PROMETEO ENCADENADO

The 37th volume (2011) of the journal Theoretical Linguistics features a dou- ble issue devoted entirely to a debate initiated by Martin Stokhof and Michiel van Lambalgen regarding the scientific status of modern linguistics (especially formal semantics). The volume opens with an article titled “Abstractions and idealizations: the construction of modern linguistics,”5 in which Stokhof and van Lambalgen raise the question of whether formal semantics could be an example of a failed discipline: “These observations give rise to a fundamental question with regard to linguistics as such: Could modern linguistics perhaps be an example of a ‘failed discipline’ ?”6 The rest of the volume features var- ious responses to this article, and is finally concluded with Stokhof and van Lambalgen’s responses to these responses.7

Having raised the question of failure, Stokhof and van Lambalgen go on to confirm the suspicion that, for a variety of reasons, formal semantics (and modern linguistics more generally8) could indeed be an example of a failed

4_{Partee (2012), p. 187} 5

Stokhof and van Lambalgen (2011a)

6_{Stokhof and van Lambalgen (2011a), p. 3} 7

Stokhof and van Lambalgen (2011b)

8_{It is not sufficiently clear from the article exactly which branches of linguistics are im-}

plicated this critique. The authors make it clear that Chomskyan linguistics and formal semantics are implicated, but they also make it clear that computational linguistics is not implicated. For the purposes of this thesis, it is sufficient to note that they think formal semantics in particular is implicated in the critique.

discipline. Crucially, they allege that the models used in formal semantics are far too abstract and idealized, and that therefore they cannot be compared to reality for empirical verification or falsification. The debate centers around the way in which modern linguistics “conceptualizes its central objects of study so as to fit a particular methodology.”9 A major factor that explains the success and prestige of modern linguistics is that it has succeeded to come up with scientific characterizations of its core concepts; this allows researchers to formalize these concepts and embed them into full-fledged models of language. However, Stokhof and van Lambalgen call into question the adequacy of these characterizations. In particular, they allege that the central objects of study of formal semantics (i.e. ‘language’, ‘grammar’, ‘meaning’, etc.) have been deliberately constructed through a process of ‘idealization’ which does not meet the standards of a rigorous scientific inquiry.

For example, formal semantics replaces the intuitive conception of language (what we encounter in our everyday usage of language) with a mathematical- logical concept of language as “a potentially infinite set of well-formed ex- pressions generated by a finite, or finitely characterisable, set of rules (i.e., a grammar).”10 _{Thus the concept of “language,” which is one of the primary ob-}

jects of study for formal semantics is a deliberate construction (and allegedly an idealization) that does not readily correspond to any phenomenon in reality. It is arrived at by starting with an observable real world phenomenon (what we encounter in our everyday usage of language) and idealizing away (i.e. ig- noring) what are considered to be “irrelevant” aspects such as human finitude. Another example is the concept of linguistic “competence,” which is another crucial object of study for modern linguistics. The concept of competence is an idealized construction that is arrived at by starting with the observable phenomenon of linguistic performance and then idealizing away (i.e. ignoring) the so-called “grammatically irrelevant” conditions such as speech errors, etc.11 For a final example, consider what is perhaps the central and most important object of investigation for formal semantics — the concept of “propositional meaning” — is also the result of idealization according to Stokhof and van

9

Stokhof and van Lambalgen (2011a), p. 1

10

Stokhof and van Lambalgen (2011a), p. 3

Lambalgen: “the concept of propositional meaning as such is yet another ex- ample of a construction that is not so much an abstraction as an idealization.”12 It begins with the concept of natural language meaning as it occurs in ordinary discourse and idealizes away (i.e. ignores) the so-called semantically irrelevant (i.e. pragmatic) conditions such as context.

Stokhof and van Lambalgen allege that these theoretical constructions, al- though they take some real world phenomena as their point of departure, ignore several qualitative dimensions of the phenomena and end up with an idealized object that is ontologically speaking quite unrelated to the phenomena: “They [idealizations] change the object of study, and one of the consequences of this is that there no longer is an immediate relation between the idealised object and the original, natural phenomenon.”13 They discuss how these theoretical con- structions idealize the object of study by once again citing Chomsky’s notion of competence:

What happens here is that competence, regarded as the proper object of study of linguistics, is constructed from what we can ob- serve, i.e., everyday use of language, by stripping it from a number of features, such as memory limitations, mistakes, (communicative) goals, attention shifts, and so on. In other words, Chomsky con- structs from observable language use a concept of linguistic compe- tence by simply ignoring a number of its actual, real properties. In that we a new object of study is created, i.e., an object that has an ontological status that differs from that of the original one.14

Therefore, the claims made by a theory based on such idealized objects (such as the claims made by formal semantics) can never be empirically verified or falsified, because these claims cannot “actually be compared with observations and the outcomes of experiments.”15 This is because there is a fundamental mismatch between the theory and the empirical observations; the theory makes claims about idealized phenomena, while the observations tell us about real

12

Stokhof and van Lambalgen (2011a), p. 15

13_{Stokhof and van Lambalgen (2011a), p. 13} 14

Stokhof and van Lambalgen (2011a), p. 11

15

observable phenomena, and there is no way to use the observation to verify or falsify the theory:

[T]here is a serious lack of empirical validation of the theory about the idealized object. Apart from the fact in the case of lin- guistics the original phenomenon is hard to fit into an experimental design, there is the problem that, without an independently veri- fied bridging theory, no theory about the idealized object will lead to predictions that can be tested on the original phenomenon (via observation or any any other means).16

Therefore, according to Stokhof and van Lambalgen, formal semantics could be seen as an example of a failed discipline, because it does not meet the basic criterion for a rigorous scientific inquiry, i.e. empirical verifiability / falsifiability.