Rationalism and Empiricism in the Linguistic Study

Linguistics have extremely close relations with philosophy， there is shade of the philosophy in the study of Linguistics. Rationalism and Empiricism， as the two great theories of Western epistemology， have an influence on the research methods of linguistics all the time. This text attempts to make a comparative analysis from these two aspects.

The history of linguistics can be roughly divided into four periods： the period of traditional linguistics， historical comparative linguistics period， the period of structural linguistics and transformational generative linguistics period； And now it shows diversified patterns. Research methods in linguistics schools of each period has its own philosophical basis or reference sources. However， the controversy between rationalism and empiricism exists in the entire process of linguistics development. As Robins described in the A Short History of Linguistics， \" opposition empiricism and rationalism ， in different forms ， throughout the entire history of linguistics .\"

Traditional linguistics period refers to entire language study before 18th century， also known as philology period. Plato established the first linguistic philosophy- Naming Theory： Language is naming after the nature of things. The name is a tool of expressing and conveying knowledge. His theory of naming and rationalism of epistemology are closely related. Aristotle's philosophy of language can be said to be a \"conventional theory \". He was against Plato’s concept theory from the perspective of empiricism of epistemology. He believed that the world in which experience is perceptible objectively exists. The concept of things cannot exist without perceptual objects； meaning comes from the conventions.

Study on the language of historical comparative linguistics period was affected by philosophical empiricism and nature science， paying attention to proceeding from the actual material of the language， instead of starting from the speculative thinking. In the actual work， linguists no longer considered linguistics as a speculation， but a real science discipline. Especially the new grammar scholars even more opposed to preconceived， speculative theory， payed more attention to the data and materials. They argued that material is the first； theory is the second， as one of their basic principles： historical linguistics must be explained on the basis of language facts， and should investigate alive dialect.

Saussure opposed language research only focus on the study of history， rather than focus on the reality of the structure of language. He proposed in the Course in General Linguistics， a series of dualistic views （for example， langue and parole， synchronic and diachronic， syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations）. He stressed that the analysis on realistic structure of language has become the source of structural linguistics. From the philosophy theory， the research of structuralism linguistics proceeded between two lines of empiricism and rationalism. Empiricism paid more attention to the history of language， while rationalism emphasized the current situation of the language. In the words of Saussure， the former was diachronic study， the latter synchronic study. Empiricism had a connection with social， history， culture， and was called by Saussure external linguistics. Traditional rationalism emphasized nothing but the structure of language， and was called internal linguistics. From the two points mentioned above， the research of structuralism linguistics basically belongs to traditional rationalism. After Saussure， there formed three different structuralism schools， wherein the phoneme theory of Prague school was outstanding， Copenhagen School emphasized on abstract theory， American descriptive school represented by Bloomfield had the greatest impact. The philosophical basis of the descriptive linguistics was empiricism represented by Locke， its psychological foundation is based on behaviorism represented by Watson. Bloomfield inherited the “Blank Slate Theory ” of empiricism and the stimulus-response theory. Bloomfield made a proposal： the language study must start from phonetic form， rather than from the meaning. He（1983） thought in the language， “The only useful generalizations about language is inductive generalization”. Descriptive linguistics did not make any assumption about properties of the structural system of language before description. For descriptive linguists in the Schools of Linguistics of Sampson Geoffrey（1980）， “The real language theory is no theory in the world”.

During the period of transformational generative grammar linguistics， Chomsky cited two scientific evidence to support his point of view rationalism. First， he proposed that there were two parts in the sentence--the surface structure and deep structure. Deep structure was generated by the base parts， and obtained semantic interpretation through semantic parts. Surface structure was transformed from the deep structure. Chomsky believed that the various ethnic languages had different surface structures， but had a common deep structure. For the different language views Research methods used by TG theory is different from those by the descriptive linguistics. Chomsky thought， generation which was adopted by descriptive linguistics could not make a complete description of the language， since the materials or corpus of one language were limited， and language study could not and need not exhaust all information of language. Different from descriptive linguistics， TG theory adopted the deductive method to study language. The rules system of the language， derived from mathematical logic， derived and deduced various specific language forms.

In language studies， rationalism and empiricism complemented each other. The research of the former is with a speculative color， the latter research respect facts and the diversity of language. What we study on empirical language school and rationalism language school is just in terms of its theoretical orientation and emphasis， in other words， it does not mean one theory must surpass the other. In fact， each school would more or less under the influence of the two theories.

Reference：

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