Analysis and falsifiability in practice: A commentary on Haspelmath’s ‘General Linguistics must be based on Language Universals’
Adam Tallman
February 2021 

This paper is a commentary on Haspelmath’s “General Linguistics must be based on Language Universals”. Some practitioners in the natural-kinds programme argue that theoretical models developed and fit to data of one language make testable predictions about the next. I argue that this is not obviously true in cases where categories and relations presupposed by the hypothesis do not map deterministically onto the next language. While such a theoretical model can be fit, hypotheses couched in the model cannot be meaningfully tested. While I agree with Haspelmath’s paper in general, I suggest that the distinction between the Boasian/Greenbergian and natural-kinds programme may describe a normative tendency rather than a necessary division in the field.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/005720 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	Theoretical Linguistics
keywords:	philosophy of science, theoretical linguistics, morphosyntax, morphology, syntax, phonology
previous versions:	v1 [January 2021]
Downloaded:	778 times

 

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