EM1: The epistemological status of empirical data data in linguistics

Coordinator: S. Auroux (HTL, Paris 7)

Particicipants in the LABEX-EFL: C. Puech, S. Archaimbault, J. M. Fortis, D. Samain (HTL),  J. M. Marandin (LLF), J. Léo Léonard (LPP-P3), Barbara Hemforth, Serge Nicolas (LPNCog).

Developments in corpus linguistics over the last twenty years, the more or less convergent developments in the fields of neuro-imaging, psycholinguistics, cognitive linguistics, computational linguistics, the development of experimental procedures which are more or less fine-tuned according to the desired levels of linguistic analysis, etc, point to the possible emergence of a new paradigm in linguistics. Nonetheless, the consistency and degree of "novelty" of this paradigm can only be evaluated rigorously if one adopts a historically grounded epistemological approach.

Taking as a starting point S. Auroux's work on the empirical nature of linguistics (Auroux 1998), we propose to take a closer look at the experimental turn promoted in the Labex EFL: the notions of experimental protocol, biases, artifacts, data will be carefully analyzed. They will be compared to the notions and methodologies used to-date: examples, contrasts, and counter-examples. Experimentation in linguistics will be compared to experimentation in other natural or social sciences. In particular, it is crucial to carefully investigate how the experiments in EFL are – or will be – different from the experiments currently run in psycholinguistics. We will resort to the expertise of the participants specialized in 19^th or 20^th century linguistics history to critically evaluate the progress of EFL. Hence, the issues to be addressed are:

·       The relationships that can be established between the technics used in linguistics so far (S. Auroux 1998) and the development of experimental procedures;

·       The questioning of Milner’s 1989 claim that "there is no observatory in linguistics”;

·       The effect of the existence of an inherited grammatical "format" ("Extended Latin Grammar" or others) on current research;

·       The relationships between "field linguistics" and “ experimental linguistics”,  in particular with respect to the elicitation of data or judgments/comments on those data.

·       The notion of "artifact" and "bias" and their production procedures;

·       The diversification of available mathematical "resources" and modeling, in particular probabilistic models.