Theory-Orientation Versus Data-Orientation

Abstract

Summary Two contrasting attitudes towards the scientific study of language have been apparent from the earliest period of linguistic studies in Europe. The forms that the contrast has taken have varied from one era to another. In Greece the debate was between the claims of grammar to be a science (téchnè) and the opinion that its was no more than practical knowledge (empeiría). In the Middle Ages the scholastic speculative grammarians maintained that their theory of grammar embodied a superior level of adequacy over against the mere accurate record of observed fact provided by Priscian and the didactic grammarians. A similar opposition was seen in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries between rationalist linguists, with their emphasis on linguistic universals and on the importance of ‘general grammar’, and the empiricists, who paid most attention to the individual differences of each language, to be accurately observed and independently classified. These continuing attitudes are still a matter of controversy today, and each has an essential place in the progress of linguistic science.