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EDITOR'S CHOICE
Linguistic Intuitions
Gareth Fitzgerald
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Volume 61, Issue 1, March 2010, Pages 123–
160,
https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/axp014
Published: 21 May 2009
Abstract
2.1
2.2
2.3
3.1
This paper defends an orthodox model of the linguistic intuitions which form a
central source of evidence for generative grammars. According to this orthodox
conception, linguistic intuitions are the upshot of a system of grammatical
competence as it interacts with performance systems for perceiving and
articulating language. So conceived, probing speakers’ linguistic intuitions allows
us to investigate the competence–performance distinction empirically, so as to
determine the grammars that speakers are competent in. This model has been
attacked by Michael Devitt in his recent book and a series of papers. In its place,
Devitt advances a model of linguistic intuitions whereby they are speakers’
theory-laden judgements about the properties of languages. In this paper, I try to
make clear the rationale behind the orthodox model and the inadequacies of
Devitt's model.
1. Introduction
2. Intuitions as Evidence
An example: intuitions about binding
Acceptability and interpretability
Other evidence
3. The Orthodox Model: Linguistic Intuitions as Data for Psychological Theories
How do intuitions bear on competence theories?
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Issue Section:
Articles
1 Introduction
In order to determine what the grammar of a speaker's language is, generative
grammarians draw upon a distinction between what is licensed by a speaker's
grammatical competence—roughly, a system of linguistic information pairing sounds
and linguistic forms over an unbounded range—and what is an e ect of extraneous
performance factors engaged in putting that competence to use (see, in particular,
Chomsky [1965]
, pp. 3–62). This paper examines how generative grammarians get a
grip on this distinction empirically, what sort of evidence is brought to bear in
generative grammar, and what sorts of hypotheses it is brought to bear on. The primary
aim of the paper is to defend what I take to be an orthodox model of linguistic intuitions
as they form a central source of evidence for generative grammars. According to this
orthodox view, linguistic intuitions can be used to investigate the structure of a
dedicated system of grammatical competence as it interacts with performance systems
for perceiving and articulating language. So conceived, evidence from speakers’
3.2
3.3
3.4
3.5
4.1
4.2
4.3
4.4
4.5
Intuitions and judgements
Linguistic intuitions and visual impressions
Are linguistic intuitions the ‘voice of competence’?
Are linguistic intuitions and visual reports disanalogous?
4. Devitt's Model: Linguistic Intuitions as Theory-laden Judgements
Devitt's model
Devitt's model and belief-independence
Devitt's model and folk theory
A modi cation to Devitt's model
Devitt's alternative view of the evidence
5. Conclusions
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linguistic intuitions allows the grammarian to investigate the competence–
performance distinction empirically and thereby determine the grammatical structures
that speakers are competent with. This orthodox model has been attacked by Michael
Devitt. In its place, he advances a model of linguistic intuitions whereby they are
speakers’ theory-laden judgements about the properties of languages (
Devitt [2006a]
,
[2006b]
,
[2006c]
). I aim to make clear the rationale behind the orthodox model and the
inadequacy of Devitt's proposed alternative.
2 Intuitions as Evidence
Both psychologists and philosophers are interested in people's intuitions. But the locus
of their interest may di er. Psychologists are interested in gathering data on subjects’
intuitions, sometimes in elaborately designed experiments, because these intuitions
re ect the workings of the psychological systems of the subjects that have them.
Philosophers may also be interested in people's intuitions because of what they reveal
about the psychological states of the people that have them. But philosophers
sometimes seem to be interested in people's intuitions because they are revelatory of a
non-psychological domain of facts. This interest is well motivated where there is good
reason to think that the subject is well positioned with respect to the facts in question,
perhaps because he has some special knowledge.
Generative grammarians draw upon the intuitions of competent speakers. We all have
such intuitions. If I say to you ‘John posted the letter to Bill’, you immediately
recognize that as a part of your language. If I were to ask you whether it was OK, a
perfectly good sentence of your language, then, no doubt, you would say that it was.
However, if I say to you ‘to posted Bill the John letter’ you are likely to recognize the
words as part of your language but also recognize that there is something amiss in the
way they have been put together. In fact we have very intricate intuitions about the
linguistic forms of our language and their meanings. Grammarians use these intuitions
to investigate grammatical structure.
Chomsky's teacher Harris held that linguists cannot investigate the structure of
languages by examining speakers’ intuitions:
We do not ask a speaker whether his language contains certain elements or
whether they have certain dependencies or substitutabilities [… the speaker's
habits] are not su ciently close to all the distributional details, nor is the speaker
su ciently aware of them. Hence we cannot directly investigate the rules of the
‘language’ via some system of habits or some neurological machine that generates
1
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all the utterances of the language. (
Harris [1985]
, p. 45)
Harris surmized that, rather than investigate speakers’ linguistic judgements, the
grammarian has to investigate ‘some actual corpus of utterances’ from which we derive
‘such regularities as would have generated those utterances’ (
Harris [1985]
, p. 45). But
current scienti c practice suggests that Harris was wrong about what could be learnt
from speakers’ judgements. Though the questions are not framed in the metalinguistic
way that Harris considered, grammarians do investigate grammatical structure by
probing native speakers’ intuitions. The orthodox view is that these intuitions are
yielded by special cognitive systems responsible for recognizing and shaping
grammatical categories in speakers’ utterances.
If the aim of linguistic inquiry is a theory of the grammatical competence system as it is
situated within linguistic cognition then it is natural to seek data from the subjects
whose cognitive capacities are the domain of inquiry, just as in other areas of
psychology. The central issue that Devitt has raised is whether generative
grammarians, like psychologists, are interested in speakers’ intuitions because they are
data for theories about speakers, and more particularly their grammatical system (see
Devitt [2006a]
, pp. 95–125). Devitt suggests, to the contrary, that grammarians are
concerned with these intuitions because they are revelatory of a domain of non-
psychological facts to which speakers may have access through empirical re ection.
According to the orthodoxy, grammatical principles are part of an explanation of a
range of data concerning the proclivities of speakers. The data are that they nd certain
forms acceptable and that certain interpretations are available to them. On Devitt's
view, the data bear primarily on the properties of the presented sounds and marks
rather than on the cognitive states of the speakers that intuit them.
The fact that intuitions may have a di erent signi cance to psychologists and
philosophers, and the fact that there are competing accounts of how linguistic
intuitions serve as evidence, suggests that the nature of intuition as a general category
is not well enough understood to provide a model of linguistic intuition. The term
‘intuition’ has been applied across a range of domains and cognitive abilities, and there
may not be the kind of singular phenomenon that the term suggests. As Fiengo
remarks, we might do well to focus for present purposes on the question of ‘what
linguistic intuitions must be like if they are to be the data of Linguistics’ (
Fiengo [2003]
,
p. 255).
2.1 An example: intuitions about binding
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Although a wide variety of intuitive judgements are brought to bear on generative
grammars, I’ll focus on one illustrative example of how intuitions have been exploited
to support theoretical hypotheses. It concerns the analysis of sentences containing
re exives like myself (this presentation is adapted from
Adger [2003]
, pp. 116–20).
Consider the following examples:
(1) I shaved myself.
(2) Myself shaved me.
English-speakers intuitively judge (1) to be a perfectly good sentence, but immediately
recognize that there is something amiss with (2). As English-speakers, we would
replace (2) with (1). Generative grammarians draw upon the intuited di erence between
(1) and (2), and related constructions, as evidence for a theory of the structures
containing re exives that are sentences of human languages.
It turns out that the relevant intuitions about permissible re exive constructions and
their possible meanings can be explained in terms of the notion of c-command
(constituent-command). Linguistic structures can be represented by tree diagrams,
and the relations between the nodes in the tree can be described in familial terms.
Hence, if node Y is directly above node X in the tree then Y is X's parent, and if Z is
directly above Y in the tree then Z is X's grandparent and so on. If Y is also directly
above W in the tree, then X and W are sisters. And we can say that the node Z contains all
these nodes that are descended of it as children, grandchildren and so forth. In tree
diagrammatic terms, a node X c-commands a node Y if, and only if, X's sister either: (i)
is Y, or (ii) contains Y. Re exive constructions, like (1) and (2), are an example of c-
command in action. In order for a re exive to be part of an acceptable sentence like (1),
it has to enter into special relationships with other constituents in the structure in
which it occurs. For a re exive, like myself in (1), to be a part of a good sentence it must
be bound: it must have its interpretation xed by an antecedent in that sentence. Myself
in (1) is bound by I. Linguists aim to discover how it is determined when a potential
antecedent can bind a re exive; for all seems to go well with (1) but not with (2). A well-
known hypothesis (Principle A of Binding Theory) is that a re exive must be bound by
an antecedent that c-commands it. Evidence from speakers’ intuitions can be
marshalled in support of this hypothesis as follows.
What could explain the contrasting intuitive judgements English-speakers make about
(1) and (2)? It seems that in (1) the re exive is co-referential with another expression in
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the sentence, in this case I. So we might form the following generalization: a re exive
must be co-referential with another expression in the sentence. However, this
generalization would not explain the intuited di erence between (1) and (2) because the
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