THE CAUSE OF UNDECIDABILITY
AMONG LINGUISTIC THEORIES

© 1998 by Orchid Land Publications

[updated 3-9-98]

      To summarize a brief article by C.-J. Bailey some years ago, the task of stating the cause of the undecidability as to the "right" theory among various linguistic theories that account for about the same amount of important data is not very difficult.  For it is doubtless parallel to, e.g., a putative cosmological theory that rejected development--how the universe was born and has developed into what it is--but tried to explain the "synchronic" universe without such information:  The undertaking would be as much of a lost cause as is trying to explain language in the minilectal--i.e. synchronic-idiolectal--framework that prevails among theoreticians of language.  Deciding among various theories that account for about the same amount of important data is a lost cause when you refuse to allow the theories or those judging theories to make use of data on how languages are born and how a given one has developed into what it now is.

      One can hardly hope to convince either extreme--the rationalist theoreticians or the antitheoretical (positivist) glottometrists--that such is the truth.  But one can hope that--some day--younger, less indoctrinated linguists will see the point and abandon the minilectal straitjacket that now makes decidability among linguistic theories--and even frameworks--impossible.

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