Language Form and Language Function
Language Form and Language Function Books
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The two basic approaches to linguistics are the formalist and the functionalist approaches. In this engaging monograph, Frederick J. Newmeyer, a formalist, argues that both approaches are valid. But, because formal and functional linguists have avoided direct confrontation, they remain unaware of the compatibility of their consequences. One of the author’s goals is to make each side accessible to the other. Even as remaining an ardent formalist, Newmeyer stresses the limitations of a narrow formalist outlook that refuses to consider that anything of interest might have been exposed in the course of functionalist-oriented research. He argues that the basic principles of generative grammar, in interaction with principles in other linguistic domains, provide compelling accounts of phenomena that functionalists have used to try to refute the generative approach.
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This is an vital contribution to the debate between linguists such as Chomsky who concentrate on form, and and those who focus on how language reflects function. As an customary Chomskyan Newmeyer is hardly an unbiased participant, but one who takes unusual interest in how function may shape language.
Readers will need some background in linguistics to follow the arguments. Those who sympathise with functional approaches may be aggravated by his rejection of prototype theory, and may not be convinced by his ‘deconstruction’ of grammaticalization theory. Typologists should be aware (as many already are) of the problems he raises regarding language samples and second-hand data sources. Nevertheless the debate is a rewarding one to follow for linguists of either persuasion. Newmeyer sets stringent criteria for a convincing functional explanation in linguistics. To show that he is not merely setting the goalposts at an impossible angle, he accepts two lines of functional explanation which meet his test: iconicity, and the theory developed by John Hawkins which clarifies aspects of word order in terms of on-line language processing. Functionalists should see this as a challenge, even as formalists should take note of how one leading exponent brings function into the picture.
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