And in general, why do we need to teach theory at all?
These are all issues that have been largely solved ever since the structures introduced in our textbook emerged in the 1950s. Many different theories, in fact, are based on such primitive tree diagrams, which is probably why the authors of the textbook, and Stanford’s linguistics department, believe it’s a good idea to offer a general introduction by going back to history.
Indeed, offering a theory-neutral introductory course is a great thing if all students are to further pursue more advanced courses in the discipline. Though I have no concrete evidence suggesting otherwise, however, I do not believe that this is the case for LING 1. (I should note that I most certainly believe Prof. Meghan Sumner and our conscientious TAs, SK, Lelia, and Olek, have done an amazing job teaching and providing help.) A friend of mine is taking this course only to fulfill her symbolic systems minor requirement, and this is probably going to be the only linguistics course she will ever take in her life. Imagine, if you can only take one biology course throughout your life, do you want to take a theory-neutral course that strives to be compatible with both creationism and different versions of evolutionary theories (including Lamarck’s)? True, up till now we still do not have sufficient electrophysiological evidence to prove or disprove any linguistic theory of serious complexity. But in my opinion, the fact that something is merely a theory, as opposed to a fact, and we have competing theories against it cannot translate into an automatic rejection. Rather, we need to examine one thing: whether the theory has enough explanatory power to help students better understand the facts in a systematic way.
Recent frameworks of Generative Grammar, for instance, have done a generally successful way in explaining the structural reasons behind the seemingly irregular phenomena I listed above. The incorporation of determiner phrases, the introduction of IP (or TP) and CP, and the X-bar schema and its extensions are all examples of the theoretical repertoire we now possess to better understand and analyze the underlying the structures of phrases (including words and sentences), and how their meaning can be affected with changes in phrasal structures, at an invisible level (say, the two meanings of “the person is too nice to kill”). It is worth noting that such theories often also work very well crosslinguistically, so that they can reveal even more than what students would usually expect about language, and the science behind it.
Finally, is a theoretically motivated course going to be much more difficult for both the students and the teachers? I honestly do not think so. Sure, one could say, if students at MIT and other peer institutions can do it, why can’t us? But I can argue with more convincing reason than just school pride. Last year I taught a introductory elective course in linguistics to 20 high school sophomores in China. (We mainly focused on presenting the syntactic structures of modern standard Chinese from a Minimalist viewpoint.) In the second lesson, I explained the fundamental operation of merge, how X-bar schema work based on merge, and how to draw tree diagrams in accordance with X-bar schema. Then, when I gradually introduced examples from different categories, the students could come up with their analyses considerably accurately without much additional guidance. Of course, as a 20-period course, we skipped a lot of advanced topics (for the record, we covered some phonology and semantics in 2 period and no pragmatics or sociolinguistics at all, mainly because I knew very little about these fields; we also focused on different writing systems and solving problems from Linguistics Olympiads), but in general, the students felt illuminated by the basic ideas and even fell in love with linguistics. So, all in all, at least it was an successful experiment per se.
You posed a number of great questions I hadn't thought to ask myself. I hadn't spent much time in the past contemplating the distinction between linguistic practice and linguistic theory.
ReplyDeleteOne piece of linguistic theory I find particularly interesting is that language, as we know, is always changing. This means, like you suggested, that we can't simply have examples for everything--we need theory to explain the ins and outs of a language, keeping in mind that it develops and evolves.
When I was working on homework number five, diagramming sentences with trees, I came across a number of the questions you raised in your first paragraph. I struggled with gerunds and back-to-back verbs. As you suggested, this seems like a useful time to know the theory behind such sentences so that we may better understand them.
I think the most important consideration to make with your proposal has to do with the goal of an introductory course. While you may be right, that it might not necessarily be much more difficult to have a theory-oriented course, there may be other reasons why the current class structure is not set up that way. In my opinion, introductory courses in almost any subject are designed to be a summary of the field. While I do not know for certain, I would assume that additional theories in linguistics are not necessarily vital for a summary to get a satisfactory idea of a concept. The theory that you mention with regard to the trees might be more fully explored in a class that focuses specifically on syntax, for example.
ReplyDeleteI really like this post as a way to help us understand why this course seems to have the construction that it does. And I personally will defend that for me having the background of linguistic theory makes it easier to understand more higher level concepts, as would obviously make sense. Yet, what we learn as introductory is strictly related to what we hope to study further. For instance, if we study only pragmatics, we will not necessarily be able to understand how certain cultures form sounds more frequently than those of other cultures. But, if that is something people are not hoping to learn or have no purpose in learning then an introductory knowledge in those fields does not matter. It simply seems here that as you described whatever topics you learn at a basic level are related to what theories are available and what knowledge is desired in the future.
ReplyDeleteThis post raises several interesting points, and so does Laura’s comment. First, I don’t think it’s a question of studying theory or studying application – I think, as Tom implied, each has its place.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I think that one other possible advantage of studying theoretical linguistics (and really theory in general) as opposed to purely practical, applied linguistics is that it allows for greater interaction between linguistics and other disciplines. This isn’t to say that interdisciplinarity doesn’t exist on a practical level – it definitely does. But I think that laying out broad theoretical concepts can often make it easier to see how those concepts relate to other disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, etcetera.
Great post, Tom! I found it really interesting when you mentioned the example of the different meanings of “are” in “we are runners” and in “we are running.” I wonder why in English only the verb “to be” is used for such meanings, where in Spanish and Portuguese, there is a clear distinction between the verbs “estar” and “ser” that differentiate between temporary states and physical description/character. On a different note, I agree with Paul in that introductory courses should provide students with an overview of the basics of a certain subject, so I do think that Ling 1 should be taught “theory-neutrally.” This way, students can gain interest in more specific areas of Linguistics, and then take classes with more theory-based topics.
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