Field Procedures in Generative Grammar.
Irene F. H. Wong · Anthropological linguistics · 1975
The aim of this paper is to examine some of the main theoretical issues which lie at the basis of generative grammar, in order to assess their relevance to empirical research into language.1 It is assumed that a theoretical frame of reference is a pre-requisite for all field work. This theoretical frame of reference will be both the beginning and the end of field work, the beginning in that it guides the direction of field procedures, and the end in that all investigations in the field should ultimately result in the production of a grammar within that particular theoretical framework. Experimentation on language processes does not take place in a theoretical vacuum. It should proceed in all instances from either an implicit or an explicit framework which gives it both meaning and direction. Otherwise field work will be nothing more than aimless dabbling about in the field, for the researcher needs to have an idea of what he is looking for before he can hope to find it. Only in this way can time, money, and energy, among other things, be best put to profitable uses and lead to valid conclusions about various aspects of language. This paper attempts to examine the implications for field work, given generative grammar as the required theoretical frame of reference. For the purpose of this paper, the following statement by Chomsky about generative grammar will be taken to contain the main theoretical issues which lie at the basis of this approach to the study of language: Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speakerlistener [assumption number one], in a completely homogeneous speech-community [assumption number two], who knows its language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of the language in actual performance [assumption number three]. 2 These assumptions Chomsky calls his 'methodological preliminaries' towards the theory of generative grammar. Each of these assumptions will be examined in some detail in the rest of this paper, with the most attention being paid to the third and last of the three assumptions embodied in the quote. The first assumption that Chomsky makes is that linguistic theory deals with the ideal speaker-listener. It will be evident at once that although such an idealization of the speaker-listener may be found useful to the theory of language, yet it has no practical relevance at all to the empirical research