History and Philosophy of Linguistics Reading group Next meeting: Monday, July 26, 46pm, Woolley N408
Reading: Robert de Beaugrande 1996. The pragmatics¹ of doing language science: The warrant¹ for large-corpus linguistics Journal of Pragmatics 25: 503-535 The development of 'mainstream linguistics' in this century is briefly retraced to suggest that the original decision to describe 'language by itself' as opposed to 'language in use' favoured formalism over functionalism and eventually led to a severe impasse for three tests a valid science of language ought to meet: coverage of language data, convergence among the data being described, and consensus among linguists about how to proceed. The impact of large-corpus linguistics might resolve this impasse and accordingly raises the prospect of a fundamental reorientation of linguistic theory and of the 'pragmatics' of 'doing language science'. More information at http://groups.google.com.au/group/HPLinguistics. Enquiries: Nick Riemer ([email protected]) All welcome!
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