Esa Itkonen

What is methodology (and history) of linguistics good for,

epistemologically speaking?
In: Histoire Épistémologie Langage. Tome 13, fascicule 1, 1991. pp. 51-75.

Résumé
RESUME : Cet article tente de répondre à la question figurant dans son titre : Quelle est l'utilité de la méthodologie et
l'historiographie de la linguistique, du point de vue épistémologique ? Pour trouver une réponse, on passe en revue les thèmes
suivants : théorie grammaticale (aussi connue sous le nom de 'linguistique autonome1), linguistique causale, historiographie de
la linguistique, étude du langage et de l'esprit. Finalement, on fait quelques observations sur le débat récent concernant la nature
de la linguistique.

Abstract
ABSTRACT : This paper tries to answer the question that figures in its title : What is methodology (and history) of linguistics good
for, epistemologically speaking ? An answer is sought for, in turn, in the following areas : grammatical theory (also known as
'autonomous linguistics1), causal linguistics, historiography of linguistics, and the study of language and mind. The paper
concludes with some remarks on the recent discussion concerning the nature of linguistics.

Citer ce document / Cite this document :

Itkonen Esa. What is methodology (and history) of linguistics good for, epistemologically speaking?. In: Histoire Épistémologie
Langage. Tome 13, fascicule 1, 1991. pp. 51-75.

doi : 10.3406/hel.1991.2324

http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/hel_0750-8069_1991_num_13_1_2324
 Histoire Épistémologie Langage 13/1 (1991)

WHAT IS METHODOLOGY (AND HISTORY)

OF LINGUISTICS GOOD FOR,
EPISTEMOLOGICALLY SPEAKING ?

Esa ITKONEN

ABSTRACT : This paper tries to answer the question that figures in its
title : What is methodology (and history) of linguistics good for,
epistemologically speaking ? An answer is sought for, in turn, in the
following areas : grammatical theory (also known as 'autonomous
linguistics1), causal linguistics, historiography of linguistics, and the study
of language and mind. The paper concludes with some remarks on the
recent discussion concerning the nature of linguistics.

RESUME : Cet article tente de répondre à la question figurant dans son

titre : Quelle est l'utilité de la méthodologie et l'historiographie de la
linguistique, du point de vue épistémologique ? Pour trouver une réponse,
on passe en revue les thèmes suivants : théorie grammaticale (aussi connue
sous le nom de 'linguistique autonome1), linguistique causale,
historiographie de la linguistique, étude du langage et de l'esprit.
Finalement, on fait quelques observations sur le débat récent concernant la
nature de la linguistique.

1. General Remarks.

Human beings are unique in that, while doing something, they

generally also know what they are doing. This ceases to be the case,
52 Esa Itkonen

however, when they engage in exceptionally complex activities.

Science is a prime example of such an activity : it is not at all
uncommon to see 'ordinary practising scientists' go about their
work, while having only a vague, or downright false, idea of what it
is, exactly, that they are doing. To me such a state of affairs is
degrading ; and, accordingly, knowing what one is doing has an
intrinsic value. This is where methodology and/or philosophy of
science comes into picture.
In general, philosophy of science is considered a respectable
undertaking. On closer inspection, however, some differences
emerge. The philosophy of natural sciences, especially astronomy
and particle physics, enjoys great prestige. So does the philosophy of
logic and mathematics, even if to a somewhat lesser extent. But the
philosophy of linguistics is sometimes treated with mistrust. To me
this is a sign of (temporary, let us hope) immaturity within the field
of linguistics.
It may be good to add that there are two (often related) ways
of practising methodology which I reject straight away. One is to
maintain that a given scientific discipline (here : linguistics) is based
on some colossal misunderstanding, with the implication that the
achievements of more than two thousand years just have to go down
the drain. The other is to dwell upon some Utopian stage of a given
scientific discipline (here : linguistics) that lies far off in the future.

'phenomenological'
A sound methodology
account of what
mustthe be
scientist
basedis doing
on ina fact,
detailed
not

what he thinks he ought to be doing. For instance, in the early phase

of a typical grammatical description the grammarian observes
nothing, i.e. he neither sees nor hears utterances. Rather, he invents
sentences which his linguistic intuition tells him are correct, and he
mentally performs some operations which either preserve correctness
or change it into incorrectness. Typically, such a mental operation
consists in altering either the form or the distribution of constituents,
and if it produces an incorrect sentence, the grammarian becomes
aware of a (possibly very low-level) rule which has been violated.
That is, incorrectness never concerns one sentence alone. In all this,
the grammarian has done nothing but analyze his own consciousness,
or more precisely, what he himself consciously knows to be the
case. Obliterating the distinction between conscious and unconscious
 Methodology of linguistics 53

makes here any methodological self-understanding impossible a

priori. So does construing the grammarian's activity as an instance
either of the observational or of the experimental method.
In this paper I shall discuss some lessons that can be drawn
from investigating the methodology and/or philosophy of linguistics,
with the emphasis on the epistemological aspect. Understandably, I
shall concentrate on questions that I have dealt with in my own
work.

2. The Status of Grammatical Theory.

The basic tenets of my 1978 book Grammatical Theory and

Metascience1 (henceforth to be abbreviated as GTM) can be
summarized as follows. A language is a system of social rules (or
norms). The social nature of rules means that they exist as objects of
common (or mutual) knowledge. Thus, one can become aware of
rules, which means, more technically, that rules can become objects
of subjective atheoretical intuition. Rules determine the correctness
or incorrectness of sentences. Any rule can be described by a
corresponding (atheoretical) rule-sentence, for instance, 'The
precedes, as in the man, and does not follow, as in man the'2 or
'Tree means a plant, and not a number, whereas three means a
number, and not a plant' or 'In a sentence like John likes him the
word him cannot refer to John'. It is a peculiarity of rule-sentences
that since they are known to be true, they are (known to be)
unfalsifiable. Any purported counter-examples, like uttering the
sentence 'Man the came in1, are simply irrelevant, because they are
(known to be) incorrect. It is this, and only this, feature that
distinguishes (descriptions of normative) rules from (descriptions of
non-normative) regularities. Denying the unfalsifiability of rule-
sentences amounts to denying that there is any 'rule vs regularity' -

1 . This is a revised and expanded version of my 1974 dissertation Linguistics and

Metascience.
2. The original formulation of this rule-sentence was 'In English the definite article
precedes the noun*. This created some confusion because 'definite article' and
'noun' are undeniably theoretical terms (or concepts). I pointed out from the
beginning, however, that such terms can be dispensed with ; see GTM : 325-326,
n. 90, and 167468.
54 Esa Itkonen

opposition. In thus revealing the normative nature of the subject

matter of grammatical theory, rule-sentences possess considerable
metascientific interest. Because of their atheoretical character,
however, they possess no scientific interest3. Such an interest
appertains only to theoretical grammatical descriptions, like
generative grammars of (fragments of) given languages. A rule as
well as the truth of the corresponding rule-sentence is known by
intuition, but since one has no prior knowledge about a theoretical
description, one cannot know it by intuition. This means that a
theoretical description is itself not a normative entity, even if it has
been invented for the purpose of giving a systematic overview of
normative data (see GTM : 8.3, esp. pp. 215-216, and 9.3, esp.
246-247). They key notions in this account are 'rule1, '(atheoretical)
rule-sentence', and '(theoretical) grammar'.
The question has been much debated whether linguistics is just
a subbranch of psychology or whether linguistics-<?Ma-psychology
should be distinguished from grammatical theory (also called
'autonomous linguistics1). In my published work I have argued at
length for the latter alternative. In the present context it suffices to
point out that grammatical theory, as here defined, is based on the
notion of axiomaticity , or on the idea of 'describing as much as
possible by means of as little as possible'. Experimental-
psychological studies have established that the (untrained) human
mind does not function axiomatically. (This is not surprising.
Anyone who has studied axiomatics knows from bitter personal
experience that he has to struggle against his natural inclination.)

3. The 'atheoretical vs. theoretical1 distinction has turned out to be surprisingly

difficult to grasp. (Its general justification is given in GTM: 8.2-3.). The
following should clarify the issue : "When formulating our norm-sentences [or
rule-sentences] we must have some minimal trust in the intellectual capacities of
our audience. In general our trust is justified. Therefore I could just as well have
formulated my norm-sentence as 'the man is right, and man the is wrong', and
could have let the audience infer, or rather recognize, the intended norm. The
only members of my audience who would betray my trust are professional
linguists. Urged by their professional interest... they would pretend not to
understand the norm which they do understand in fact, and would ask to be
explicity told all the prima facie exceptions. Althought I intend to give an
atheoretical (or pretheoretical) description, and they think they are asking me to
give what I intend to give, they would in fact be asking me to give a theoretical
description. This is the fallacy in their argument" (CLT : 264).
 Methodology of linguistics 55

Therefore psycholinguistics is a linguistic subdiscipline distinct from

grammatical theory. It is a different matter that psychologists may in
turn wish to describe the workings of the (non-axiomatic) human
mind as parsimoniously or 'axiomatically' as possible.
Pânini's (c. 400 B.C.) grammar is a perfect - and still today
largely unsurpassed - example of a non-psychological grammatical
description. To give a more recent example, grammars written in the
tradition of Montague (1974) are based on a very simple idea, viz.
the repeated application of the notion of one-place function. In this
way they achieve a very high degree of generalization independent
of, and even in direct opposition to, any psychological
considerations.
It has been claimed, e.g. by Chomsky (1986 : 20), that within
grammatical theory, as here defined, questions of truth and falsity do
not arise in any interesting sense. This is a serious
misunderstanding. Any axiomatic theory (or system) must satisfy the
twin desiderata of completeness and soundness : it has to generate all
and only desired entities, viz. true sentences in empirical sciences,
correct sentences in grammatical theory, or valid formulae in logic
(cf. Itkonen 1976). To the extent that it fails to do so, it is falsified.
Again, assuming that there are two descriptions which are both
complete and sound, there still exists an objective criterion of
selection, namely simplicity. Interestingly enough, this was also
Chomsky's initial position :

It is important, incidentally, to recognize that considerations of

simplicity are not trivial or 'merely esthetic1. It has been remarked in
the case of philosophical systems that the motives for the demand for
economy are in many ways the same as those behind the demand that
there be system at all. ... It seems to me that the same is true of
grammatical systems, and of the special sense of simplicity that will
concern us directly (Chomsky 1975 [1955] : 114, n. 2 ; similarly
Chomsky 1957 : 55-56).

In later making his rather half-hearted attempt to come to grips

with psychological facts of language, Chomsky has simply confused
the issue, by merging two distinct and equally legitimate types of
linguistic study.
56 Esa Itkonen

As already indicated, there turns out to be a broad analogy

between grammatical theory and formal logic, in particular
'philosophical logic1 which formalizes atheoretical knowledge related
to such conceptual oppositions as 'necessity vs. possibility',
'obligation vs. prohibition', 'knowledge vs. belief. I have justified
this analogy in some detail in GTM : 10.0. What is especially
important, is that not just correctness but also validity turns out to be
a primarily intuitive notion : when there is a conflict between formal
validity and intuitive validity, the latter wins.
Moreover, grammatical analysis is shown to be closely similar
not just to logical but also to philosophical analysis (see GTM :
11.0). This is not surprising, given that logic expands in the
direction of philosophy, and philosophy, in turn, develops in the
direction of increasing formal ization. The common methodological
notion turns out to be explication, understood as a method for
transforming non-empirical truths of the intuitive kind into non-
empirical truths of the formal kind. Explication is the general
method of conceptual analysis, which means that grammatical
theory, philosophical logic, and analytic philosophy are
exemplifications of this superordinate notion. This is an ontological
characterization. (Notice that 'concept' refers here to an
intersubjective entity, i.e. an entity which -as I would say- exists as
an object of common knowledge. When a philosopher analyzes the
concept of 'truth', he is dealing neither with mental representations
nor with brain states.) From the epistemological point of view, the
three disciplines must be characterized as intuitional sciences,
because the act of knowledge on which they have to rely is intuition,
as distinguished from observation and introspection (cf. Itkonen
1981a). The fundamental difference between intuitional and natural
sciences should be obvious.
Now, what is the intellectual gain in all this ? To be sure, an
increase in linguists' self-understanding is an end in itself. But there
is more. As Ringen (1980 [1975] : 101) has pointed out, "explicit
discussions of the status of formal analytic philosophy are difficult to
find". Concentrating on the analytic philosophy of science, one
might say that it has been so busy analyzing other sciences that it has
had no time to ask what kind of science (or 'discipline') it itself is.
On some occasions when this question has been raised, the answer
 Methodology of linguistics 57

given has been quite obviously wrong, as in Stegmuller's or

Popper's case (cf. Itkonen 1981a : 130-133). Here philosophy of
linguistics can bring about much-needed clarification, by showing
that analytic philosophy (of science) is a straightforward instance of
conceptual analysis, just as grammatical theory is. A similar
conclusion applies also to the methodological status of philosophical
logic.
In reaching these results, I have followed the lead of Pap
(1958), a neglected classic. Cohen (1976) too probes the intuitional
basis of analytic philosophy.

3. The Status of 'Causal1 Linguistics.

Linguistics is not a homogeneous discipline. Rather, it is

divided into several subdisciplines each of which tries to answer its
own characteristic question. As I see it, grammatical theory, as here
defined, constitutes the logical 'core' of linguistics. The question it
tries to answer is What ?, namely, What is a correct sentence of a
language L ? (If needed, the concept of 'sentence' may be embedded
in the more encompassing concepts of 'speech act' ans 'text'). Apart
from grammatical theory, the three most important linguistic
subdisciplines are psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and diachronic
linguistics, each of which tries to answer its own characteristic
How ?-question, namely How is language produced I understood I
stored I acquired ?, How is language used under different
circumstances ?, and How does language change ? Notice that
answering a How ?-question presupposes an answer to the
corresponding What ?-question. Notice also that it is only after
answering a How ?-question that one can hope to answer a Why ?-
question. Thus, there is the hierarchy 'What > How > Why1, as
shown
X?' - 'A.1
by the
'How
following
is A done
pairs
?' -of'In
questions
the way and answers : 'What is
B.' - 'Why in the way
BT - 'Because of C
These conceptual relationships are faithfully reflected in
historical relationships : in no linguistic tradition has it ever
happened that psychological or sociological or diachronic study
emerges before the emergence of grammatical theory. The view that
grammatical theory (in the sense of 'autonomous linguistics') is an
58 Esa Itkonen

invention of the 20th century, betrays a total ignorance of historical

facts.
The linguistic What .^-question is non-causal (and conceptual)
in nature, whereas both the How ?- and the Why ?-questions are
about causation : they ask how, and why, it is that something makes
something else happen. Therefore it was only logical that, having

dealt
'causal'
with
linguistics,
grammatical
as I did
theory
in my
in 1984
my G7M,
book Causality
I should innext
Linguistic
tackle

Theory (henceforth to be abbreviated as CIL)4.

When approaching linguistic causation, I was solely interested
in explanations that actually have been or are being offered in
linguistic research. I had no interest whatever in explanations that
will, or will not, be offered in one hundred or one thousand years. It
turned out that all de facto explanations, without exception, rely in
one way or another on the concept of rationality (i.e. the rationality
of research objects, not just researchers). Sometimes this concept is
well-hidden behind natural-science terminology, but it is always
there (cf. CLT: 4.1.3-4.2.7). Rationality may be instantiated both
nomically and non-nomically. In the latter instance it explains why
nomological explanations do not apply in the human sphere, while in
the former it shows that what prima facie appears as a nomological
explanation may be so characterized only with qualifications. The
upshot is a clear demarcation between human sciences and physical
sciences : it goes without saying that in the inanimate world there is
no room for rationality. Between what is human and what is physical
there obtains a 'grey area' that ranges from animal psychology to
biology.
What I just said needs some clarification. Since I do not use
the term 'causation' in the sense of physical causation, but rather in
the pretheorical sense of 'making things happen', I have no
inhibitions against speaking about the causation of human behavior.
A typical action is caused by the agent's goal and his belief about
available means for achieving the goal : if he had not had just this
goal and just this belief, he would not have acted in the way he did.
Actions are typically rational, i.e. adequate in light of goals and

4. Anttila (1988) contains a detailed exposition of CLT.

 Methodology of linguistics 59

beliefs. The goal has the role of a 'dynamic cause1 while the belief
has the role of a 'static cause1. In acts of speaking the dynamic
causes include the speech intention while the static causes include the
mental grammar ; and just like all actions, acts of speaking too are
embedded in a means-end hierarchy in such a way that a lower-level
end (or goal) may serve as a means for a higher-level one. Within
the general notion of rationality, moreover, it is necessary to
distinguish between socially valid 'rationality principles' and their
individual-psychological internal izations ; a similar distinction has to
be made, of course, between rules (or norms) of correctness and
their internalizations (cf. CLT: 3.2).
Rationality encompasses a continuum leading from totally
unconscious to totally conscious. The more minute aspects of global
behavior are at issue (phonetic variation being the limiting case), the
more automatic and unconscious they tend to be, and vice versa ;
and the degree of nomicity increases proportionally to the degree of
unconsciousness. The study of the unconscious (including the mental
grammar) is the proper area for observational and/or experimental
methods. By contrast, algorithmic models for conscious behavior,
like those constructed within the artificial-intelligence paradigm,
reveal an interesting paradox : on the one hand, they are constructed
on the basis of the philosophical method of intuition-cum-reflection ;
on the other, they are meant to be causal models. The solution of
this paradox is as follows. As normative entities, rationality
principles are open to (conscious) intuition, and they as a matter of
fact constitute the data for models in question. These acquire their
'causal' import from the tacit assumption that the principles under
scrutiny have in fact been internalized by agents. It follows,
somewhat surprisingly, that the Pap-type explication can be, and has
been, extented to causal analysis (cf. CLT: 3.7).
It is generally thought that causal analysis proceeds,
hypothetico-inductively, from known effects to unknown (or less
well known) causes. Diesing (1972) points out, however, that social
sciences often employ 'synthetic models' which proceed in the
opposite way, namely from known causes to less well known effects.
Such 'known causes' turn out to be identical with norms for rational
behavior, i.e. our rationality principles. Now that we are able to
identify the Diesing-type synthetic model with the Pap-type
60 Esa Itkonen

explication, we may also note (cf. CLT: 6.0), that the 'causal'
human sciences (including linguistics) have to a large extent
misunderstood their own character, and still continue to do so. The
intellectual gain consists in being able to point this out.

4. The Lessons of the Historiography of Linguistics.

Having investigated the methodology of linguistics in some

depth, it seemed only logical to me that I should next get acquainted
with its history. This sentiment was reinforced by the fact that within
the philosophy of science there was a wide-spread interest in the
concept of 'scientific progress', an interest originating in Kuhn
(1962). To me, it seemed futile to debate this issue in vacuo ; and
the concept of 'progress within human sciences' (including
linguistics), being a relatively untouched topic of research, held out
some hope of new discoveries. Moreover, the veridicity or otherwise
of epistemic relativism was also the object of much discussion, and it
seemed equally futile to consider it in vacuo. To me, this meant that
I had to find out whether, and on what basis, I could come to
understand linguistic traditions of non-Western cultures. The
outcome of this research project is to be found in my forthcoming
book Universal History of Linguistics .'India, China, Arabia, Europe
(henceforth to be abbreviated as UHL).
Once I had familiarized myself with the Western tradition, I
realized that linguists hold a decidedly wrong, i.e. inflated, view of
the amount of progress that their discipline has supposedly
undergone since its beginnings. It was a sobering experience to learn
that many of the 'revolutionary innovations' that we were taught in
the mid-sixties had been explicitly stated in the oldest extant
syntactic treatise in the West, namely Apollonius Dyscolus' Peri
syntaxeos. Similarly, I was surprised to learn that in grammatical
theory the achievement of the Middle Ages, understood as a
combination of the Modistic universal grammar and the Ockham-
type logical linguistics, stood at a level that was reached anew only
in the 20th century.
The decisive experience, however, was coming to understand
the grammatical traditions in India and in Arabia. Especially in its
morphophonology, Panini's (c. 400 B.C.) grammar Astadhyayi has
 Methodology of linguistics 61

certainly not been outmatched before the 1970 's, if even then.
Sîbawaihi's (d. 793) Al-Kitab, though not quite at the same level of
technical mastery, contains a syntactic theory that is certainly
superior to its pre-1900 Western counterparts. This means that all
preconceptions concerning the 'progress in linguistics' have to be
abandoned, in particular the presumption that there is any kind of
similarity between the progress in linguistics and the progress in the
natural sciences, e.g. in physics. For more than two thousand years,
there was, on the global scale, no progress in linguistics (more
precisely, grammatical theory) ; and what progress may have been
achieved today, is very much smaller than linguists are inclined to
think.
Once the facts are known, the next step is to ask for an
explanation : Why is the progress in linguistics so different from the
progress in physics ? By way of an answer, I offer here an analogy.
In the history of philosophy, Plato's and Aristotle's position is
almost (but not quite) as strong as Pânini's in the history of
linguistics. To make matters even clearer, consider Aristotle in his
two roles of a philosopher and of a physicist : in the former role he
is still our contemporary whereas in the latter he is hopelessly
outdated. The reason for this remarkable difference must be that the
ontology-cum-methodology of an intuitional science like philosophy
(or grammatical theory) has remained the same, whereas within the
natural sciences both the research methods and the research objects
have undergone a series of fundamental changes.
Above, I just gave the bare outline of my argument. It is
presented in much greated detail in UHL : 6.1.2. The view,
presented in Sections 2 and 3 above, that there is a significant
difference between human (in particular, intuitional) sciences and
natural sciences has now received additional, and rather dramatic,
support. That the result of historiographical research agrees with the
result of methodological research, enhances the plausibility of each.
What about epistemic relativism ? As is evident from the very
structure of UHL, I have no doubt that there is a common basis for
comparing the linguistic traditions in India, China, Arabia, and
Europe, even if the tradition was less developed in China than it was
elsewhere. This common basis may even be characterized as
'universal', provided this term is not taken to entail any strong sense
62 Esa Itkonen

of (nomic) necessity : it is certainly possible that dissimilar linguistic

traditions might have occurred elsewhere. (Being interested in the
science of language, I ignore here the so-called folk linguistics). In
the same vein, if I have shown that relativism does not prevail in
linguistics, this by no means entails that it may not be more
operative in some other area, e.g. medicine (for more discussion,
see UHL : 6.2).
What could a relativist do to prove me wrong ? He ought to
show that I have not really understood Pânini or Sîbawailhi,
although I think I have. To achieve this, he ought to show that he
has understood them better than I have. To the extent that he would
succeed, he would undermine his own relativist position : by his own
example, he would prove that it is possible to come to understand
alien cultures and to compare them with our own culture,
presumably on some universal basis5.
It may also be good to point out that there is nothing
aprioristic in my type of ('contingent1) universalism. When I started
this research project, I expected to encounter a great amount of
variety, both within the Western tradition and among the four
different traditions. The variety was, however, only apparent : I saw
it only as long as I had not transcended my own vantage point,
which was that of contemporary Western linguistics. The more I
could free myself of it, the more similarities I perceived. My esteem
for Pânini1 s grammar and Sîbawaihi's syntax is ultimately based on
such traditional, and universal, criteria as explicitness, systematicity,
coverage of data, and degree of generalization.
Intellectual hegemony is generally conceded to the West, as
compared with the East. In philosophy the two may have been
equals, but elsewhere -it is maintained- the West prevails. This
attitude may give rise to apparently opposite types of reactions :
either the intellectual achievements of the East are dismissed as
irrelevant (because non-scientific) or they are extolled under such
non-scientific labels as 'wisdom' or 'mysticism'. Both of these
reactions are unjustified, because Eastern linguistics certainly

5. French
It shouldphilosophizing,
be evident that as
I strongly
represented
rejectby
theFoucault
extreme relativism
and Derridaof contemporary
; cf. Itkonen
(1988b) and (1989).
 Methodology of linguistics 63

qualifies as scientific. And what is more, it is in linguistics -and only

in linguistics- that the intellectual hegemony of the West has been
unequivocally broken.
What is the gain in all this ? The gain is that we have lost the
sense of Western superiority, and have done so in a principled way.

5. Language and Mind.

As noted before, in CLTl conceived of the linguistic structure

in its internalized form as part of those static causes which contribute
to bringing about linguistic behavior of any kind. I did not really
face the question whether this cause could in turn be viewed as an
effect produced by some ulterior causes. To be sure, I defended the
view that linguistic form must have been determined by its function,
but having stated my general position (cf. pp. 157-161), I did not
pursue the question any farther. During the last ten years or so,
however, there has been an increasing amount of research devoted to
explaining universal features of linguistic structure, or linguistic
universals tout court (see e.g. Haiman 1985, Haiman ed. 1985,
Hawkins ed. 1988). At the moment this seems to me the single most
interesting avenue of linguistic research. I think it will eventually
shed some genuine light on the relation between language and mind.
Linguistic structure is jointly produced by different types of
causal factors and these have to be disentangled. I distinguish
between three causally efficacious categories, namely ontology,
cognition, and interaction, each of which will be briefly
characterized below. But first it must be made clear precisely what
kind of causality is involved here. It is tempting to say that linguistic
structure results from verbalizing the results of some antecedent
mental processes, namely conceptualizing the world, manipulating
conceptualizations, and interacting with other people. Indeed, I have
nothing against such formulations, as long as their non-literal
character is clearly understood. In a more careful context we should
not speak of a process of 'verbalization', but just of the processes of
learning and maintaining a language. That linguistic structure is an
'mirrors'
'effect', is evident from the joint facts that it universally
something antecedent and that it does not cease to do so, i.e. it does
not change in a random fashion.
64 Esa Itkonen

The ontological explanation is based on the isomorphism

between language and reality (more precisely, reality-as-
nonlinguistically-conceptualized) ; alternatively, we may speak of
the (structural) iconicity of language. Isomorphism between states of
affairs and sentences is instantiated by their respective constituents
on the dimensions of number, qualitative properties, quantitative
properties, order, and cohesion6.
The cognitive explanations constitute a more heterogeneous
category. They are based on the idea of an additional mental (but
still nonverbal) contribution that a person makes to states of affairs
(as conceptualized). Here the entire 'human nature1 comes into play,
starting with the differences between animal and human cognition.
Also the 'figure vs. ground' distinction, i.e. the universal tendency
to relate what is small to what is big (but not vice versa), is
obviously conditioned by the psycho-physical constitution of the
humans. So is the notion of metaphor, i.e. the universal tendency to
use expressions for bodies-in-space to mean something quite
different. Moreover, mental operations like identification,
quantification, negation, and inference are self-evidently
superimposed upon (conceptualizations of (constituents of)) states of
affairs. Perhaps surprisingly, I would also place the phenomena of
traditional deicticity in this category, even if they are often literally
part of, rather than added to, the state of affairs to be spoken about.
The interactional explanations attemps to account for
phenomena that are subsumed under the label of 'discourse-
pragmatics'. In the present state of our knowledge these explanations
do not seem to me quite as trustworthy as their ontological or
cognitive counterparts.
It has always been known that the sign languages of the deaf
are iconic, in the sense of being rather directly conditioned, or
'caused', by the extra-linguistic reality which they speak about. Now
that oral languages have turned out to be (structurally) iconic, and
sign languages have turned out to be more conventional than was
generally thought, it has become quasi impossible to deny that they
ensue from a common linguistic capacity (see e.g. Poizner et al.

6. In Itkonen (1970) I presented the general argument for explaining linguistic

structure as being 'caused' by isomorphic nonlinguistic structure.
 Methodology of linguistics 65

1987). From this it follows, however, that not only sign languages
but also oral languages must have an ontological explanation. How
widely the linguistic (or rather, semiotic) capacity must be ultimately
understood, is still an open, and very exciting, question.
All this evidence constitutes a direct refutation of the innatist
hypothesis which flatly denies that linguistic structure can be
explained. In defending his own methodological position, Chomsky
(1986 : 249) claims that "we try to construct the best theory of all
the evidence and tentatively accept its statements as true", giving to
understand that his Government-and-Binding theory is precisely this
'best theory1. However, Chomsky simply ignores the huge amount
of cross-linguistic evidence that, having accumulated over the years,
argues for the explanation of linguistic universals. Evidence from
experimental psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, and auditory
phonetics is also ignored, except on those few occasions when it
seems to agree with the GB theory. If a linguistic theory should
indeed account for all the evidence, as Chomsky claims, then his
theory is far from being the best.
The Chomsky-type innate linguistic capacity is supposedly
needed to explain the existence, and the nature, of language-
acquisition. The traditional view, represented equally by Paul,
Saussure, Jespersen, Sapir, and Bloomfield, was that language is
acquired by means of analogy. Now, analogy is thought to be a
general capacity which is equally operative in different mental
domains. Chomsky regards the mind as consisting of several quasi-
independent modules, including the linguistic capacity ; and he
strongly and repeatedly denies the usefulness of any such notion as
analogy (e.g. Chomsky 1986 : 12, 43). Fodor (1983 : 106-107) even
sets up an exclusive disjunction between modularity and analogy :
where the one is, the other cannot be ; and he specifically rules out
any analogy in language.
It should be obvious at once that our ontological explanations
refute not just innatism, but also modularity, simply because the
isomorphism between reality and language is tantamount to their
structural analogy. Yet this whole discussion has suffered from a
serious distortion of the concept of 'analogy'.
Chomsky (1986) sees a failure of analogy in each and every
case where (what he takes to be) a formal similarity is not perfectly
66 Esa Itkonen

matched by a corresponding semantic similarity. But this is like

arguing that analogy fails because and and end, though 'formally
similar1, mean quite different things. All this is beside the point, of
course, because none of the champions of analogy, from Paul via
Bloomfield to Anttila, has used the term 'analogy' in this way.
Let us make this a little clearer. Chomsky (1986) uses
repeatedly the following set of examples :

(1) John ate an apple.

(2) John ate.
(3) John is too stubborn to talk to Bill.
(4) John is too stubborn to talk to.

As he sees it, the relation of (4) to (3) is analogous to the

relation of (2) to (1) ; yet John is the subject of ate in both (1) and
(2), while John is the subject of talk only in (3). Chomsky takes this
to mean that analogy fails.
His argument can be presented in the form of a traditional
'proportional analogy', thus :

(1) _ (3)
~
(2) ?

For Chomsky, the concept of analogy requires the question

mark to be replaced by (4). To see the error in this reasoning,
consider this proportional analogy :

(1) John ate an apple (5) John talked to Bill

(2) John ate ?

According to Chomsky's logic, the question mark should be

replaced by the following sentence :

(6) *John talked to

 Methodology of linguistics 67

This is wrong, however, because (6) is not even a correct

sentence7. The right solution is, rather, this sentence :

(7) John talked.

When we apply this simple observation to the first

proportional analogy, we see that the solution cannot be (4). Rather,
it has to be

(8) John is too stubborn to talk.

What about Chomsky's key sentence, i.e. (4) ? What is the

right analogy for it ? It is to be found in the following equation :

(9) The teacher discusses (5') Bill talks to John

the question

(10) The question is too John is too stubborn -?

difficult to discuss

It is here -and only here- that the sentence (4) (= John is too
stubborn to talk to) has its rightful place. Notice that there is not
only a semantic, but also a formal analogy between (10) and (4), as
one cannot help seeing, if one only cares to keep one's eyes open.
Over the years Chomsky has used several similar examples to
disprove analogy (see e.g. CLT: 63). They have no force, however,
because they all suffer from the same defect. To put it simply, it is
the view that analogy fails because and and end, though 'formally
analogous1, fail to be semantically analogous.
As a proponent of a language-specific innate capacity,
Chomsky feels no obligation to present an algorithm for language-
acquisition. He has always claimed, however, that supporters of
analogy do have such an obligation. But why ? I am free to postulate
a non-specific innate capacity to grasp analogies (and a long series of
linguists, from Paul to Anttila, have argued eloquently that we do
have such a capacity). And if the innatism of one sort does not entail

7. Maybe Chomsky would like to argue that (6) should be a correct sentence ; that it
is not, would then speak against analogy. But this is like arguing that analogy
fails because there is no conjunction *ond similar in meaning to and.
68 Esa Itkonen

any commitment to a language-acquisition algorithm, the innatism of

the other sort does not either.
In sum, ontological and cognitive (and, perhaps, interactional)
explanations of linguistic universals promise to illuminate the
relation between language and mind in new and interesting ways.

6. Some Remarks on the Recent Discussion concerning the

Nature of Linguistics

There is a lengthy series of works dealing with the

methodological status of (various parts of) linguistics. At least the
following deserve to be mentioned here : Botha (1971), Derwing
(1973), Kac (1974), Ringen (1980 [1975]), Anttila (1977), Lass
(1980), Katz (1981), Chomsky (1986), Pateman (1987), and Carr
(1990). Apart from dealing with different aspects of this discussion
in my 1978 and 1984 books, I have reviewed Lass's, Katz's and
Paterman's works in Itkonen (1981b), (1983), and (1988a),
respectively. In the remainder of this paper I shall make a few
remarks on Chomsky (1986) and Carr (1990).
In GTM : 4.0 I used Wittgenstein's private-language argument
to show that Chomsky's language-conception is inadequate ; and I
continued this discussion in CLT: 5.1. Chomsky (1986: 4.1)
responds to Kripke's (1982) somewhat similar criticism. It seems to
me that the two following points have not been understood clearly
enough. First, when Wittgenstein speaks of 'private rules', he means
rules that are consciously invented and followed. Therefore in this
whole discussion there should be no room for unconscious rules (or
rather, "rules') of the mental grammar. If one for some inexplicable
reason wishes to use the term 'private language' also in such a
context, one should at least be aware that there is no connection with
what Wittgenstein said.
Second, the central part of this discussion, mentioned by
Chomsky on p. 229, is the thesis that in a genuinely private language
one cannot know whether one has made a mistake. My (conscious)
use of a 'private' word at this moment is based on my memory about
how I used it the last time ; and if I want to privately check my
memory, I can do so only by referring to the very same memory ;
and this is no independent check. (Kenny 1973 : 192-193 contains a
 Methodology of linguistics 69

particularly lucid exposition of this point). Independent checks are

provided only by other people's memories (or intuitions). Nothing
guarantees, of course, that these are in fact trustworthy ; but at least
they offer a possibility of genuine checking : possible checks (i.e.
independent checks) are better than no checks (i.e. non-independent
checks, or 'checks'). The principle of 'testing on the basis of
independent evidence', which is the cornerstone of scientific
thinking, exemplifies the same idea. I am surprised that the
connection between this principle and the rejection of (genuinely)
private languages is so difficult to grasp.
It must be clearly understood that Wittgentein's argument is
only secondarily about the nature of language. It is primarily about
the nature of (conscious) knowledge in general ; it just so happens
that knowledge is expressed and 'manipulated' in and through
language. The target of Wittgenstein's criticism is the ultimately
Cartesian view that (conscious) knowledge is primarily subjective.
As against this, Wittgenstein argues that knowledge is primarily
intersubjective, be it knowledge of observable events or knowledge
of rules (or norms). Why ? Because in the realm of (genuinely)
subjective knowledge, expressed in a (genuinely) private language,
one cannot know whether one has made a mistake. -I must add that,
vis-à-vis e.g. Saunders & Henze (1967), the recent discussion on the
private-language problem exhibits more decline than progress8.
In presenting his own view on the nature of language,
Chomsky (1986) relies heavily on the 'I-language vs. E-language'
distinction, these two terms standing, respectively, for the mental
grammar and for the social and/or public aspect of language. He
naturally opts for the former alternative, but it is hard to see why.
Consider the following confusions.
On the one hand, I-languages are "real elements of particular
minds/brains, aspects of the physical world" (p. 26). On the other,
the rules that constitute an I-language are comparable to the rules of
a game like chess (p. 27). This does not make sense, however,
because there is only one set of rules of chess, a set which is

8. It should also be noted that Wittgenstein's originality has been much overrated in
this context. At least ever since Hegel, several philosophers have argued quite
convincingly for the primarily intersubjective nature of knowledge.
70 Esa Itkonen

commonly known to exist and is therefore equally accessible to all

chess players. It is a different matter altogether that the (socially
valid) rules of chess, like any norms, must have been (individual-
psychologically) internalized by the players (cf. the discussion in
Sections 2 and 3).
On the one hand, the rules of the I-language are not
normative ; "they entail nothing about what [one] ought to do"
(p. 241). On the other, as we just saw, they are comparable to the
rules of chess. Again, this is a contradiction because the rules of
chess certainly determine how one ought to play. In their written
form, they are not just descriptions of behavioral regularities.
On the one hand, "the rules [i.e. rule-sentences] are not
descriptions of behavior or of regularities in behavior", because one
"might choose to violate" them (p. 231). On the other, rules are
"appropriate to describe... the way a spider spins a web" (p. 239).
Again, this is a contradiction, because it makes no sense at all to
assume that a spider might choose to violate its (his ?) rules. It is
very revealing that Chomsky fails to understand the presence of free
will in humans and its absence in (lower) animals.
As the above quotations show, Chomsky's concept of I-
language is hopelessly incoherent. It would have been better for him
to stick to his original language-conception. For Bloomfield, a
language was an E-language, i.e. "the totality of utterances that can
be made in a speech community" (quoted in Chomsky 1986 : 19 ;
emphasis added). This was also Chomsky's original position : "The
grammar thus gives a theory of these utterances... we have, at any
time, only a finite corpus of utterances out of an infinite set of
[possible] grammatical utterances" (Chomsky 1975 [1955] : 77-78).
Most people, Chomsky himself included, seem to have forgotten that
he started as a Bloomfieldian antimentalist and Harrisian
distributionalist : "[A new criterion of significance] will rule out
mental ism for what were essentially Bloomfield' s reasons, i.e. its
obscurity and inherent untestability" (p. 86). "We will refer to
linguistic analysis carried out in these terms as 'distributional
analysis" (p. 127), "this term [being] borrowed from Harris" (p. 63,
 Methodology of linguistics 71

n. 1). Today the distributional analysis of E-languages continues, but

now it is called 'analysis of genetic endowment .
Carr's (1990) language-conception is quite different from
Chomsky's in that he makes a clear distinction between grammatical
theory and psycholinguistics (understood as the study of mental
grammars). In particular, he accepts the view that "linguistic objects
[i.e. "rules and sentences, and thus languages", p. 37] exist in a
public space as intersubjective objects of mutual knowledge"
(p. 43-44). He tries to provide his concept of grammatical theory
with underpinnings taken from Popper's philosophy of science. Not
content with the view, defended in GTM : 8.3., that a theoretical
grammar is just a (theoretical) systematization of (atheoretical)

normative
'realist' stance
data10, inhe the
requires
philosophy
-presumably
of science-
in accordance
the theoretical-
with the

descriptive concepts of grammatical theory to refer directly to

something. And since they cannot refer to psychological entities
(= Popper's 'world-2'), he concludes that they must refer to
'objective knowledge' or 'knowledge without the knower1
(= Popper's 'world-3').
The problems with this approach are intrinsic to the Popperian
concept of 'objective knowledge' . It is not enough just to illustrate
it, by saying that it is equally exemplified by libraries and by birds
making their nests. Nor is Popper's authority a sufficient guarantee

9. When Chomsky (1986 : 48-49 n. 17), apparently in all seriousness, claims that in
his 1955 dissertation he was dealing with the I-language ("although the term was
not used"), i.e. that rejection of X is in fact acceptance of X, one can only
marvel at this instance of Orwellian Newspeak ; for more examples, see
Chomsky (1986 : Ch. 5).
10. In fact, the issue is not quite that simple ; cf. GTM : 8.4, and CUT: 132-135,
284-286. In this distinction
instrumentalism' context, having
does not
quoted
apply to
meautonomous
as saying that
linguistics,
the 'realism
Car oddly
vs.
concludes (p. 73) that I am "mistaken" in thinking that there is an intimate
connection between instrumentalism and autonomous linguistics. In the same
context (and also p. 28) he tries to make me out as a thorough-going relativist,
on the grounds that when I speak about the purposes (or goals) of scientific
activity, he interprets them as subjective and "arbitrarily changing purposes".
There is no basis for such an interpretation. The goals of different sciences (e.g.
autonomous linguistics, as opposed to psycholinguistics) are intersubjective
entities. They may change, but not arbitrarily. On the issue of relativism, see
also Section 4 above.
72 Esa Itkonen

that there is indeed a coherent notion behind the mysterious-sounding

label of 'knowledge without the knower'. Since Carr is unable to
give any independent characterization of objective knowledge qua
referent of grammatical descriptions, he is forced to conclude, post
factum, that wherever a grammatical description appears, there was
objective knowledge waiting to be described, even if we did not
know it. But this makes the whole notion redundant. It does not help
to refer to objective knowledge as the force behind progress (e.g.
p. 138), when 'progress' remains undefined.
Since Carr wishes to prove the superiority of his Popperian
account vis-à-vis my 'hermeneutic' account (which emphasizes the
social and normative nature of language), he must find fault with the
latter. His criticism is presented on pp. 102-105, where he argues
that I am guilty of the following confusion : Rule-sentences describe
something normative ; they must contain theoretical concepts ; but
theoretical descriptions are not normative. This criticism collapses,
because the middle sentence is wrong : rule-sentences (being
atheoretical in character) must not contain theoretical concepts (cf.
Section 2 above).
Carr concludes (p. 112) that I have failed to prove the
normative character of linguistic objects. In view of this, it is
curious that he takes no note of GTM : 7.0. (= 'The Ineliminability
of Linguistic Normativity1) where I explicity point out the fallacies
in the five best known attempts to get rid of linguistic normativity. It
is even more curious that, having denounced linguistic normativity,
Carr
'norm'repeatedly
and 'convention'
argues are
(p. just
129) synonyms.
for linguistic conventionality. But

In sum, I see no reason to accept the Popperian account, but I

do see a few reasons not to accept it.

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