Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Dave Washburn <davidlwashburn AT gmail.com>]

On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 8:27 PM, K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com> wrote:

> Dave:
>
> Thanks.
>
> On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 7:22 PM, Dave Washburn 
> <davidlwashburn AT gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 7:17 PM, K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > James:
>> >
>> > On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 5:09 AM, James Spinti <jspinti AT eisenbrauns.com
>> > >wrote:
>> >
>> > > All,
>> > >
>> > > Please be aware that the copy on Scribd is an unauthorized copy. If
>> you
>> > > use it, you are breaking copyright.
>> > >
>> >
>> > Are you sure? You should send the information to the publisher to make
>> > sure. Occasionally publishers release books for download, long before
>> the
>> > copyright normally would run out.
>> >
>> >
>> Uh, James/Eisenbrauns *is* the publisher. So I suspect he'd know ;-)
>>
>> Thanks, I didn’t know.
>
>> >
>> > I do own it and have used it to some extent. My gripe is that it claimed
>> to be based on modern linguistics, but if you read the introduction
>> carefully, it doesn't use generative, lexical-functional, discourse, or
>> any
>> of the other modern linguistic approaches. It uses structuralism, which
>> was
>> passe 50 years ago. This is their definition of "modern." They're still
>> back on descriptive linguistics and haven't graduated to explanatory
>> linguistics yet. I found that baffling.
>>
>
> Wow, I must really be behind the times!   ;-)
>
> My understanding is that descriptive linguistics is explanatory
> linguistics in that one cannot describe without explaining. But I have no
> idea what is generative, lexical-functional, discourse, or structuralism
> linguistics, rather what I know is what I observe and describe to the best
> of my ability, explaining the observations.
>
>
Explanatory adequacy means looking not just at *what* happens in language,
but how and why. Descriptive linguistics says that 1) is declarative and 2)
is interrogative.

1) He goes to the market
2) Does he go to the market?

Explanatory linguistics says that 1) is the base form of an English clause,
while 2) is formed by moving the subject to second position and inserting
the auxiliary verb. Explanatory methods go on to try and sort out the
mechanisms that produce this change, and develop mechanisms that (more or
less) predict what the behavior will be in other clauses. It doesn't just
lay out a list of descriptions, it searches for the rules behind what we
observe.

Honestly, I wouldn't expect you to be up on most of this stuff, because
your focus is mainly lexicography. The approaches I mentioned all deal more
with syntax. Two very different animals!

-- 
Dave Washburn

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