On the innate building blocks of language and scientific explanation

Mendívil Giró, José Luis

Resumen: Although Haspelmath’s target article does not explicitly say it, the conception oflanguages (and of linguistics as a science) that the author presents is the same asthe one found in Saussure’sCours de linguistique generale(Saussure 1916): Lan-guages are social constructs and linguistics is a social science.1This view is notdemonstrably wrong in and of itself, but I do believe that it is an incomplete andinsufficient foundation on which to build a comprehensive science of language.By establishing a Saussurean notion of languages, Haspelmath effectivelyhints that the naturalistic and internalist conception of language developed bygenerative grammar (GG) does not represent progress in the evolution of ourdiscipline. I will argue here that Haspelmath’s assessment of GG is inadequate,because it is based on a misconception of the scientific nature of GG and of theassumptions under which it operates.

Idioma: Inglés

DOI: 10.1515/tl-2021-2008

Año: 2021

Publicado en: THEORETICAL LINGUISTICS 47, 1-2 (2021), 85-94
ISSN: 0301-4428

Factor impacto JCR: 1.455 (2021)

Categ. JCR: LINGUISTICS rank: 91 / 195 = 0.467 (2021) - Q2 - T2

Factor impacto CITESCORE: 1.2 - Social Sciences (Q2)

Factor impacto SCIMAGO: 0.36 - Linguistics and Language (Q1)

Financiación: info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/MINECO-FEDER/FFI2017-82460-P

Tipo y forma: Article (Published version)