Susan,

I think it may be useful here to make a distinction between (a) being
able to predict something that hasn't been observed before and then
later determining whether the prediction's right or not, and (b) being
able to say that new examples of the same kind of thing we already know
about act the way we think they should. Einstein's prediction that light
would bend around the sun in a certain way (b/c of gravity) was a "type
A" -- no one had been trying to measure that effect, but later, during a
solar eclipse, scientists did measurements and found that Einstein's
prediction held true. 

Predicting that someone who has just said the sequence "How are we going
to finish the" is likely to say a noun or an adjective next is more of a
type B. We're basically just saying that we've observed lots and lots of
examples, and we think a new instance is going to fit the pattern that
older ones have established, providing what we think is a pattern
actually is one (and *that's* non-trivial). A lot of people wouldn't
want to call this "prediction" in the same sense. I'd like to call it
prediction, but I'll immediately admit that I don't think it's nearly as
impressive a kind of prediction. If type A is the equivalent of making
Beef Wellington, type B is microwaving some tater tots. 

Linguistics may not seem as sciency to you because "core" linguistics
doesn't do type A predictions much (although psycholinguistics
frequently does; the predictions are frequently wrong, but hey, that's
how the game works). The best example of a linguistic Type A I can think
of is Saussure's reconstruction of a laryngeal fricative for
Proto-Indo-European -- he argued that it had one, and then later,
archeologists discovered previously-unknown documents in Hittite that,
lo and behold, indicated the presence of a sound right where Saussure
said one would be. Obviously, the Hittite tablets pre-existed Saussure,
but the *information* that they represented wasn't known to linguists at
the type Saussure made the prediction. His claim was testable against
information he didn't have, and that wasn't simply new instances of
familiar stuff (I *think* that my general argument here is paraphrasing
something by Raimo Anttila, but I'm not sure; any problems with the
argument, at any rate, are mine, not his). 

I think linguistics also has a history of confusing modeling something
with explaining it, a dodgy move if by "explain" you mean "establish a
cause-effect linkage that you claim represents what really goes on." A
model can incorporate an explanation in the causal sense, but the model
can't *be* an explanation in its own right. We can't establish whose
definition of "explanation" is the right one, but we can say that if
you're expecting one meaning, an argument that uses another will seem
quite suspect. Physicists claim that neutrinos actually exist, and that
they cause certain phenomena. They're perfectly willing to abandon that
claim if you can find good counterevidence, but for now, they're saying
that what their model says is a representation of one bit of how the
universe actually works. A linguistic model that involves a component
that generates an infinite set of sentences does *not* involve a claim
that you actually generate an infinite number of sentences in your head
(it may involve a claim that you really do have some faculty for
recognizing structures as ungrammatical, but not that you have a faculty
that really does generate infinite sentences). If you're expecting a
physicist-style model, the linguist-style one might be annoying. 

None of those points (making the big , *big* assumption that I'm right
about them) say that linguistics, or grammar, isn't really a science
though. They may indicate that we frequently get away with iffy science,
or we're stuck with tater-tot science because of the sheer number of
variables we have to work with, but that's a different thing. Tater-tot
science is still science; it's only offensive if you put on airs about
it. Even some simple frequency-based claims veer towards Type A
predictions if you test them against the kind of data no one has ever
gotten before (which is happening in some of the corpus studies), and
likewise for some typological claims that are tested against a lot of
data from languages that were undocumented at the time the claims were
made. It certainly doesn't mean that grammar or linguistics is an art
(although I would argue that the right kind of stratificational diagram
can pose as some kind of modern art form, esp. if you don't tell anyone
what any of the nodes mean). Art isn't scienceless science any more than
science is really bad art, even though it's rarely artless.


Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University


-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Susan van Druten
Sent: Sunday, November 21, 2010 10:00 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: grammar term definitions

On Nov 21, 2010, at 7:39 PM, Craig Hancock wrote:
> Do you believe that dictionaries can't be scientific?

Do you believe that discographies can't be scientific?

> Prescriptive grammarians often seem to have a messianic passion behind
> their activities. It hardly seems scientific.

Correct.  Prescriptive grammarians are pseudoscientists.   Messianic
means you think you know what is "truth" and right for all people when
you don't because other people have a different "truth."  Scientists
aren't messianic, yet they tell Truth. 

What Truth do grammarians have to tell?













>>>   If the main points you are trying to make are...
>> 
>> In this thread I have had only one main point:  As a field of
inquiry,
>> grammar is not science.
>> 
>> I know that you understand the stupidity of believing prescriptive
grammar
>> is The Way.  But if you believe grammar is ultimately scientific,
then you
>> contradict yourself.   Ultimately grammar is democratic.  But science
>> doesn't vote.
>> 
>> That crazy "had" guy on this list demands we all follow a scientific,
>> prescriptive rule he learned once.  Most of us laugh, but those of
you who
>> believe grammar is science, can't laugh.   Crazy "had" guy puts you,
the
>> scientific grammarian, in a bind.  Mediator Girl comes in and says,
"You,
>> drop the lab coat.  And, you, drop your dogma."  When you insists
your
>> unscientific beliefs are real, you create extremists who refuse to
take
>> you metaphorically (because you deny the metaphor).  Maybe if you
come
>> clean about the lack of science, crazy "had" guy could move on.  The
72
>> virgins aren't science.  There's no reward for beliefs that aren't
real.
>> 
>> 
>> On Nov 21, 2010, at 5:10 PM, Craig Hancock wrote:
>> 
>>> Susan,
>>>   If the main points you are trying to make are that grammar should
not
>>> be entirely prescriptive and that prescriptive grammarians should
not
>>> claim scientific certainty behind their prescriptive rules, I am
happy
>>> to agree. Apparently, we have very different ideas about science. To
>>> me, a scientist observes the world and tries to make sense out of
it.
>>> He/she may have very human values that drive that--a desire to cure
>>> cancer, for example--but those are not the science. I think there is
>>> room for patient observation and disciplined inquiry in the study of
>>> language. We should understand how it works apart from trying to
>>> control other people's use of it.
>>> 
>>> Craig
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Nov 21, 2010, at 4:25 PM, Craig Hancock wrote:
>>>>> I agree that grammar stops being a science when it becomes
narrowly
>>>>> prescriptive.
>>>> 
>>>> You have this completely turned around.  Science is "prescriptive."
>>>> 
>>>> Those who try to put prescriptive rules and laws on language are
acting
>>>> as
>>>> though grammar is a science when it clearly is not.  Why do we
belittle
>>>> them?  Because they don't get it; grammar is not science.  Your
>>>> insistence
>>>> that grammar is science, means you believe grammar ought to be
>>>> completely
>>>> prescriptive.  If a scientific law only most of the time follows
the
>>>> law,
>>>> it is pseudoscience.  Science demands complete obedience.
>>>> 
>>>> We can rail all we want about how unfair it is that the cute fawn
with
>>>> the
>>>> damaged foot will be the wolf's target, but the world works without
our
>>>> emotions.  Survival of the fittest doesn't care about anything but
>>>> their
>>>> ability to survive.
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>>>> 
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