing applied by makers of fake antiques(for example English-based spellings such as ee, oo would be
substituted for modern i, u). 21
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More on frauds and forgeries later ...
For now we can just bear in mind the seriousness
of vested interests drug companies, tobacco
companies, and so forth
The possibility that research funded by non-
governmental commercial interests will be controlled
by these interests
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The philosophy of science
This field of study is concerned with the familyresemblances amongst the fields called sciences,
With identifying and analysing the methods ofenquiry of the sciences
It is concerned with the assumptions implicit inscientific practice
Things that scientists presume but do not discuss or critique
Doing science of course is impossible without makingassumptions, and many of them are invisible to the people usingthem
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An example: scientific experimentation
A scientist does an experiment, getting a certainresult
She repeats it a few times and gets the same
result
After a few goes, she will probably stop, believing
that on further repetition given the same
conditions of performance the same result will
arise
Sounds like a plausible presumption
But why? How do we know that this will happen?
24
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Wearing your scientists hat, these questionsdont really concern you
But many scientists also doff their scientific hats, andthink about these questions
Many prominent scientists like Descartes, Newton, Einstein
thought about such questions, e.g.
How science should be carried out
How much confidence to place in its methods
Whether there are limits to scientific knowledge and praxis
The increasing specialisation of science has resulted in lessinterest in the philosophical questions by scientists
And also the polarisation of science and humanities (where
philosophy belongs) of the modern university system 25
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Scientific reasoning
We now discuss and evaluate some processesemployed or claimed to be employed in
scientific reasoning
Deduction
Induction
Inferences of best explanation
Explanation
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Deduction
This method of reasoning everyone accepts asvalid
Study of deductive reasoning is a part of logic
An example of this type of reasoning is modusponendo ponens:
A. All men are mortalB. Socrates is a man
C. Socrates is mortal
Linguistic examples? 27
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A. All languages have vowels and consonants
B. Nyulnyul is a language
C. Nyulnyul has vowels and consonants
A. All languages have nouns
B. Shua is a language
C. Shua has nouns
This principle tells us that if the premises aretrue, so is the conclusion
The reasoning is valid and exciting eh? But the premises need not necessarily be
E.g. Not all languages have nouns (as a distinct part of
speech) 28
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What about the following deductions?
A. Most languages have vowels and consonants
B. Nyulnyul is a languageC. Nyulnyul has vowels and consonants
A. All languages have vowels and consonants
B. Ngank is not a language
C. Ngank has neither vowels nor consonants
A. It is not the case that all languages have vowels andconsonants
B. Some languages have neither vowels nor consonants
A. It is not the case that all languages have vowels andconsonants
B. Some languages have either no vowels or no
consonants 29
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Induction
Many people have suggested a naive inductivist
account of science
That places induction as the central method of scientificreasoning
Basis of naive inductivist story
Science starts with observations, using their unimpairedsense organs (ears, eyes, nose) possibly augmented with
measuring devices These observations are recorded accurately and faithfully,
without prejudice
Statements about some aspect of the world areestablished and justified directly via the observers use of
their senses 30
Examples of observational statements of course, some
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Examples of observational statements of course, someinterpretative knowledge beyond simple observation isessential: these are not completely atheoretical statements
Gooniyandi is spoken in the town of Fitzroy Crossing
Shua has a click sound in the word kick
The last fluent speaker of Unggumi died in the last decade ofthe twentieth century
In principle, these statements can or could be established byobservation the third one, with some qualifications:
It was observable at some point in time
These are singular statements; in science we are concerned
not with singular statements, but with makinggeneralisations
With statements that are universal in application:
Statements that apply to all phenomena of a particular kind 31
H d f h i l
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How do we get from the singular statementsto the universal ones?
One answer is by induction
From a set of singular statements we can legitimatelygeneralise a universal law, provided certain conditionsare met
An example:
We make a set of observational statements aboutGooniyandi words, that all are made up of vowels andconsonants
We generalise from the set of observations to the lawthat all words in Gooniyandi consist of both vowels andconsonants
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Wh t th diti th t t b t?
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What are the conditions that must be met?
The number of observational statements must be
large The observations must be repeated under a variety of
conditions
No observational statement should conflict with the
universal law
In our Gooniyandi example this means we would need to:
Examine many different words We should observe them not just in citation, but also in use in
different sentences
If we observed an exception, then the law would not beuniversally viable
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The naive inductivist view of science is that
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The naive inductivist view of science is thatscience is based on the principle of induction:
If a large number of Xs have been observed in a widerange of conditions, and if all these Xs withoutexception possess the property Y, then all Xs have theproperty Y
Basically the view is that science proceeds asfollows:
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Facts acquired
through
observation
Laws and
theories
Predictions and
explanations
Th bl i h h i i l f
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There are problems with the principle ofinduction
Bertrand Russells inductivist turkey:
This turkey found that, on his first morning at the turkeyfarm, he was fed at 9 a.m. However, being a good inductivist,he did not jump to conclusions. He waited until he had
collected a large number of observations of the fact that hewas fed at 9 a.m., and he made these observations under awide variety of circumstances, on Wednesdays andThursdays, on warm days and cold days, on rainy days anddry days. Each day, he added another observation statementto his list. Finally, his inductivist conscience was satisfied and
he carried out an inductive inference to conclude, "I amalways fed at 9 a.m.". Alas, this conclusion was shown to befalse in no uncertain manner when, on Christmas eve,instead of being fed, he had his throat cut. An inductiveinference with true premises has led to a false conclusion.(Chalmers, p. 14)
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Linguistic example
We observe through collection of many instancesof Agent NPs in Gooniyandi, in a range of differenttransitive clauses, with many different types of NP(pronominal, animate, inanimate, ...) each ofwhich is marked byngga
We conclude that all Agent NPs are marked by themorphemengga
Seems reasonable But how certain can we be of our conclusion
Can we be any more certain than Russells turkey?
Not really36
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In fact, once we stop observing elicited
examples and look at narratives and everyday
speech we find that there are exceptions
Agent NPs that are not marked by this morpheme
A difficulty is that what counts as a broad range of
circumstances is not clear
Our elicitation aimed at gathering a broad range of data But in fact it was broad in the wrong ways
There is no way we can determine what the relevant
range of circumstances is
37
h d i
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Some have suggested a way out is tointroduce probabilities into the story
That the inductive inferences be evaluated interms of probabilities
E.g. the likelihood that the our general statement isvalid given the set of specific statements
Possibly this might sound like a reasonable solution
Intuitively it is reasonable to expect that with increasing
numbers of singular statements the probability will increase
But the turkey example shows that this is not always valid
And how could one calculate the probability?38
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Intuitively, if we have a good explanation the
probability of the universal statement is
increased
But to include this involves a problem for the
nave inductivist story of the scientific process
It cant be a simple unidirectional process
39
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Another difficulty with the proposals concerns
the singular statements conflicting with the
generalisations
In our Gooniyandi word structure example, we will
eventually find words like mm, aa, mhm
But the obvious thing to do is not to immediately throw
out the generalisation
Rather, we look at refining the notion of word
40
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Philosophers of science do not generally
regard the nave inductivist story as a
plausible model of the scientific process
Or consider induction to have a central place in
scientific reasoning
This is not to say that it has no place at all:
Presumably we use something like induction in everyday life
From observations we construct expectations as to what
will happen a matter of survival
41
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Exercise for next time:
What is mathematical induction?
How if at all is it like scientific induction?
How do mathematicians and philosophers of
mathematics regard it?
Are they as cautious and critical of it as in science?
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Inference to best explanation
Another type of non-deductive reasoning, where
from a set of specific statements a generalstatement is inferred that explains them
For example:
There are close anatomical similarities between thelegs of horses and zebras
horses and zebras descend from a commonancestor animal
This provides an explanation of the similarity
It is better than the alternative that god created both speciesseparately if so, why the similarity: an omnipotent beingcould have employed completely different templates for the
legs 43
A similar linguistic example:
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A similar linguistic example:
Italian and Spanish share a lot of similarities in
their lexicons
The definite and indefinite articles of Italian andSpanish are very similar in form and system(distinguishing two genders)
Italian and Spanish both derive historically fromthe same ancestor language
This explanation provides a better account of the factsthan that the words and articles in the two languagesare just accidentally similar
We know from Saussure that the linguistic sign is arbitrary
44
Cl l h i d l i ll il
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Clearly the premise does not logically entail
the conclusion in these cases
There are other possibilities, also consistentwith the facts:
Although not a good explanation, there is a tinychance that the similarities are a result of chance
They might alternatively be the result of
borrowing between the two languages
How can we decide which is the best
explanation?45
We add in further observations (specific statements) or
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We add in further observations (specific statements) orgeneralisations
Add to the list of similarities til we find that the amount ofborrowing would have been so large it is an implausiblestory
Observe that it is much less common for languages toborrow core vocabulary and grammatical morphemes than
other lexemes
Since the similarities are in these domains as well as in non-corevocabulary, this explanation is not as good
Observe that among the similarities in the lexicon thereare a number of recurrent sound correspondences
Common origin together with regular sound change provides a
better explanation than borrowing 46
This example illustrates the development of
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This example illustrates the development of
the comparative method in C19
Numerous linguists contributed to its shaping
Rask, Grimm, Grassman, Saussure
They observed the similarities in modern
languages, and attempted to identify theconditions under which retention and borrowing
and other explanations provide the best
explanations of similarities
47
This method of reasoning is common in linguistics
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This method of reasoning is common in linguistics
Another example comes from my own descriptive workon Gooniyandi
Here is a potted version of the story of the analysis ofthe pronoun system in the language
I observed early on that there were two 1st person non-singular pronominals, ngidiand yaadi
I concluded that the language made a distinction betweeninclusive and exclusive
Which is widespread in Australian languages
Specifically,
Ngidiwould be 1exclusive, dual or plural
Yaadiwould be 1 inclusive, dual or plural
Alan Rumsey drew exactly the same conclusion for Bunubawhen he did his first fieldwork a couple of years earlier
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These are not the only possibilities but we were
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y pcontent with them
For a while anyway
Within a few weeks of fieldwork however I found thatpeople were just not using the 1st person pronouns as theyshould be if it was an inclusive-exclusive system
Observations conflicted with expectations
Ngidiwas used for not just 1&3 but also 1&2
Yaadiwas never used for 1&2, only for 1&2&3
The observations were followed up with experiments i.e.getting speakers interpretations of invented forms:
I asked speakers what does yaadi-yoorroo mean?
Some rejected the form
Some said it means we three! 49
I of course told Alan Rumsey (my supervisor then)
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I of course told Alan Rumsey (my supervisor then)about this problem
New to him, so he also tested things out in Bunuba
Finding exactly the same situation as in Gooniyandi
So we ended up with a set of specific statements
Ngidimeans
1&2
1&3
1&3&3
Yaadimeans
1&2&3
1&2&3 50
Neither of us was happy with these specific
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Neither of us was happy with these specificobservational statements
We wanted to infer a system to suggest ageneral statement that would account for them
My first attempt was to suggest a contrast betweenrestricted and unrestricted and this appeared in mygrammar (1990)
Basically 1 restricted would be a category that included 1 and
another person category, but just one 1 unrestricted would include all person categories
However, I was never satisfied with this explanation itdoes not sound nice!
51
In early 1990s Mark Durie suggested an alternative
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In early 1990s Mark Durie suggested an alternative
We were wrong looking for an explanation:
Really, the system was an inclusive-exclusive one, in which therehappened to be accidental homophony between:
1dual exclusive ngidi(-yoorroo) and
1dual inclusive ngidi(-yoorroo)
This saves our explanation
The problem was that not only was there accidental homophonyin these pronominal forms, but also in:
The oblique forms (ngirrangi) And throughout the verbal paradigm (jirr-)
My conclusion this is too systematic to be accidental:there must be an explanation
52
In the mid 1990s Rumsey and myself both
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In the mid 1990s Rumsey and myself both
suggested explanations
Mine was:
The system is an inclusive-exclusive one, but it
operates on different principles than the standard
one
What is included or excluded is not the hearer
It is hearers specifically the hearer plus others
Ngidiexcludes hearer plus others
Yaadiincludes hearer plus others 53
Just apply logic to
Not (hearer & other(s))
And you get the right
results
In my view this is the best explanation
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y p
A long road to its discovery, but preferred over the accidentalhomophony story
And provides a neater account than what Rumsey suggested at thesame time
Which was not intuitively satisfying
We do this regularly in descriptive linguistics
Observe something and immediately seek an explanation tounderstand it
I hear an intransitive subject NP marked in Pri marked by amorpheme
I conclude immediately (tentatively) that the language is ergative
Because in accusative languages the accusative is usually marked, thenominative unmarked
Of course, then the conclusion is immediately tested 54
E l ti
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Explanations
One of the most important aims of science is to
explain the world
Astronomers aim to explain why solar eclipses occur
when they do
Linguists aim to explain e.g.:
Why languages have the structures they do
Why and how some languages are similar to one another
How languages are used in speech
Why a bilingual person choses to use one language rather
than another in a given context55
What is an explanation?
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What is an explanation?
Carl Hempel (1905-1997) suggested the
covering law model for scientificexplanation in 1950s
While a student in Gttingen he encounteredDavid Hilbert and was impressed by his attempt to
base all of mathematics on solid logical
foundations derived from a limited number of
axioms (Hilbert's Program)
56
Hempel suggested that scientific explanations
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Hempel suggested that scientific explanationshave logical structure of arguments
Premises followed by conclusions (what needs to beexplained)
To explain why the ergative marker in Gooniyandi issometimes used and sometimes not used one needs
to set up a set of premises from which this conclusionderives
Accounting for the uses and non-uses
What are the characteristics of a viable scientificexplanation?
How should the premises and conclusions be related? 57
Hempels suggestion:
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p gg
The premises should entail the conclusion (logically a
deductive argument) The premises should be true
The premises should comprise at least one generaluniversal statement at least one general law
Schematically:
General lawsParticular facts
Phenomenon to be explained
58
A linguistic example:
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A linguistic example:
We want an explanation for why a bilingual
speaker in the Austrian village Oberwart switched
from Hungarian to German in an argument
In the following discourse a mother is collecting
her daughter, who has been looked after by thegrandparents during the day.
The girl has been misbehaving, and the
grandfather sympathises with her.
59
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The switch to German justifies thechoice of child-rearing methods. This
switch to German ends the argument
between the mother and grandfather
60
How might an explanation go according to
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How might an explanation go according toHempel?
Languages express speakers personal and ethnicidentities
Hungarian expresses speakers ethnic identity as member of
a small village in Austria German expresses speakers identity as an Austrian
Choice of language in bilingual situation indicates
choice of identity
I am an Oberwartian we are intimates
I am an Austrian we are not intimates
61
We have there general laws (concerning
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We have there general laws (concerning
language affiliations and choice) and particular
facts (about the language use in the community)
We conclude that the switch to German in the
conversation was motivated by the speaker wishing to
distance herselffrom her interlocutor
She establishes herself as an Austrian, not an Oberwartian
Austrian is dominant, the language of the powerful
By implication she is the powerful one with the powerfulargument
So we can account for the effect of her language choice for
her successfully winning the argument over her father
62
Similarly for the other linguistic example
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Similarly for the other linguistic example,
optional ergative case marking in Gooniyandi
though with some twists
A general statement I have proposed in recent
work is given that a grammatical morpheme is
optional:
Usage vs. non-usage always codes meaning relating to
the interpersonal dimension
Specifically, this relates to the general dimension ofjoint
attention
63
This coding is non-arbitrary:
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64
Usage relates to assignment ofprominence attend to
this, it is important; highlighting Non-usage relates to backgrounding this information is
of the setting type, fleshing out contextual details, e.g.
provides a search domain
It is not suggested that the clause necessarily presents
backgrounded information
Greying, defocusing, or distancing is perhaps a better analogy
anti-highlighting
Prominence and backgrounding correlate with figure
and ground but they are not identical notions
This can be easily appreciated in non-linguistic
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65
This can be easily appreciated in non linguisticsemiosis:
Flashing light on signals engaged in police business,attention is drawn to the vehicle other drivers beware, asthis vehicle need not obey the usual rules
FLASH
INGLIGHTS
OFF
Whyhavetheflashing
lightsoff?
CATEGORYWhat typeof
vehicle?
Car
Justcruising;
unspecifiedactivity
FUNCTIONWhat function doesthevehicleserve?
Police vehicle
FLASHING
LIGHTS
ON
Why
turn
onthefla
shing
lights
?
Enga
gedin
polic
ework
Use
System
Flashing light offtells you thatthese guys are justcruising, looking
for trouble: police
functionbackgrounded
Applied to optional ergative case marking, we get an
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explanation for:
Use of the ergative highlights or foregrounds agentivity of
an agent Non-use of the ergative backgrounds its agentivity
I said there is a twist to the story
It is that either use or non-use might not convey anymeaning
One of them may be so frequent as to tell you nothing
So e.g. in Gooniyandi the ergative is so common that it is thenorm, and tells you nothing it does not highlight
Omission tells you something, as it is infrequent (c. 10% of the time)
Omission serves to background the agentivity of the agent66
This means that there is an additional factor that must
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be taken into account:
Markedness
Then we get the following scheme:
67
Use No meaning[prominent]Meaning[+prominent] No meaning[prominent]
Meaning[+prominent]
Non-use No meaning
[
back-grounded]
No meaning
[
back-grounded]
Meaning
[+back-grounded]
Meaning
[+back-grounded]
In my papers on the topic I show how some
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In my papers on the topic, I show how some
specific instances of non-use can be explained
in this way:
Now we are explaining the specific statement not
the general law (as above)
68
Two illustrative examples:
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69
p
Here the non-use of the ERG on ngidisuggests
pragmatically low agentivity of the speaker group.
Why, to what purpose would the speaker do this?
It primarily concerns the construal of the narrative world as one in
which:
The person being followed expended a lot of effort trying to find his
way home, but failed and died.
The followers easily tracked him, and found his body.
(1) aa, ngidi garndiwangoorroo, garndiwirri ngidi yoowooloo-yoorroo,
aa we many two we man-DUbaraj-jirr++a-yi, thinga, Gooniyandi
track-1excNOM+3sgACC+A-DU foot
We all we two Aborigines tracked him on foot.
The next example is the only instance in which an
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70
p y
inanimate Agent is not ergatively marked:
The reason: non-use of the ergative implicates low
agentivity, low potency
Lack of effect on the Undergoer as the next sentence says, it was
just a sprinkling of rain.
NB not lack of volitionality
(1) thinga gilba-yirr++di-yi / gamba / yilij-jin++afoot find-1excNOM+3sgACC+DI-DU water rain-1excACC+3sgNOM+A
garr garrwaroo /
after afternoon
We found his tracks, but it rained on us that afternoon. Gooniyandi
There are two important difficulties with
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Hempels story see Okasha 2002
First, what explains what?
The structure of explanations is symmetric:
Flagpole example provides a clear illustration
We can measure the height of a tree from:
Length of its shadow
Angle of the sun
We could use the height of the tree and angle of the sun toexplain the length of the shadow
In Hempels scheme, we could equally explain the height ofthe tree by the length of the shadow and the angle of the
sun! 71
Second difficulty is irrelevance
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Second difficulty is irrelevance
A young child is in a hospital ward full of pregnantwomen
One person in the ward is not pregnant, John, a
male
Child asks doctor Why isnt John pregnant
Doctor replies John has been taking birth control
pills for the past 3 years. People who take birth
control pills dont get pregnant. So John is notpregnant.
72
What the quack says may be true
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For some reason John has been taking birth control
pills
This would count as a viable explanation inHempels scheme
But few would regard this as a decent explanation
Most obviously the explanation is that John is a male
Whether he takes the pill or not is irrelevant
We need to at least add a criterion of relevance to Hempelsscheme
73
To return briefly to the first problem, we might propose arequirement of causality:
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q y
In a clear sense the height of the tree and the angle of the suncause the length of the shadow
Whereas the length of the shadow and angle of the sun can hardlycause the height of the tree
So we might suggest that to explain something is to identify
what the cause is
Height of a tree would be caused by things such as:
Genetic make up of the tree
The available resources in the environment
Not the length of the shadow
The causal criterion also explains why Johns taking the pill is notthe explanation of his not being pregnant
Clearly the cause of this situation is his sex 74
Things are not always the same in linguistics it is
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not clear that causality ought to be invoked in all
instances of explanation in our subject
In our language choice example, we explain
The choice of German to win the argument The winning of the argument by choice of German
In the case of optional ergative marking
The choice not to use the case-marker to background the
Agent
The backgrounding of the Agent by not using the ergative75
My opinion is that the situation here is differentto our flagpole and unpregnant male examples
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to our flagpole and unpregnant male examples
There is a good reason why
The type of linguistic phenomenon we are trying to explainhere concerns the linguistic sign
Recall Saussures model of the intrinsic relation between signifierand signified
No causal relation here
We can view the sign from either perspective, and thatswhat we are doing in our two alternative explanations oflanguage choice and case-marker use
Of course, I do not suggest that causal explanations have norole at all in linguistics
Only that causality is not the ultimate arbiter in all instances
76
Conclusion
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Well be talking more about the philosophy of
science including linguistics later
What I try to do in this course is to encourage some ofthis self-awareness and reflexive thinking about oursubject, linguistics
And to see it in the wider contexts of both
Its history of development
Its ecology, the other disciplines that it interacts with
In short our interests are in the history and philosophy
of the science of linguistics 77
Conclusion
Finally, let us recall that linguistics straddles
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y, g
the science-humanities divide
A foot in both camps
Reflecting its status as a social science
And linguistics shows some peculiarities relative to the
hard sciences