New linguistics
GEOFFREY SAMPSON
New Horizons in Linguistics edited by John Lyons (Pelican Original 10s) Until recently, modern theoretical linguistics was the preserve of small groups of young scholars on a few American campuses, who themselves bubbled over with an almost messianic fervour and with iconoclastic (if in many cases half-baked) ideas, but whose work was completely unknown even to their colleagues in other departments, let alone to the world at large. In the last year or two, things have changed. The public has become aware of linguistics, and of the• name of Noam Chomsky; Chomsky being the man who virtually single-handedly transformed linguistics from a worthy, but rather dull, fact-gathering discipline (as it was until the nineteen-fifties) into the exciting, intellectu- ally stimulating, albeit still quite immature subject it is today. There are two reasons for this sudden growth in awareness. One is simply that language is a phenomenon of universal interest, so that new ideas about .it automatically attract a wide audience; the other being Chomsky has emerged as that trendy contemporary figure, an articulate opponent of the American war in Indochina and the American way of life in general. Interest in the man has led to curiosity about his work.
A considerable demand has thus developed for a book that would interpret the findings of modern linguistics to a wider audience. This is an attempt to meet that demand. It contains an introductory chapter by the editor, the most eminent British practitioner of the subject, and sixteen chapters on par- ticular aspects of linguistics and allied sub- jects, each supplied with a brief editorial preface. The individual chapters are by recognised British and American (and, in one case, German) authorities in- the respective fields; there is no contribution, unfortunately, by Chomsky himself, but the chapters all fit more or less into the Chomskyan framework —little attention is paid to earlier work.
Since Chomsky's view of language has created so Much controversy not only among scholars studying language for its own sake but, probably to a much greater extent, among philosophers and psychologists, it is a pity that at least one chapter could not have been contributed by a devil's advocate. Perhaps it was felt that for the book to speak with a divided voice would only confuse; but Chomsky's own views (on language, and, John Trim of Cambridge argues, on politics too) have developed so much as a reaction against behaviourist psychology, that it is difficult to appreciate their force and novelty without the help of a spokesman for the opposition.
Given that the contributors have been chosen to present one side of the case, the great difficulty in a work of this kind is to show how the various facets fit into a coher- ent whole. New Horizons can be faulted here. Consider, for instance, its use of formalism (always a difficulty in popular expositions of linguistics). There are many algebraic form- ulae and symbolic diagrams scattered through these pages. The use of mathemati- cal formalisms, in a not obviously mathe- matical subject like the study of language, always runs the risk of appearing to the lay- man (often rightly) to be a device explicitly designed to boost the self-importance of the members of a little cult group, and protect them from his intrusion. In fact, mathema- tics has a genuine and important role in linguistics, in connection with Chomsky's key idea that much of our ability to use language is innate, rather than learned (and hence that there must be definite limits to the ways in which the languages of the world can differ from one another). The branch of mathematics called automata theory pro- vides a very general definition of a class of abstract objects analogous to languages, and much of linguistics consists of imposing con- straints on that definition, in order to reach a precise specification of the notion 'possible human language'. However, New Horizons never sets the particular examples of forma- lism it contains in the context of this wider goal.
At times the book also promises more than it can produce. One of the most interesting aspects of Chomsky's work is his idea that the facts of languages provide ammunition with which to attack the Darwinian theory of evolution, together with his condemnation of that theory as in any case intellectually sterile. In his introduction to the chapter by J. C. Marshall, Lyons suggests that it deals with this issue; but in fact Marshall scarcely touches on the point, any more than do the other contributors.
Despite these criticisms, New Horizons can nevertheless be recommended as by far the easiest way to find out about the range of activities currently going on under the name linguistics. Although it is sometimes hard to discern the outlines of the wood, the trees are mostly sound; and for the reader who wishes to go into some aspect more deeply, the bibliographical references are admirably comprehensive.
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