Thanks for this Chris.
For the sake of completeness let me just quickly sum up some comments I posted
recently on Funknet, contrasting what I see as the key difference between my
position and the current usage-based work you cite, such as that of Bybee and
Langacker.
As I said on Funknet, I think contemporary work which attempts to explain
language in terms of usage (structure which is emergent over usage, actually)
such as that of Joan Bybee (also Cognitive, Langacker, etc, and almost all
exemplar-based or connectionist NLP) is chiefly limited by a failure to
realize it is not enough that your model be based on generalizations of
usage, you must also allow for the possibility of discontinuous change in
those generalizations.
What current usage-based models explain well is lexicon. Lexicon (parametrized
by frequency of use) evolves slowly. Syntax (parametrized by the selection of
one or other alternative paradigmatic generalization over the corpus) is
subject to sudden, discontinuous, change. That is the bit current usage-based
models miss, and it is that which is responsible for the novelty of syntax.
-Rob
On Friday 17 March 2006 22:20, Chris Butler wrote:
> There is now a considerable body of theoretical linguistic work which
> underlies the position taken by Rob Freeman, i.e. that we should build our
> linguistic models on the basis of generalisations over usage. I am
> referring to the so-called 'usage-based model' represented by the work of
> Langacker in Cognitive Grammar, much work in Construction Grammar (e.g.
> that of Goldberg, Croft), and also the work of scholars such as Bybee,
> Hopper, Thompson, Barlow and Kemmer.
>
> Chris Butler
> Honorary Professor, Centre for Applied Language Studies, University of
> Wales Swansea, UK
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