{"id":35000,"date":"2017-02-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-16T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.smglanguages.com\/blog-it\/uncategorized\/understanding-linguistics-is-it-a-science"},"modified":"2024-10-08T15:24:17","modified_gmt":"2024-10-08T15:24:17","slug":"understanding-linguistics-is-it-a-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.smglanguages.com\/en\/understanding-linguistics-is-it-a-science\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding Linguistics: Is it a Science? (Pt. 02\/12)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We premised in our <a title=\"Understanding Linguistics: Searching for Basic Principles\" href=\"https:\/\/www.smglanguages.com\/understanding-linguistics-searching-for-basic-principles\/?lang=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">previous article<\/a> that, in spite of the <strong>dazzling technological advances<\/strong> that seem to multiply daily in the most varied and far-fetched fields of endeavour, humanity in general is as ignorant of language today as it was at the dawn of history. <strong>Hammurabi\u2019s code<\/strong> was etched in stone maybe six thousand years ago; today, electromagnetic fields have been harnessed to the point that text dances miraculously on screens before us, seemingly out of nowhere, capable of reshaping itself in the space of a nanosecond. Every day, <strong>new algorithms<\/strong> connect us in previously undreamed of ways, leaving pundits and science fiction writers alike in a metaphysical dust, forced to catch up with this ever more astounding reality. Yet, we don\u2019t really know how language works, but only that it does.<\/p>\n<p>The same might be said of that sense that we like to call common, as if all other senses weren\u2019t. What we call common sense would surely merit a more specific name, like sense of measure, sense of direction, spatial sense, sense of justice, esthetic sense, sense of humor and so on. Common is a very poor adjective to describe anything, it\u2019s an umbrella term which may refer to a host of concepts and phenomena we are not aware of. And this is precisely the point: we are not aware of what makes it so that we are able to speak. Seen from this perspective, the concept of \u2018native speaker \u2019 begins to waver, to become less monolithic than we would have thought or hoped it to be.<\/p>\n<p>Linguistics itself, although a self-proclaimed science born out of a rib of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cultural_anthropology\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Cultural Anthropology<\/a> , seems to mean something very different as you cross the Atlantic. To be sure, there is and always has been <strong>cultural cross-pollination<\/strong> managing to reach the farthest corners on the map, but the academic discipline of Linguistics in the New World as traced by<strong> charismatic founder and leader MIT guru Noam Chomsky<\/strong> bears very little resemblance to what universities in the Old World might elect to call Linguistics.<\/p>\n<p>This cosmic ambiguity, seemingly one of the defining features of language, does not relent even in the face of higher learning and culture within the US educational system. In fact, it is simply not possible to earn a Master\u2019s Degree of Science in Linguistics. Because the denomination does not exist, all you can hope to do is earn a B.A. or M.A, Master of Arts, as if you were an English or an Art History major. But wait a minute! <strong>Wasn\u2019t Linguistics supposed to be a science?!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Here is a joke I never tire to tell. Careful though, you might not laugh right away, but when you do, you will know why Linguistics, at least as Chomsky defined it, is a science and nothing but. There are three scholars: a mathematician, an engineer and a linguist. The three are asked the very same question, \u201cIs nine a prime number?\u201d The mathematician goes first, \u201cOne, two, three, five, seven, eleven\u2026 no! Nine is not a prime number.\u201d Then it\u2019s the engineer\u2019s turn, \u201cThree, six, nine\u2026 No, nine is not a prime number.\u201d Finally, it\u2019s up to the linguist to answer. He seems to ponder the question in his mind for a moment or so and then says, \u201cYes! Nine is a prime number.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Inevitably, as we are talking about language, the punch line is wrought with ambiguity. One would at first tend to laugh because Linguistics is not a so-called hard science, and a math poor linguist would necessarily come up with the wrong answer to a mathematical riddle. Another interpretation would poke fun at the fact that Linguistics is a science that happens all in the mind, having <strong>no grounding in experiment and proof<\/strong>, making it not a science but a <strong>pseudoscience<\/strong> at best, as many deem Psychology or Sociology to be.<\/p>\n<p>However, what makes me laugh is that, within the parameters of Linguistics, the linguist\u2019s answer is correct because, you see, linguistic inquiry does not care whether a sentence is true or false. Truth be said, the linguist in the joke is not even considering the meaning of the question! Rather, he\u2019s evaluating whether it is well formed, and being able to give a well formed answer to it makes it all the more so. In short, the words that make up a sentence must be <strong>perfect in number, shape, and agreement<\/strong>, of the right kind and in the right position. Only then we can say that both [Is nine is a prime number?] and [Nine is a prime number.] are well-formed sentences of the language under scientific scrutiny. Of course, this can only happen in the mind of a native speaker&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We premised in our previous article that, in spite of the dazzling technological advances that seem to multiply daily in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[203,205],"class_list":["post-35000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-languages","tag-linguistics"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Understanding Linguistics: Is it a Science? 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