Linguistics and Kuhn’s notion of a disciplinary life-cycle

118 4. Code Model Linguistics: Patch or Abandon? round-earth community was buying into an inferior paradigm. If they want to believe the earth is round, then let them have it. After all, “scientific communities get the scientific revolutions that they deserve” McCawley 1979 :231. The preceding comments notwithstanding, McCawley’s investment analogy is useful. It can indeed be difficult to determine exactly how a community or individual should invest “intellectual capital.” Kuhn himself notes: “During periods of revolution when the fundamental tenets of a field are once more at issue, doubts are repeatedly expressed about the very possibility of continued progress if one or another of the opposed paradigms is adopted” Kuhn 1996 :163; italics added. If an analyst is satisfied with a paradigm, he may feel no need to abandon it. If others around him do feel such a need and abandon the earlier paradigm in favor of another, then, from the perspective of the first individual, they have abandoned what is logical and orthodox for something illogical and heretical. McCawley posits the inverse of the cumulativists’ presupposition. Whereas cumu- lativists posit that paradigm shift brings about a successive move toward scientific progress, he posits that it may be a move away from such progress. He has taken the antithetical position, but has made a similar error. The primary issue remains: How might one find a neutral position from which to make the evaluation? Obviously that position would require an objective stance. Kuhn offers little assistance here, arguing that, since paradigms are being evaluated by practitioners of paradigms, inherent biases can never be totally overcome 1996 :92–94. This is clearly a circular response. Kuhn is not una- ware of the circularity, and he attributes it to the nature of disciplinary communities in question. Since such communities define their own favorite problems, they may thereby insure that their favored paradigm always “comes out on top.” McCawley is primarily concerned with questions of productivity. In other words, should we abandon one treatment in favor of another before we have completed the first treatment? It may be an interesting question, but it fails to grasp Kuhn’s argument— namely, that science is not completely objective. If it were, then questions of productivity would be paramount and, it should be added, simple to answer. Is this to suggest that Kuhn is not interested in productivity? The answer is twofold. As addressed in section 4.1.11 , Kuhn does support the idea of progress as it has been conceived within normal science, but he also notes that the traditional characterization simply does not hold across scientific revolutions. In the process of revolution, a community may redefine the very notion of progress, so that progress expresses the presuppositions of the new paradigm, rather than the old.

4.2.2. Linguistics and Kuhn’s notion of a disciplinary life-cycle

Kuhn’s idea of a disciplinary life-cycle was better developed in his 1970 Postscript than it had been in the earlier text. Accordingly, in reading linguists responding to Kuhn, it is important to note which text they reference. Kuhn’s 1962 edition suggested that disciplines typically go through a period in which they grapple with several potential 4. Code Model Linguistics: Patch or Abandon? 119 paradigms, prior to seizing upon a single paradigm. In that discussion, the earlier phase was described as being “immature” and “pre-paradigm,” while the later was characterized as “mature.” But as is recounted in section 4.1.7 of the present study, Kuhn revised and clarified that position, largely in response to critics, who correctly pointed to its inadequacy. As he explained, “What changes with the transition to maturity is not the presence of a paradigm but rather its nature” Kuhn 1996 :179. While linguists may readily recognize in other disciplines the life-cycle Kuhn describes, the manner in which they interpret the history of their own discipline varies. Some linguists have found in Kuhn’s concept of revolutions and paradigm shift an explanation for particular characteristics of the “Chomskian revolution” and the relative dominance the generative school has held within the linguistic community see Grace 1969 ; Lounsbury 1961 ; Pearson 1977 ; Thorne 1965 ; Voegelin and Voegelin 1963 ; Wells 1963 . Others concede that the advent of the generative school was revolutionary, but having noted certain similarities between the generative conceptual framework and frameworks that predate it, they suggest that the revolution was more social than conceptual see Anttila 1975 , 1993 . 67 Certain other linguists have responded to Kuhn in a different manner. They share the general perspective that major linguistic schools of thought, such as the structural, behav- ioral, generative, stratificational, and functional traditions, can be viewed as coexisting paradigms Edmondson and Burquest 1998 ; Figueroa 1994 ; Hymes 1974a ; Percival 1976 . These theoreticians implicitly or explicitly reject components of Kuhn’s theory as it applies to the conceptual structuring of disciplines. For example, Hymes 1974a , Percival 1976 , and Figueroa 1994 argue that, in contrast to Kuhn’s predictions regarding the development and structuring of disciplines around a dominant paradigm, linguistics has had no major paradigm and that, instead, several paradigms have existed and been maintained in a coincidental and continually competitive state. Figueroa makes her rejection explicit, stating, “Kuhn’s scheme does not adequately account for the history of linguistics where one finds throughout its history, co-existence of competing paradigms” 1994 :8; italics added. Instead, she prefers Hymes’ assessment of the history of linguistics, wherein Hymes proposes the notion of cynosures within a diverse paradigmatic community Figueroa 1994 :8–9; Hymes 1974a :1–38. 68 Percival 1976 and Figueroa 1994 both take issue with Kuhn’s account of the developmental processes in disciplinary science, suggesting that they don’t apply to linguistics. Of major concern for these theoreticians is Kuhn’s suggestion that scientific disciplines typically begin with what he termed an “immature” state, wherein competing paradigms vie for position. “Mature” disciplines, in contrast, have progressed through this phase and are typically united under a single paradigm see section 4.1.7 . Percival 67 For additional arguments against a paradigm-shift characterization of the Chomskian revolution see Percival 1976 :288ff., McCawley 1979 , and Makkai 1993 :1–2, 6. 68 Cynosure: “a center of attention or interest” Neufeldt 1989 . 120 4. Code Model Linguistics: Patch or Abandon? and Figueroa reject Kuhn, arguing that coexisting paradigms in linguistics negate the validity of his theory. Their arguments are not convincing. The “paradigms” they identify are, in fact, unified under a higher-level paradigm i.e., commitment to particular metatheory of linguistics. If they are to be characterized as paradigms, it should be as subcommunity- level paradigms centered on particular theories. But even if their characterization of linguistics was accepted, it would pose no counter-argument—the coexistence of para- digms presents no problem within Kuhn’s theory. Percival acknowledges this, but finds Kuhn’s account dissatisfying: “If it is easy, as Kuhn asserts, to identify the paradigms of a mature scientific community, then we must indeed conclude that, from its inception, modern linguistics has not been a science—or more precisely, that modern linguistics has not been one of Kuhn’s ‘mature sciences’” Percival 1976 :291. Figueroa concurs, “Of course in Kuhn’s defense one could simply claim that linguistics is and always has been an ‘immature’ science, hence the existence of various approaches at any given time” Figueroa 1994 :8. Percival’s and Figueroa’s rejections of Kuhn extend, in part, from an overreaction to his dichotomization of ‘mature sciences’ and ‘immature sciences’ and, more generally at least for Percival, the dichotomization of ‘sciences’ and ‘non-sciences’. Both of these dichotomies, it should be noted, depend upon a categorization which divides disciplines supporting a plurality of paradigms from those disciplines hosting a dominant individual paradigm see Percival 1976 :291–292; also see Kuhn 1969 ; Masterman 1970 :74. 69 Kuhn himself acknowledges this as a problem in the preface to his 1962 text, stating, “My distinction between the pre- and the post-paradigm periods in the development of a science is … much too schematic” 1996 :ix. These dichotomies are overly simplistic, but if viewed as simple heuristic devices, they pose no threat to the general value of Kuhn’s theory. This is especially so if one considers the modifications and elaboration offered by Kuhn in the 1970 Postscript. Percival also gives considerable attention to rejecting a Kuhnian account of the early history of linguistics. Based on his historical review, which depends heavily on Hymes 1974a , Percival’s rejection of a Kuhnian account seems rather pedantic. He insists that, in order for Kuhn’s account to have any value for linguistics, one must be able to identify lone innovators as responsible for a paradigm, those innovators should have no antece- dents, and the communal switch to the new paradigm should be both quick and complete 1976 :290, 291. While Kuhn did, in fact, identify such elements in certain paradigm shifts of the past, he does not insist that these characteristics are essential. He writes, “The most obvious of scientific revolutions are those famous episodes in scientific 69 Masterman writes: This pre-scientific and philosophic state of affairs sharply contrasts, however, with multi-paradigm science, with that state of affairs in which, far from their being no paradigm, there are on the contrary too many. This is the present overall situation in the psychological, social and information sciences. 1970 :74 4. Code Model Linguistics: Patch or Abandon? 121 development that have often been labeled revolutions before” 1996 :6. In introducing the idea of revolutions through the work of Copernicus, Newton, Lavoisier, and Einstein, he states, “More clearly than most other episodes in the history of at least the physical sciences, these display what all scientific revolutions are about” Kuhn 1996 :6. Elsewhere he writes, “I have so far tried to display revolutions by illustration, and the examples could be multiplied ad nauseam. … [The examples used] were deliberately selected for their familiarity ….” 1996 :136. In other words, Kuhn clearly states that he did not choose these particular revolutions as illustrations because their concise and colossal qualities are normative, but rather because those exceptional and famous qualities make them convenient and easy to discuss. Moreover, he points to the existence of such changes at both macro and micro levels, thereby illustrating that he is not referring only to paradigms which act as Grand Unified or unifying Theories. Kuhn writes: Characteristics [of paradigm shift] emerge with particular clarity from a study of, say, the Newtonian or the chemical revolution. It is however, a fundamental thesis of this essay that they can also be retrieved from the study of many other episodes that were not so obviously revolutionary. For the far smaller professional group affected by them, Maxwell’s equations were as revolutionary as Einstein’s, and they were resisted accordingly. Kuhn 1996 :6–7 In regard to Percival’s insistence that a Kuhnian account demands ‘lone innovators’ and immediate communal response see Percival 1976 , n. 11, Kuhn seems to suggest just the opposite as the more normative condition, even within his 1962 text: A new theory, however special its range of application, is seldom or never just an increment to what is already known. Its assimilation requires the reconstruction of prior theory and the reevaluation of prior fact, an intrinsically revolutionary process that is seldom completed by a single man and never overnight. No wonder historians have had difficulty in dating precisely this extended process that their vocabulary impels them to view as an isolated event. Kuhn 1996 :7 In a footnote to his 1979 version of ¡Madison Avenue, si, Pennsylvania Avenue, no, McCawley similarly addresses concerns raised by Percival 1976 . 70 He writes: Percival 1976 argues that Kuhn’s notion of paradigm “cannot be applied either to the history or the present state of linguistics.” However, Percival’s arguments are concerned with two features of Kuhn’s conception of paradigm that I regard as peripheral to Kuhn’s main claims, namely, Percival’s view of a paradigm as “1 resulting from an outstanding scientific achievement on the part of a single innovator, and 2 commanding uniform assent among all the members of the discipline” Percival 1976 :285. The question of where the ideas embodied in a paradigm come from is clearly immaterial to the question of how a set of ideas and approaches acquires the status of a paradigm. The existence of a single innovator or of someone who can be palmed off as a single innovator is a propagandistic asset that has undoubtedly helped various paradigms to acquire paradigm status faster than they otherwise would have, but Percival’s first point is at best a side issue. Furthermore, uniform assent among the members of a discipline is neither necessary nor sufficient in order for an idea to be part of a paradigm for that discipline. An idea or approach is part of the paradigm of a discipline if it is uniformly regarded as the ‘standard’ answer to certain questions or the 70 The footnote cited is not included in the 1976 version of McCawley 1979 . 122 4. Code Model Linguistics: Patch or Abandon? standard way of dealing with certain kinds of problems, even by members of the discipline who regard the answer as wrong or the method as unsound. McCawley 1979 :279 Dell Hymes’ argument regarding cynosures is related to that offered by Percival, but is a bit more complex and subtle Hymes 1974a :1–38. Hymes 1974a is the intro- ductory article in a collection of works titled Studies in the History of Linguistics: Traditions and Paradigms. Hymes correctly notes that linguistics has witnessed the coex- istence of competing schools of thought, and that no single school has ever completely displaced the others. Rather, the discipline has simply made one or another of the schools the focus of attention for a time. Then, when interest shifts to another set of problems and questions, attention correspondingly shifts to a different school of linguistics. With this history in view, Hymes suggests that Kuhn’s theory does not sufficiently account for linguistics since, in his perspective, the community seems to lack the level of conformity or unity he understands Kuhn to be describing. Accordingly, Hymes is not satisfied with the notion of paradigms as he understands it to apply to linguistics. He suggests that the history of linguistics may be better characterized by the term and notion of cynosures. Cynosure may be defined as “a center of attention or interest” Neufeldt 1989 . In contrast to Percival 1976 , who makes bold statements that are easily contrasted with Kuhn’s writings, Hymes makes no clear argument with Kuhn. He does not quote Kuhn in the article, preferring instead to loosely summarize. One comes away with a general sense that Hymes disagrees with Kuhn, particularly in regard to how Kuhn may be applied to linguistics, but there is no clear point of contention. He simply implies that Kuhn’s theory may be a better fit for the hard sciences, such as physics and chemistry, than it is for the human sciences, such as linguistics. Indeed, Hymes’ contention may not be with Kuhn so much as it is with those who would attempt to apply Kuhn to linguistics. Hymes seems particularly concerned with ways in which Kuhn’s theory may have biased linguists’ reviews of linguistic history and influenced their anticipation of the future of linguistics. He suggests that Kuhn’s notion of paradigms has “encouraged a bias of practicing linguists toward their own history …, in favor of a picture of their discipline’s history as one of great gaps and discontinuities, and, as far as the history informs the present and future, toward an image of ‘permanent revolution’” Hymes 1974a :14. Hymes is particularly critical of “ways in which the notion of ‘paradigm’, as an implicit theory of the nature of science and scientific progress, may be used as a scenario ” 1974a :14, and forward; italics added. That is, he is concerned about characterizations which would cast every arriving new theory as a Kuhnian revolution, with rising theoreticians casting themselves in the role of “Chomsky II or III or IV” 1974a :17. Hymes has raised a valid concern; however, it is not well balanced by the conclusion to the section, wherein he employs loaded language to disparage the argument see Weston 1992 . Hymes insists that the past history of linguistics can only be understood via his characterization, and implies that those who would disagree with that 4. Code Model Linguistics: Patch or Abandon? 123 characterization are naïvely biased by their subcommunity and inadequately informed 1974a :19–20; also see Hymes and Fought 1975 :925. Having mentioned the possibility of a linguistics which is “pluralistic in ideal and in practice,” he writes: Such a perspective is at least clearly required for the understanding of the past develop- ment of linguistics. It is[,] to repeat, not adequately understood as a succession of paradigms. Rather, it has had a history of the rise, and variegated development, of a plurality of traditions. These traditions of inquiry, sets of problems, have each their own record of continuity in and of themselves. In relation to the center of the intellectual or disciplinary stage, to the succession of cynosures, as it were, the record is one of discontinuity. Hymes 1974a :19 Hymes has duly warned his readers against certain people, who in Makkai’s ex- pression 1993 :2, could be thought of as overzealous “paradigm mongerers.” Hymes correctly notes that the pressure of a paradigm can influence an analyst’s perspective— that is, after all, a major point in Kuhn’s thesis. This fact, in and of itself, however, does not require one to reject a Kuhnian analysis. While Hymes intends his own analysis to contrast with Kuhnian accounts, it should be made clear that it is not the intention of this study to argue with Hymes’ pointing to traditions and cynosures within linguistics. In fact, this study supports his char- acterization of certain schools e.g., generative linguistics as a cynosure among traditions. The notion of cynosures, taken in proper context, makes an important con- tribution to Kuhn’s theory. This study cannot, however, accept Hymes rejection of Kuhn’s theory as it may be applied to linguistics. There are two reasons for this: 1. Hymes has not adequately handled Kuhn’s proposals regarding paradigms. 2. Hymes own account of linguistics does not conflict with Kuhn’s proposals. As with several other theoreticians addressed here, one can infer that Hymes is relying on the 1962 text of Kuhn’s Structure. There are three points in his analysis which support this inference: First, while Hymes notes the existence of the second edition 1970 in his bibliography, his single parenthetical reference to Kuhn is to the first edition 1962 . Second, Hymes specifically suggests that Kuhn’s theory could benefit from a discussion of paradigm communities. He writes: We tend to think of paradigms in terms of intellectual innovation winning its way by merit, but what is fundamental to the whole thing, I think, is the existence of the paradigm community. Kuhn himself has nothing to say about the criteria by which the scientific status of the succes- sive paradigmatic innovations is guaranteed. It would seem entirely sufficient, to produce the phenomena he describes, to have a community, guided in problem-solving by a dominant model, and sharing over any particular period of time some common commitment to the purposes of both. Given these ingredients, one might find an unending series of successive ‘paradigms’, as one takes up the anomalies of another, without any continuity of progress to be observed across the whole. Hymes 1974a :17 Reader’s familiar with Kuhn’s 1970 Postscript will readily identify in this quotation a request for the very material Kuhn covers in that Postscript. Were it not for Hymes’ later publication date, readers may have wondered if Kuhn’s Postscript was, in part, a response to Hymes. As it stands, however, Hymes agrees with other critics of Kuhn’s 1962 text, all 124 4. Code Model Linguistics: Patch or Abandon? the while overlooking the fact that Kuhn addressed these criticisms in the 1970 Postscript see Kuhn 1996 :176ff.. Third, Hymes 1974a has an underdeveloped notion of paradigms. As addressed previously, this is common among theoreticians who rely upon the 1962 text without the benefit of the clarification and elaboration offered in 1970 Postscript. Hymes’ view of Kuhn’s theory suffers in this regard. Hymes has interpreted paradigm to mean theory or, at best, school of thought. Accordingly, he overlooks both the constellation of commitments and the shared examples components which Kuhn stresses in the Postscript. In missing the discussion of scientific communities organized around paradigms, he accordingly overlooks the fact that Kuhn writes of scientific communities as existing at various levels. As with Percival, it seems that Hymes’ major reason for rejecting Kuhn lies in a misunderstanding stemming from Kuhn’s choice of examples. Because of the grand examples he employed “mega-paradigms” with lone innovators, complete displacement of antecedents, and well defined histories, Kuhn is mistakenly interpreted as suggesting that all paradigms if they are paradigms will display similar characteristics. With that misunderstanding, Percival and Hymes find it difficult to reconcile their notion of paradigms with the history of linguistics. For example, in discussing the coexistence and continuing longevity of certain paradigms in linguistics, Hymes writes, “How can this be so, if paradigmatic succession is unilinear, in the image of an Einstein succeeding a Newton as law-giver?” 1974a :11. With the benefit of the Postscript clarification, however, one may clearly see that Kuhn is addressing both the grand scale and the subcommunity scale, and all in between. Indeed, the traditions Hymes correctly identifies in linguistics fit firmly within that description. The same may be said for the cynosures. Kuhn writes: A scientific community consists, on this view, of the practitioners of a scientific community. … There are schools in the sciences, communities, that is, which approach the same subject from incompatible viewpoints. But they are far rarer there than in other fields; they are always in competition; and their competition is usually quickly ended. … 4. Code Model Linguistics: Patch or Abandon? 125 Communities in this sense exist, of course, at numerous levels. The most global is the com- munity of all natural scientists. At an only slightly lower level the main scientific professional groups are communities: physicists, chemists, astronomers, zoologists, and the like. For these major groupings, community membership is readily established except at the fringes. Subject of highest degree, membership in professional societies, and journals read are ordinarily more than sufficient [for identification]. Similar techniques will also isolate major subgroups: organic chemists, and perhaps protein chemists among them, solid-state and high-energy physicists, radio astronomers, and so on. It is only at the next lower level that empirical problems emerge [in the effort to define a community]. … I take it that the job can and will be done, at least for the contemporary scene and the more recent parts of the historical. Typically it may yield communities of perhaps one hundred members, occasionally significantly fewer. Usually individual scientists, particularly the ablest, will belong to several such groups either simultaneously or in succession . Communities of this sort are the units that this book has presented as producers and validators of scientific knowledge. Paradigms are something shared by the members of such groups. Kuhn 1996 :177–178; italics added A comment should be made regarding Hymes’ suggestion that linguistics may not follow Kuhn’s account because it hasn’t, in Hymes’ view, been organized around a single major paradigm. This issue is closely related to Percival’s and Figueroa’s concern over the status of linguistics as a science or mature science. While this study disagrees with that suggestion and, instead, considers a major paradigm to be in evidence, it is important to recognize that this is not a necessary condition for Kuhn’s theory to prove useful. As Hymes seems to be aware, Kuhn notes that the social sciences tend not to display fidelity to a single paradigm as is common among the natural sciences Kuhn 1996 :165; however, Kuhn does not intend by this that the social sciences and non-sciences do not employ paradigms or display behavior patterns organized around paradigms. Rather, as Kuhn is careful to address in the Postscript, the social sciences and non-sciences do employ paradigms particularly as this term refers to shared examples. In writing Structure, it was Kuhn’s intention to, first, point out that the sciences are indeed like the non-sciences in this respect, yielding similarity in periodization and institutional structure. Only subsequently could he point out that the sciences tend to differ from the non-sciences in the degree to which they unify around individual paradigms in their pursuit of progress 1996 :208. Hymes proposals regarding traditions and cynosures, then, do not conflict with Kuhn’s notion of paradigms; rather, they support it. Finally, this section addresses a suggestion by Adam Makkai, which at first glance seems to contrast starkly with those offered by Percival and Hymes. Whereas Percival suggests that the discipline is an expression of coexistent competing paradigms, and Hymes suggests the discipline expresses an assemblage of traditions marked by cynosures, Makkai writes, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is simply NOT APPLICABLE TO LINGUISTICS . Our field has had but one ‘paradigm’ ever since the learned debates of the ancient Greeks regarding whether language was subject to rules the ‘analogies’ of the Alexandrians or a matter of random lists the School of Pergamon ….” Makkai 1993 :7; capitalization in original. 126 4. Code Model Linguistics: Patch or Abandon? Makkai is basically sharing concern with Hymes that excess zeal over Kuhn’s proposals has spawned revolutionary hype and a resulting hysteria. Hymes wishes to tie contemporary linguistics to ancient and contemporary folk linguistics see Hymes 1974a :2ff.; Makkai wishes to place the roots of contemporary linguistics in the inquiries of the ancient Greeks. Perhaps the question of linguistic paradigms hinges, in part, on the age old distinction between lumpers and splitters. In other words, it is a matter of scope see again Kuhn 1996 :177. If Makkai wishes to lump the entire history of linguistics into a single mammoth paradigm, then, in Makkai’s honor, “Long live the unity of knowledge ” 71 Many others in the community of linguists, however, find it advantageous to serious- ly consider the presuppositions and metatheory shared by various communities and levels of community structure. As mentioned in the introductory chapter of this study, histori- ography may have as an objective “… to lay bare the sometimes unconscious assumptions that linguists bring to their theories of language and to follow the consequences of those assumptions through the elaboration of the theories, often over long periods of time” Andresen 1987 :647. In that, the discipline may not only better understand the past, but also better determine goals for future progress. Carefully applied, Kuhn’s theory may be a useful tool toward that end.

4.2.3. Linguistics and Kuhn’s idea of normal and revolutionary phases