[B-Greek] phonological flow & syntactical structure

James Tauber jtauber at jtauber.com
Wed Apr 27 18:36:18 EDT 2005


On Wed, 27 Apr 2005 14:01:46 -0700, "Eric Biggs"
<ericb at gracechurchreno.org> said:
> 'Phonological flow' is my phrase.  In considering what Noam Chomsky has
> written on syntacitcal structure and the way he uses phonology in this
> process, I believe I came up with it.  I do not have the "Aspects of the
> Theory of Syntax" in front of me, (it's at home), so I can not quote
> right now, but I will on my next post.

I'd be interested in what concepts from Aspects you use the term
"phonological flow" for as I'm still not clear what you are using that
phrase to mean.

Note that Aspects is 40 years old and a great much has changed in
linguistics since then, including in Chomsky's own thinking. Much of
what is argued for in Aspects has seen been refined or even abandoned so
I would not read too much into the details of that one book. That is not
to say, of course, that one can't still gain new insights inspired by
some of the ideas. So I don't discourage you from reading Aspects - but
it has to be taken in context of work before and after.

I too don't have Aspects handy but I'm surprised that it would have that
much to say on how syntactic structures relate to phonology. I look
forward to any quotes you can provide.
 
> My thought's on exegesis come from my understanding from  Chomsky's
> syntactical structure, which seems to be linked to phonology.  If
> phonology has any way of governing the syntax then knowlege of the way
> phomemes flow, would be useful in exegesis.  Only if it has bearing on
> the syntax.  Therefore I considered a more acurate pronunciation.

I'm still unclear on what you mean by "flow" so it's hard for me to
comment too much but the notion of phonology governing syntax doesn't
sound like Chomsky to me. Perhaps I have misunderstood you.

> My understanding of generative grammar, in a nut shell, is that grammar
> itself is controled by language

I don't know what you mean by "grammar itself is controlled by
language". If you mean that the internal knowledge of a language is
determined by the external language we experience, then that is almost
the opposite of what set Chomsky's thinking in the 50s and 60s apart.
Chomsky argued against a behaviourist view of language and instead
argued that humans have an innate understanding of "language" and, as
children, just pick up the specifics of the language they are acquiring.
In other words, a "universal" grammar already exists and is merely
parameterized based on the evidence the child experiences first learning
the language.

> and thus bringing about grammatical
> constructions that do not "fit the rules" but become accepted due to use.

Again, this doesn't sound like it has anything to do with generative
grammar, but just a commmon sense statement about language change.

>  This lends to seeing language as an "entity" and not a "phenomenon".  I
> took this thinking into Chomsky's syntactical structure.

This is true. For Chomsky, "language" is primarily about the knowledge
the person has in their head that enables them to generate valid
sentences (hence the term "generative" grammar). A generative grammar
lives in the human brain although might be modelled formally outside it
(and this is what linguists in the generative tradition attempt to do)

> I have been mislead on the orgin of Greek being Sanskrit, (I do not know
> Sanskrit) but in an attempt to realize a better pronunciation I thought
> it right to go to the source as opposed to bringing a modern
> understanding into the ancient understanding. 

Well, you can go back to Proto-Indo-European, the constructed ancestor
of Greek, Latin, Sankrit, English, etc. Doing so might be of academic
interest (it certainly appeals to me :-) but besides explaining the
origin of some stems and inflection, I can't see it contributing at all
to exegesis.

James
-- 
  James Tauber               http://jtauber.com/
  journeyman of some    http://jtauber.com/blog/




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