Linguists: What have you done for me lately?

MAubrey
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Re: Linguists: What have you done for me lately?

Post by MAubrey »

Jonathan Robie wrote:Did I get this right?
Yes and no.

It's entirely a question of the research questions we're interested in answering. Chomsky is wrong about specific research questions. He's just plain right when it comes other research questions.

Different frameworks ask different questions for different purposes and goals.

In this case, the question of a new reference grammar, the question we need to be asking is this: What framework would be appropriate for for the research questions that we have for the Greek language?

In the case of Government & Binding, the question is: What are the relevant research questions GB seeks to answer and are those questions inline with the purposes of a descriptive reference grammar? And why?
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Re: Linguists: What have you done for me lately?

Post by cwconrad »

MAubrey wrote:
Jonathan Robie wrote:Did I get this right?
Yes and no.

It's entirely a question of the research questions we're interested in answering. Chomsky is wrong about specific research questions. He's just plain right when it comes other research questions.

Different frameworks ask different questions for different purposes and goals.

In this case, the question of a new reference grammar, the question we need to be asking is this: What framework would be appropriate for for the research questions that we have for the Greek language?

In the case of Government & Binding, the question is: What are the relevant research questions GB seeks to answer and are those questions inline with the purposes of a descriptive reference grammar? And why?
Perhaps Jonathan knew what "Government & Binding" is, but I didn't; guessing that it just might be jargon, I did a google search and discovered that it is a more recent Chomskian framework. I think this is what Jonathan's "Write for the Reader" rule was intended to forestall.

I really would like to get some sense of the perspectives held by those seriously looking at ancient Greek or Hellenistic Koine Greek with a view to compiling a new descriptive reference grammar. Should the question be shunted off to a new subforum topic, "What Questions do we have and what Framework is appropriate for a reference grammar of Hellenistic Koine Greek?

If that's not the way to go, I'd still like more answers to my earlier question: What are the greatest deficiencies in the grammars of ancient Greek, especially Hellenistic Greek, that are regularly consulted today?
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
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Jonathan Robie
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Re: Linguists: What have you done for me lately?

Post by Jonathan Robie »

MAubrey wrote:
Jonathan Robie wrote:Did I get this right?
Yes and no.

It's entirely a question of the research questions we're interested in answering. Chomsky is wrong about specific research questions. He's just plain right when it comes other research questions.

Different frameworks ask different questions for different purposes and goals.
This relates to what I was saying about models earlier. You can have many maps of the same terrain, none of these maps completely models the terrain, each map is useful for different purposes, even if the maps contradict each other. People frequently fail to distinguish their map from the terrain.

On B-Greek, we have many different linguistic maps, because we learned in different decades and different disciplines. I had graduate work in transformational linguistics and psycholinguistics in the early 1980s, but have not kept up since. I suspect a trained linguist can the fingerprints of that background in the things I post. Frequently, I think that makes people from one school sound ignorant to people from another school. People who learned an older framework balk at the things people who have learned a newer framework say without first coming to grips with the newer framework, since learning a new linguistic framework is hard. I felt that happened with Stephen Carlson in the Galatians thread, long before we actually had a chance to listen and hear where he was coming from.
MAubrey wrote:In this case, the question of a new reference grammar, the question we need to be asking is this: What framework would be appropriate for for the research questions that we have for the Greek language?
Sure, and maybe we should make a list of questions and of candidate frameworks.

I'm sure there are other questions stemming from Greek. I'm beginning to deal with linguistic data in ways that require me to learn a bit more. For instance, I am now dealing with syntax trees using two different models, one set of trees uses a phrase structure model up to the phrase level (with a dependency model at the clause level), the other uses a dependency grammar throughout. I'm going to have to learn a few things before I'm up to speed on this, and I don't really know the best place to start.
MAubrey wrote:In the case of Government & Binding, the question is: What are the relevant research questions GB seeks to answer and are those questions inline with the purposes of a descriptive reference grammar? And why?
Maybe we could do a series of shoot-outs, picking one set of questions, and asking what linguistic theories might be helpful for those questions and how. Let's not start with another round on aspect ;->
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
MAubrey
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Re: Linguists: What have you done for me lately?

Post by MAubrey »

cwconrad wrote:Perhaps Jonathan knew what "Government & Binding" is, but I didn't; guessing that it just might be jargon, I did a google search and discovered that it is a more recent Chomskian framework. I think this is what Jonathan's "Write for the Reader" rule was intended to forestall.
Well, it's about as recent as I am...I don't know whether that says more about it or me.
cwconrad wrote:If that's not the way to go, I'd still like more answers to my earlier question: What are the greatest deficiencies in the grammars of ancient Greek, especially Hellenistic Greek, that are regularly consulted today?
I'm trying to get there. I have a lot on my plate right now and I haven't even started piling it up for this Thursday's meal!

Preliminarily, independent of any framework, I would say:
  • --The nature of clause structure/phrase structure. Micheal Palmer's work on this was an incredibly important starting point, but only scratches the surface (the functionalist discussions of constituent order like Helma Dik's, while very important contributions, are too simplistic in nature).
    --Tied to that would be information structure.
    --Tied with both of those would be a more explicit evaluation of how prosody & pronunciation relate to phrase structure, word order, and information structure.
    --Some kind of incorporation of the insights of Simon S.M Wong and Paul Danove in terms of how verbs relate to their grammatical relations (known as argument structure in the linguistic literature).
    --Voice (obviously)
    --Tense and aspect (in my view more, but not exactly, along the lines of Fanning than Porter or Campbell)
    --A more robust classification & analysis of adverbs & particles according to their semantic functions (such that I never have to read another grammar that describes ἄν as "an untranslatable particle."
Jonathan Robie wrote:On B-Greek, we have many different linguistic maps, because we learned in different decades and different disciplines. I had graduate work in transformational linguistics and psycholinguistics in the early 1980s, but have not kept up since. I suspect a trained linguist can the fingerprints of that background in the things I post.
If you're interested, Peter Culicover & Ray Jackendoff have an excellent book titled Simpler Syntax that does a good job covering both the history and the state of the art. I used it a lot when I taught Survey of Linguistic Theories in 2012.
cwconrad wrote:I really would like to get some sense of the perspectives held by those seriously looking at ancient Greek or Hellenistic Koine Greek with a view to compiling a new descriptive reference grammar. Should the question be shunted off to a new subforum topic, "What Questions do we have and what Framework is appropriate for a reference grammar of Hellenistic Koine Greek?
Jonathan Robie wrote:Maybe we could do a series of shoot-outs, picking one set of questions, and asking what linguistic theories might be helpful for those questions and how. Let's not start with another round on aspect ;->
I think these are good ideas.

Also, finally, for the purposes of full disclosure:
My wife and I have charted out a reference grammar and we've written about 100 pages so far, mostly on the verbal system, but also portions on deictic and reference (pronouns & definiteness markers) and on the adjective system. At the rate we're going, we'd probably have a full draft by 2018(?).
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Re: Linguists: What have you done for me lately?

Post by Louis L Sorenson »

Mike Aubrey wrote
If you're interested, Peter Culicover & Ray Jackendoff have an excellent book titled Simpler Syntax that does a good job covering both the history and the state of the art. I used it a lot when I taught Survey of Linguistic Theories in 2012.
Here is the link to a library near you.....http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3AS ... dblist=638
MAubrey
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Re: Linguists: What have you done for me lately?

Post by MAubrey »

Louis L Sorenson wrote:Mike Aubrey wrote
If you're interested, Peter Culicover & Ray Jackendoff have an excellent book titled Simpler Syntax that does a good job covering both the history and the state of the art. I used it a lot when I taught Survey of Linguistic Theories in 2012.
Here is the link to a library near you.....http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3AS ... dblist=638
I should say though, that they're advocating their own approach, too, in addition to the history. One that borrows from various ideas that have been borrowed over the past 20 years.
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Re: Linguists: What have you done for me lately?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

MAubrey wrote:
  • --The nature of clause structure/phrase structure. Micheal Palmer's work on this was an incredibly important starting point, but only scratches the surface (the functionalist discussions of constituent order like Helma Dik's, while very important contributions, are too simplistic in nature).
    --Tied to that would be information structure.
    --Tied with both of those would be a more explicit evaluation of how prosody & pronunciation relate to phrase structure, word order, and information structure.
    --Some kind of incorporation of the insights of Simon S.M Wong and Paul Danove in terms of how verbs relate to their grammatical relations (known as argument structure in the linguistic literature).
    --Voice (obviously)
    --Tense and aspect (in my view more, but not exactly, along the lines of Fanning than Porter or Campbell)
    --A more robust classification & analysis of adverbs & particles according to their semantic functions (such that I never have to read another grammar that describes ἄν as "an untranslatable particle."
I agree with Maubrey on this point. None of these seem to be covered adequately by traditional grammar.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
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Re: Linguists: What have you done for me lately?

Post by Louis L Sorenson »

If you're interested, Peter Culicover & Ray Jackendoff have an excellent book titled Simpler Syntax that does a good job covering both the history and the state of the art. I used it a lot when I taught Survey of Linguistic Theories in 2012.
I bought the book and it is in hand. I'll let you know if it helps. I'm also trying to treebank the Enchiridion of Epictetus for the Alpheios treebank editor, and am going through the same learning curve that Jonathan is going through to some extent.
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Re: Linguists: What have you done for me lately?

Post by mwpalmer »

I would like to address something Jonathan Robie wrote, assuming a difference in perspective between Mike Aubrey and myself. I failed to address his question at the time, as I should have done. I could make excuses, but they wouldn't help. :-)

Jonathan wrote:
Mike Aubrey tells me that Chomsky is just plain wrong, models based on his work are not even to be treated with respect. Michael Palmer tells us Chomsky's government and binding theory is the right place to start.

Did I get this right?
No. You did not get the part about my perspective right. I would definitely not suggest that Chomsky's government and binding theory is the right place to start. Chomsky's government and binding theory, while it did influence the later work of a number of linguists, has since been superseded, and not even Chomsky accepted it as adequate by the end of his life. Besides that, it was never intended as a framework for writing a grammar for language students. It was one stage in Chomsky's developing attempt to explain what was going on in the "language faculty" of the human brain, though he took pains to say he was creating an abstract "model" that was not based in biological study of the brain. (It reminded me of the old mind vs. brain debates in philosophy,)

My view is that *we* (students and teachers of Hellenistic Greek—the people involved in this forum) need to listen for insights from a variety of approaches to linguistics, taking what is helpful, rejecting what does not contribute to a better understanding of Ancient Greek, and negotiating our own terminology. We should work to make sure our terminology is intelligible both to students learning Greek as well as linguists studying Greek, of course, but we should not try to force Greek into the mold provided by any one approach to linguistics. When those of us with studies in Linguistics write about Ancient Greek, we will inevitably use the terminology that we know and find comfortable, but we need to be challenged when that terminology leads to confusion, and we need to negotiate terminology so that we are all "speaking the same language."

Mike and I have had at least one discussion (on our own blogs, not on this forum) in which it became clear that we were looking at the same problem through different lenses because of our familiarity with different Linguistic paradigms, but the result was not competition or an attempt to argue that either paradigm was "correct," but a search for what would be beneficial in explaining what we find in the Greek texts to people who do not share either of our backgrounds in Linguistics.

I greatly appreciate Jonathan including the following paragraph in his earlier post:
I suppose part of my problem is that I would like linguists to teach me their insights, but I often find myself pulled into a dispute between very smart linguists instead, I have to first figure out what they are disagreeing about, then figure out what ramifications it has for the language as I know it, which requires me to learn multiple models and figure out what they are arguing about. At the end, I rarely feel like I've learned much about Greek.
I would like to encourage you, Jonathan, and any other readers of this forum to speak up about this whenever you feel this way. Doing so will keep those who have advanced studies in Greek, Linguistics, or both rooted in the real world. It will make the linguists and grammarians do the necessary work to negotiate our terminology and clean up our explanations so that they are beneficial for real users of the texts we all value.
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Re: Linguists: What have you done for me lately?

Post by Philip Tollinga »

mwpalmer wrote:I would like to encourage you, Jonathan, and any other readers of this forum to speak up about this whenever you feel this way. Doing so will keep those who have advanced studies in Greek, Linguistics, or both rooted in the real world. It will make the linguists and grammarians do the necessary work to negotiate our terminology and clean up our explanations so that they are beneficial for real users of the texts we all value.
As a non-linguist, I would greatly appreciate consulting a grammar which makes use of a linguistic "koine" terminology as Michael has suggested. Rijksbaron's book on verb syntax and semantics is often reviewed as easily understandable by the anthropos koinos. Could there be a similar framework agreed upon by the linguists from differing paradigms? Footnotes could perhaps do service for more abstract discussion points, if necessary.
Last edited by Stephen Carlson on January 4th, 2014, 6:59 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Trimmed excessive quoting. The additional content is very much appreciated but the forum software makes it less necessary to include the whole previous post.
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