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You're thinking of archaeology itself, imo, which is more clearly a science. History mainly uses written texts as sources. Or at least, I think it does - I've never studied history itself, but I've never heard of it doing anything else as its primary method. But it's generally pretty telling when a discipline is only offered as an arts degree without even the option for a science degree that it's a humanity.vijayjohn wrote:I don't see how history uses the scientific method any less than linguistics does. I mean, it even relies heavily on archeology, chemistry, carbon dating, and such.
Whether it should be called a social science or humanities seems to be a debateable issue, but I don't even see why it can't just be considered a science if linguistics can be called one.
mōdgethanc wrote:History mainly uses written texts as sources.
mōdgethanc wrote:I've never studied history itself
OldBoring wrote:While science in a broader sense is anything that studies something analysing data. For example, geography is defined as a science that studies...
mōdgethanc wrote:I've never studied history itself
History is not a school subject?
They mainly use them to collect data, though, not to reconstruct what happened in the past. I think the difference is that linguistics is all about using written evidence to describe language while history is more interested in constructing a narrative. Linguistics is interested in what the features of this language are or whatever while history is interested in why things happened. That makes it more subjective because it's based less on hard data and more on personal interpretation.vijayjohn wrote:Don't most branches of linguistics do that, too, though?
Biology really puts paid to the idea that science = math. Economics has way more math than biology.OldBoring wrote:To me science in the strict sense makes me think of subjects where you make experiments, use a lot of math to calculate the results, and there are a lot of formulas. Basically, anything based on math.
I'm not sure myself about whether history is a science or not. It does aim to discover facts, which is what all sciences do. I think there is more room for interpretation in history, though. Linguists might argue over exactly what cases a language has, but they won't argue that Latin was an analytic language. Historians might all agree that Germany invaded Poland, but they might have dozens of competing ideas about why exactly (was it to secure land and resources? racism? was Hitler insane? was it revanchism for losing World War I? was it because they needed a stepping stone to invading the USSR, which was their long-term goal all along? was it just because Poland was allied with their enemies and seemed like an easy target? was it because the wind was blowing east that day?). Disputes in linguistics seem to be more along the lines of "does this language have a word for blue or just blue-green", "this sound is a uvular and technically not a velar", and shit like that. (Or major ones like "does the Chomskyan language apparatus really exist", but that's more philosophy and cognitive science than pure linguistics.)vijayjohn wrote:Just in case you're curious, here are the problems I see with considering linguistics to be a science and history not to be, given what we've said so far:
- as we've said, the extent to which linguists conduct experiments is limited
- history doesn't rely exclusively on written data (in fact, there is none for us to rely on for certain time periods where we do nevertheless have clues to things that happened); I think it's just that it's useful to have it
- there is such a thing as historical linguistics, which, you know, I majored in
- it does use written data to (help) reconstruct what happened in the past (at least if it's available)
- linguistics also uses prior research, which is also written data, as a reference to what's already been said about something, and further research may improve on it by disagreeing and revising it or adding on to it
- I think history does this, too
- linguists are also interested in constructing narratives and in why changes take place, rather than merely describing language(s) and what changes took place
- languages are not entirely predictable, either
- but you can predict some things about both history and languages
mōdgethanc wrote:Linguists might argue over exactly what cases a language has, but they won't argue that Latin was an analytic language.
Disputes in linguistics seem to be more along the lines of "does this language have a word for blue or just blue-green", "this sound is a uvular and technically not a velar", and shit like that. (Or major ones like "does the Chomskyan language apparatus really exist", but that's more philosophy and cognitive science than pure linguistics.)
do you mean your master's?
Have you ever seen anyone say that?vijayjohn wrote:They won't? They don't even agree as to what "analytic" means! (Referencing this discussion again)
I'm sure there are acrimonious debates at the higher levels of the field. There also are in well-established Real True Pure Hard Sciences, like over whether string theory has any validity and what it would mean if it did. But the fundamentals, like what a dental consonant is or what a verb is, seem to be pretty settled.Those are some of the disputes in linguistics but not even close to all of them.► Show Spoiler
But of course, I've never seen any of this covered in undergrad classes on linguistics because they're desperate to get people interested in it before they see any of this shit.
mōdgethanc wrote:Have you ever seen anyone say that?
I'm sure there are acrimonious debates at the higher levels of the field. There also are in well-established Real True Pure Hard Sciences, like over whether string theory has any validity and what it would mean if it did. But the fundamentals, like what a dental consonant is or what a verb is, seem to be pretty settled.
I doubt you will find any who do.vijayjohn wrote:That Latin isn't analytic? No
Again, I really don't know much about history, but I think historians widely agree on what major events happened and when. What they might not agree on as much is why. I also think that philosophers agree on the fundamentals of their field (like what a right is, or what the common good is) but interpret these things very differently. History seems more like that to me. In linguistics, you might have different models of the sound laws of Old Chinese, but they will all arrive more or less at the same place eventually. In fields like history and philosophy, this might not ever happen, because the goal isn't really to prove something wrong, but to generate discussion and form new ideas.So you don't think the fundamentals of history are? (I'm not asking that to be facetious, btw. I'm just wondering because I'm genuinely curious ).
vijayjohn wrote:- as we've said, the extent to which linguists conduct experiments is limited
vijayjohn wrote:- linguists are also interested in constructing narratives and in why changes take place, rather than merely describing language(s) and what changes took places
razlem wrote:vijayjohn wrote:- as we've said, the extent to which linguists conduct experiments is limited
Strongly disagree. There are/have been numerous experiments in Phonology, Syntax, and Language Acquisition.
- linguists are also interested in constructing narratives and in why changes take place, rather than merely describing language(s) and what changes took places
Also disagree. Descriptive linguists don't create stories to explain things, we rely on data and trends, like any other objective field. That Indo-Europeans had a "Sky Father" wasn't a fabrication made up by historical linguists, it's based on historical evidence and a century of linguistic reconstruction.
Those are some pretty major subfields though! I could say "psychology isn't a science because stuff like positive and humanistic psychology don't use the scientific method" but that would ignore biological, cognitive and other major branches that do use experimental methods for everything.vijayjohn wrote:Sure, but how many are there outside of a few subfields? And it seems to me that the fact that there "have been numerous experiments" is not saying much in favor of arguing that the extent to which linguists conduct experiments is not limited if this is not a requirement of people specializing in any of these subfields.
All sciences do this sometimes though. Going back to my example of string theory in physics, that's pretty much all theorizing without much if any data.But we don't rely on data a lot of times - often we rely entirely on data from one limited study, and in some cases we rely on no data at all.
There is definitely is a ton of evidence to show he is right about language acquisition, but it has always bothered me somewhat that his theories aren't based on much hard evidence.For example, there's the well-known problem of Chomsky theorizing about syntax without using actual empirical data as a basis.
This is unfortunately a problem in every science. Sometimes a paper will be written, nobody else will do research on that topic for whatever reason, it keeps getting cited for several decades, then we find out eventually that it wasn't correct. This is why replication is so important.What about things like the 1971 study by Gumperz and Wilson of structural convergence in the village of Kupwar in India? That study is cited over and over again in the literature on language contact even though the actual paper is pretty vague about its findings, gives next to no background information about the village, makes no attempt at all to place this situation in the context of language contact in India (or even in the state, region, or district that it's located in), and apparently, no one has bothered to try going to the village and investigating the linguistic situation there themselves in 45 years. Why does it make sense for a science to rely on such a study?
mōdgethanc wrote:There is definitely is a ton of evidence to show he is right about language acquisitionFor example, there's the well-known problem of Chomsky theorizing about syntax without using actual empirical data as a basis.
There is plenty of indirect evidence that language acquisition is an innate ability:vijayjohn wrote:There is? From what I vaguely recall, studies of language acquisition seem to contradict his ideas of how we acquire language quite a bit
That's the problem. There isn't enough neurobiological evidence for it (except general stuff like that synaptic pruning happens around the time of the critical period).and where's the evidence in favor of things like switching parameters in our brains?
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