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  • From: Dave Washburn <dwashbur AT nyx.net>
  • To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] VSO vs SVO
  • Date: Fri, 30 May 2003 18:38:05 -0600

On Friday 30 May 2003 12:52, c stirling bartholomew wrote:
> on 5/30/03 10:39 AM, Peter Kirk wrote:
> > I don't have a single grammatical framework. I'm not sure how far that
> > is a helpful concept. When I was in SIL I learned to be careful of
> > frameworks ...
>
> Yes, one needs to take a rather polygamist attitude towards "frameworks"
> move form one to another, mix them together ... borrow, steal and transform
> elements from various schools and come up with a personal language model
> that is so esoteric that no one understands what you are saying ... :-)))

Believe it or not, that's what I do ;-)

> On the other hand, I have over several decades run into a lot of "true
> believers" who thought they were carrying the torch for some model (e.g.,
> Chomsky '95 or SFL Holliday). These folks tend to be perennially upset when
> the rest of the world doesn't understand what they are saying.

Part of my problem is that I don't use a full-blown Chomsky model. So even
those who know Chomsky don't understand me *whine* *sob* *boo hoo* (okay, I'm
better now). The model that I use as my starting point is somewhere between
his "aspects" model and his later "extended standard theory" with a few
modifications of my own, particularly having to do with what I like to call
"social convention," which deals with such things as deliberate grammatical
formations and the unpredictability of poetry. However, I do begin the whole
thing with deep grammar vs. surface grammar, as well as phrase structure
rules plus transformations. From there, it's a bit of a mulligan stew, but
in terms of the current climate of TG theory, it's not terribly Chomskyan
even though it's transformational-generative. Does that muddy things up
sufficiently?

> I prefer to take the salvage approach, steal a few good ideas from marginal
> models and leave the rest of it alone, refusing to get caught up in
> defending someone else's system.

I couldn't agree more. That's why I abandoned Chomsky right around the time
that he came up with trace theory (those "phantom slots" that were mentioned
before).

--
Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur




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