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Round Table Meeting on Linguistics and Language Studies REPORT OF THE FIFTEENTH ANNUAL (FIRST INTERNATIONAL) ROUND TABLE MEETING ON LINGUISTICS AND LANGUAGE STUDIES C. I. J. M. STUART EDITOR GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY PRESS Washington, D. C. 20007 Copyright 1964 GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY PRESS INSTITUTE OF LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 56-38540 PRINTED BY PORT CITY PRESS, INC. BALTIMORE, MD. KROM time to time the Institute of Languages and Linguistics, Georgetown University, publishes monographs in- tended to contribute to the discipline of linguistics, and to the study and teaching of languages. Manuscripts should be addressed to Dean Institute of Languages and Linguistics Georgetown University Washington, D.C. 20007 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Foreword vii INTRODUCTORY REMARKS: On the Nature of Linguistic Inquiry ix WELCOMING REMARKS: Reverend Frank L. Fadner, S. J., Regent, Institute of Languages and Linguistics xv Robert Lado, Dean, Institute of Languages and Linguistics.... xvi I. CURRENT RESEARCH IN SYNTAX OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES C. E. Bazell Three Misconceptions of Grammaticalness 3 M. A. K. Halliday Syntax and the Consumer 11 Andre Martinet Foundations of a Functional Syntax 25 A. G. F. van Hoik Functional Syntax and Syntactic Operations 37 DISCUSSION 49 II. FIRST LUNCHEON ADDRESS Martin Joos A Chapter of Semology in the English Verb 59 III. ACHIEVEMENT IN LINGUISTIC THEORY H. A. Gleason, Jr. The Organization of Language: A Stratificational View .... 75 H. Hiz The Role of Paraphrase in Grammar 97 Sydney Lamb On Alternation, Transformation, Realization, and Stratification 105 Page F. R. Palmer 'Sequence' and 'Order' 123 DISCUSSION 133 IV. SUBJECT-MATTER RELATIONS BETWEEN LINGUISTICS AND OTHER DISCIPLINES Jarvis Bastian The Biological Background of Man's Languages 141 D. S. Boomer Linguistics and Speech Behaviour 149 Norman Geschwind, M.D. Development of the Brain and Evolution of Language 155 J. F. Glastra van Loon Language and the Epistemological Foundations of the Social Sciences 171 DISCUSSION 189 V. SECOND LUNCHEON ADDRESS Charles A. Ferguson On Linguistic Information 201 Appendix I Program of the Fifteenth (First International) Annual Round Table Meeting 211 Appendix II Palms Lounge Exhibition 213 Appendix III Index of Speakers 214 Appendix IV Membership of the Fifteenth (First International) Annual Round Table Meeting 215 FOREWORD In celebration of the one hundred and seventy fifth anniversary of Georgetown University, the Fifteenth Annual Round Table Meeting on Linguistics and Language studies was the first international meeting of the series. The international character of the meeting, however, was not merely an expression of celebration, but came in response to a long-felt need for an international forum in linguistics other than the five-yearly International Congresses. With respect to this goal, the meeting was undoubtedly successful in helping toward closer understanding of the positions adopted by workers who are widely scattered both geographically and with respect to their linguistic activities. Indeed, the meeting was so successful in this respect that there is now some question as to whether future Round Table Meetings could help toward clarification of linguistic goals, methods, and results by adopting an international representation either from time to time or as a matter of regular policy. Internationally formed panels might provide working forums within which particular problems could be focussed upon so as to permit unified efforts to reach consensual agreement and thus overcome the admitedly heterogeneous nature of contemporary linguistic outlook. With such future possibilities in mind, the 1964 Round Table Meeting was intentionally exploratory in nature, probing, as it were, the areas where substantial agreement is already established, and the areas where there is obvious need for agreement or, at any rate, clarification of the conditions through which workers fail to reach agreement. The subject-matters of the various panels do not, of course, cover the entire (or even a truly representative) range in this respect, but must necessarily reflect the current interests of the chairman whose task was to draw up the programme and convene the meeting. A brief, and quite general, statement of the issues which lay behind this programme is given in the Introductory Remarks. It should be emphasized, however, that the participants in the 1964 meeting are in no way to be associated with the views represented in those Introductory Remarks. All the papers delivered at the meeting are included in this monograph, together with selected and editorially revised portions of the panel discussions. My thanks are due to Mr. Leslie Hanzely for his expert recording of the entire proceedings, and to Mr. James Welch who designed the cover for the monograph and has done much otherwise to improve Georgetown publications in linguistics. I am grateful to all the graduate students in my seminar on formal methods in semantics: Marian Hutchison, Barbara Price, and Jane Takeuchi helped to prepare transcripts from the recorded discussions; Larry Selinker, and members of the university Linguistics Club, gave assistance in many organizational tasks during the meeting; Joe Roy is especially to be thanked for editorial assistance which made the preparation of the monograph, in all its phases, considerably easier than it might otherwise have been. CI.J.M. STUART Editor INTRODUCTORY REMARKS: On the Nature of Linguistic Inquiry An obvious distinction exists between language, qua phenomenon, and our understanding of language as this is represented in explicatory state- ments. Equally obvious is the fact that linguistics offers no single explica- tion, so that "language" is used to designate either the phenomenon itself or any of the linguistic explications of it. It is a matter of some consequence, therefore, to be clear as to what is meant by "language" in a given instance. For scientific purposes, however, to say what we mean by "language" is another way of stating what we understand concerning the phenomenon. Thus, if linguistics is to appear as a continuum of achievement rather than as a chronology of events, it is important that different linguistic explica- tions should each contribute to our effective understanding of language. It is clear that different explications may involve distinct modes of mean- ing, and hence yield distinct kinds of understanding. An investigation into modalities of meaning in linguistic explication is, however, beyond the scope of these introductory remarks; what is intended here is a discussion of the meaning of linguistic statements as this has bearing upon the general nature of linguistic inquiry. In linguistics "speech event" designates certain classes of observables (or, more precisely, is a generic designation for the members of such classes), while "language" is a generic designation for systems of restraints in terms of which speech events are said to occur. Thus language may be viewed, within linguistics, either as an heuristic interpretation of the systemic conditions under which observed events occur, or as a referential system of concepts that has a topological interpretation in observed events; in either case, speech events are viewed as data by which language is made apparent. Statements made by the linguist in explicating such systems are not of a justificatory kind, if only because linguistic observables (speech events) are part of the biologically given world. It is because speech events occur as part of the biological order, and because some kind of ordering principle (language system) is a prerequisite for the occurrence of speech events as biological signals, that the subject-matter of linguistic inquiry is called "natural language". As objects of inquiry, literature and the other arts, engineering, and technology are subject to justificatory statements. Confronted by a work of art or a work of engineering, one may reasonably ask why the work was done and whether it was well done; that is to say, we may rightly ask teleologic and evaluatory questions in such cases. In the case of natural language, it would be meaningless to ask such questions. It is because the linguist attempts to give explications of natural systems, and without recourse to justificatory statement, that linguistics is regarded as a scientific discipline. On the other hand, the linguist's explication of natural language systems is subject to justificatory statement as part of a necessary attempt to evaluate the scientific status of linguistic results. Three major issues are involved in such attempts; these concern the subject-matter, the purpose, and the logic of linguistic inquiry. Any attempt to account for the meaning of linguistic statements must be based upon some identification of these three factors. Within the limits already established, both "speech event" and "lan- guage" take on particularized meanings according to the concepts which enter into the referential system. Perhaps the most familiar linguistic meaning of "language" in this sense is that which is synonymously expressed in "language structure". Here "language" designates a system of conditions in terms of which speech events are viewed as consisting in discrete units that are organized, within the speech event, according to the restraints of the system. On this view, language is understood as a systemic restriction upon the occurrences of different classes of unit present in the speech event. We should notice that "speech event" in this structural thesis
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