Function-and-behavior approaches in linguistics

Abstract

Linguists are increasingly turning to approaches that say that language has no phonology per se, but one should speak about the phonology of speech production, speech perception and language acquisition. The same applies to morphology, syntax and smaller structures in the general architectonics of language/speech grammar. Nowadays, there is no description of grammar/phonology that would illustrate this logic. In the most general way, these approaches can be designated as behavioristic. It is argued here that oblivion of the principles of classical linguistics results in contradictions, unsolvable theoretical problems and delusions. Appeal to phonetics in the narrow sense of the term is unavoidable in modeling speech production, when reproducing from the “meaning to text” transition. The meaning is obviously immaterial, but the same cannot be said about the text. Another transition that in recent years began to be dealt with in linguistic literature on a par with Lev Shcherba’s “aspects”, is “text to language system”. The point of departure here is not easy to define, especially in the case of a natural speech. Two solutions are possible, one based on Chomsky’s postulation of the innate character of language, the other admitting a kind of recursive mechanism capable of “selfexpanding” as a result of an infinite number of iterations. As a solution, a combination of two levels may be proposed, prehonological and phonological (resp. semantic amd presemantic) which will be resonsible for both transitions.