Here is the "book description" of the English Kindle edition of Hoji 2013.

***
This volume contains the seven articles by Hajime Hoji collected in Hoji 2013 Gengo Kagaku-o Mezasite (Aiming at Linguistic Science): Issues on Anaphora in Japanese, edited by Ayumi Ueyama and Yukinori Takubo (Ohsumi Shoten, Japan).

The seven articles are all concerned with local disjointness effects in Japanese, though to varying degrees. These effects have often been regarded as being due to Principle B of the Binding Theory. However, it is claimed in Hoji 1995 (the first paper in this volume), as well as in many of the subsequent papers including those collected in this volume, that what is responsible for such local disjointness effects in Japanese is distinct from Principle B of the Binding Theory. The effects in question are addressed as they show up both in elliptical and non-elliptical contexts. The discussion of local disjointness effects in the elliptical context involves the sloppy-identity readings. Hoji's (1995) claim deserves serious attention and critical scrutiny with regard to its empirical consequences as well as its theoretical and methodological implications.

The main methodological theses of the articles contained in this volume are: (i) our linguistic intuitions, and hence judgments by our informants, are often, if not always, due to grammatical and non-grammatical factors; and (ii) we can expect to make progress in uncovering the properties of the language faculty only if we recognize this and make serious and concerted efforts to tease apart these two distinct types of factors.

The articles address how to identify local disjointness effects and the sloppy-identity reading that are necessarily due to grammatical factors. Some of the articles also discuss the phenomena of bound variable anaphora and the wide scope distributive reading. What unifies all these phenomena is the relevance of LF c-command. The central issue is how we can clearly detect the effects of the LF c-command condition on certain semantic interpretations, such as coreference, bound variable anaphora, scope dependency and the sloppy-identity reading. Out of these empirical considerations grew the conceptual and methodological concerns addressed in the last two articles in this volume, both published in 2003.

This volume also contains Hoji's newly written 26-page Preface "Towards Language Faculty Science: Remarks on the papers collected in Hoji 2013" and an English rendition of one of the two essays written in Japanese by Ayumi Ueyama for Hoji 2013 "Dr. Hajime Hoji's path as a linguist―in place of a biographical note."

The Preface offers Hoji's own critical assessment of the articles included in this volume from the perspective of Hoji 2015 Language Faculty Science (Cambridge University Press), providing an insightful characterization of what he considers as his personal shift from a linguist to a language faculty scientist that took place between 1985 and 2015, which, according to him, is closely related to the fundamental difference between compatibility-seeking research and testability-seeking research.

Much of the current "theoretical discourse" seems to continue to rely on many of the "operational tests" that Hoji has painstakingly argued are not valid and hence unlikely to contribute to the deepening of our understanding of properties of the language faculty. According to the Preface, this can be attributed to its compatibility-seeking research orientation.

The Preface not only gives a historical background of each of the articles in the volume but it also serves as an introduction to Hoji 2015. It can be understood as raising a pointed question aimed at practicing linguists and graduate students regarding their research goal and methodology.

This volume should be valuable reading for anyone who is striving to pursue rigorous testability in research that aims at discovering the properties of the language faculty and also for those who have doubts about how that is possible.
***

I will be giving a talk at a workshop at Kyoto University (Kyoto Workshop on linguistics and philosophy: Evidence and inference: the foundation of linguistics and philosophy) on 11/1/2015.

The program is available at:
https://sites.google.com/site/yukinoritakubo/events/kyoto-workshop-on-linguistics-and-philosophy-evidence-and-inference-the-foundation-of-linguistics-and-philosophy

The title of my talk is "Experiments in Language Faculty Science."
I will try to present the core and basic ideas of language faculty science as an exact science as presented in Hoji 2015 and what I plan to do in my second book. The PPT file for the presentation contains four short clips of Feynman videos. I hope the audience will at least enjoy watching them.

I initially had the following table of contents for the second book. But, after preparing a file, I came to think an alternative table of contents whose simplified version is given in [45284].

*****
1. Introduction to language faculty science
1.1. The object of inquiry
1.2. The internalist approach and "Guess-Compute-Compare"
1.2.1. Rigorous-testability-seeking research, as opposed to compatibility-seeking research
1.3. Some consequences
1.3.1. The structure of prediction-deduction and its consequences
1.3.2. The inseparability of facts from hypotheses
1.3.3. The internalist approach and informant classification
1.4. Outline of the book
2. FD as the object of inquiry
2.1. Introduction
2.2. Hypotheses, consequences and predictions
2.3. Probes: BVA, coreference, and the sloppy-identity reading
2.3.1. BVA
2.3.2. Coreference
2.4. Identifying FD-based BVA and FD-based coreference
2.5. Sources of judgmental fluctuation
2.6. On the nature of our predictions
3. BVA as a probe: hypotheses
4. Coreference as a probe: hypotheses
5. Experimental results (I): Single-researcher-informant experiments
5.1. Introduction
5.2. With BVA as a probe
5.2.1. Hypotheses
5.2.2. Result of a single-researcher-informant experiment
5.2.3. Result of multiple-informant experiments
5.2.4. Result of a single-non-researcher informant experiment
5.3. With Coreference as a probe
5.3.1. Hypotheses
5.3.2. Result of a single-researcher-informant experiment
5.3.3. Result of multiple-informant experiments
5.3.4. Result of a single-non-researcher informant experiment
5.4. Correlations
5.5. Further consequences
6. Experimental results (II): Multiple-non-researcher-informant experiments
6.1. Introduction
6.2. With BVA as a probe
6.2.1. Hypotheses
6.2.2. Result of a single-researcher-informant experiment
6.2.3. Result of multiple-informant experiments
6.2.4. Result of a single-non-researcher informant experiment
6.3. With Coreference as a probe
6.3.1. Hypotheses
6.3.2. Result of a single-researcher-informant experiment
6.3.3. Result of multiple-informant experiments
6.3.4. Result of a single-non-researcher informant experiment
6.4. Correlations
6.5. Further consequences
7. Further remarks
7.1. Confirmed predicted schematic asymmetries and statistically significant contrasts
7.1.1. The language-particular lexical hypothesis about otagai
7.1.2. The different LGs for BVA
8. Summary and concluding remarks

I think some of the people who will have read my first book will think that it may be possible to pursue language faculty science as an exact science.

But, many of them, I think understandably, remain not quite convinced about its feasibility and the viability because certain things are not spelled out or illustrated to their satisfaction in my first book.

My second book, I think, will convince some of them that language faculty science as an exact science is indeed possible.

I have already starting writing it.
I will make postings about its content in due course.

For the title of the second book, I thought about Language Faculty Science: From a single-researcher-informant experiment to a multiple-non-researcher-informant experiment.

I will most likely pursue its publication from Cambridge University Press (CUP), in part because the second book will be making reference the website accompanying the first book, which clearly states "Cambridge University Press" on its pages.

According to the CUP commissioning editor, I cannot have the above title because there is already a book whose tile is Language Faculty Science.

Among the other alternatives I have considered so far are:

"Predictions and Experiments in Language Faculty Science"
"Definite Predictions about Linguistic Judgments by Individuals"

Of course, you might want to think about the title after you have come up with the bull of the book.
But, in this particular case, I have a fairly good idea about its content.

As to its table of contents, a simplified version of the table of contents that I am "working with" now is:

Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. A single-researcher-informant experiment
Chapter 3. A single-non-researcher-informant experiment
Chapter 4. A multiple-non-researcher-informant experiment
Chapter 5. Concluding remarks

In Chapter 2, I will discuss:
--Hypotheses about FD
--BVA, the sloppy-identity reading, coreference, and their different sources including FD
--Various LGs for BVA and coreference
--Various SGs

Note: I will also mention DR in relation to BVA, but won't get into details. I will mention the sloppy-identity reading, but its discussion will be quite limited. I may even make reference to Neg-related matters to make the reader understand the scope of our research in terms of types of interpretations. The SGs to be discussed will include the "regular" paradigms" of SOV, WCO, the Surface OS and the Deep OS, plus the long-distance OS, OSV of the local context, SOV of the local context, SOV of the Spec-binding context, and OSV of the Spec-binding context. I may mention the resumption, but will not discuss it.

Chapters 3 and 4 will discuss a subset of the issues addressed in Chapter 2.
Chapter 3 will be based on the single-non-informant experiment I conducted in Yokohama in May this year and follow-up experiments on the same informant.

Chapter 4 will be based in part on the EPSA Experiments we already have, but I will perhaps add some more EPSA Experiments.

Similar remarks are made in "Remarks" [44473] (Feynman on Scientific Integrity, and Arguments in Linguistics).
See also "Remarks" [35922] (One of the main features of Language Faculty Science) and "General Remarks" [44416] (Cargo Cult Science by Richard Feynman).

It may be an accurate characterization that the CUP book is a result of pursuing the idea expressed below.

"Now it behooves me, of course, to tell you what they're missing. But it would be just about as difficult to explain to the South Sea islanders how they have to arrange things so that they get some wealth in their system. It is not something simple like telling them how to improve the shapes of the earphones. But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science. That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school--we never say explicitly what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty--a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid--not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked--to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.

Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can--if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong--to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition." (From "Cargo Cult Science," included in Feynman 1985 Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman ) (p. 340-341).

As I anticipated, proof-reading the entire CUP manuscript is giving me a pretty good idea about the second book. I can see fairly clearly what issues I want to discuss further, among those that I was not able to address in depth in the CUP book due to space limit.

I will prepare a list of such "points" and decide which ones I want to discuss in my second book.

If I combine such a list with what I have already prepared as something like "the outline/idea of/about the second book," I should have a pretty good idea/outline about the second book.

As I go through and proof-read the entire CUP manuscript, I got curious (again) about what people have to say about testability in linguistics, and Googled "testability in linguistics."

One of the hits was:

"Linguistics and scientific methods"
by David Eddington

https://www.jyu.fi/hum/laitokset/kielet/tutkimus/langnet/opiskelu/mennytta-ohjelmistoa/Dabrowska%206

According to http://www.researchgate.net/profile/David_Eddington/publication/228848641_Linguistics_and_the_scientific_method/links/00b7d539a0ad7bf2d1000000.pdf (which seems to be a better LINK that the first one), the paper appeared in a 2008 issue of Southwest Journal of Linguistics.

As I have noted elsewhere, there seem to be quite a few articles/works available that deal with "methodological issues" like what is addressed in the paper mentioned above. I think it is fairly easy to "situate" my CUP book in the context of discussions of that sort, as long as you have a good understanding of the points in the CUP book. As I have noted elsewhere, what remains to be not very clear to me is how I should talk to those people who do not clearly distinguish (i) language (and linguistics) and (ii) the language faculty (and language faculty science).

I would say that Chomsky is, at least partially, responsible for the general absence in the field of the clear distinction between the two notions because he often uses "language" when he means the language faculty.

And, there is a book (published in 1992!) like this:

Prospects for a new structuralism

https://books.google.com/books?id=P0N24LJx7a4C&pg=PA23&lpg=PA23&dq=testability+in+linguistics&source=bl&ots=PXRueAchr_&sig=eSu6ZQZ_W1vYWy1ymi0Ys8v1UQM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=rseWVYmEMdWsyATv9ZQQ&ved=0CDkQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=testability%20in%20linguistics&f=false

I thought the return to, or the resurrection of, the behaviorist tradition started to become strong 10-15 years ago, but I guess the trends had been going on much longer than that.

At any rate, it seems to me that the USC LING Department is no exception with regard to the general trends of this sort, which one might suggest is in part influenced by the attitude of the USC administration, which one might also suggest is a reflection of the general trends in academia in the world of placing so much more emphasis than before on the "usefulness" of scientific research.

The abstract of my talk at Gunma Prefectural Women's University, May 11, 2015 was as follows:

"My forthcoming book Language Faculty Science (Cambridge University Press)
explores how we can aspire to accumulate knowledge about the language
faculty in line with Feynman's 'The test of all knowledge is
experiment'. The two pillars of the proposed methodology for language
faculty science are the internalist approach advocated by Chomsky and
what Feynman calls the 'Guess-Compute-Compare' method. Taking the
internalist approach, the research is concerned with the I-language of an individual speaker, taking an internal system of the mind as the object of inquiry). Adopting the Guess-Compute-Compare method, it aims
at deducing definite predictions and comparing them with experimental
results. The book offers a conceptual articulation of how we deduce definite predictions about the judgments of an individual speaker on the basis of universal and language-particular hypotheses and how we obtain experimental results precisely in accordance with such predictions. In pursuit of rigorous testability and reproducibility, the experimental demonstration in the book is supplemented by an accompanying website which provides the details of all the experiments discussed in the
book. In this lecture, I will try to present the core ideas of my forthcoming book in support of the viability of the study of the language faculty more in line with physics than with social and behavioral sciences."

I did not use a handout for the talk although I distributed a list of hypotheses and other key schemata and examples, given as Appendix I of Language Faculty Science. I think the talk went well. The preparation of the talk led me to realize a better way to address:

(i) the need to work on schemata
(ii) the fundamental schematic asymmetry

There are other innovations (with regard to an effective presentation) as the result of the Gunma talk. So, the talk was very productive.

I even feel now that I can try to come up with a "basic" lecture on language faculty science in 90 minutes, whose organization departs fairly radically from that of the Cambridge book.

The various activities during my stay in Kyoto (January-May), which include the copy-editing process and the Index-preparation for Language Faculty Science, as well as lectures at various places and discussions with various people, even including an astrophysicist of Tokyo University, made me realize (more) clearly (than before) what (outstanding) (substantive and expositional) shortcomings there are in the book.

That, of course, is a good thing.

Due to the timing of the production of the book, however I cannot incorporate the possible innovations in the forthcoming book.

But, they will be incorporated in future works.

The image that will be used for the cover of the book has been decided.

A draft of what will appear on the back cover of the book, as its brief summary is:

"This book explores how we can aspire to accumulate knowledge about the language faculty in line with Feynman's "The test of all knowledge is experiment." The two pillars of the proposed methodology for language faculty science are the internalist approach advocated by Chomsky and what Feynman calls the "Guess-Compute-Compare" method. Taking the internalist approach, the book is concerned with the I-language of an individual speaker. Adopting the Guess-Compute-Compare method, it aims at deducing definite predictions and comparing them with experimental results. It offers a conceptual articulation of how we deduce definite predictions about the judgments of an individual speaker on the basis of universal and language-particular hypotheses and how we obtain experimental results precisely in accordance with such predictions. In pursuit of rigorous testability and reproducibility, the experimental demonstration in the book is supplemented by the accompanying website which provides the details of all the Experiments discussed in the book."

I have submitted the manuscript of Language Faculty Science to Cambridge University Press for copy editing. So, I assume it will be published in 2015, unless the production process is much faster than I anticipate. In the meantime, much of the web site accompanying the book has bee prepared. The website will be made accessible to the public when the book is published.

If you are an internalist pursuing rigorous deducibility and testability, you try to evaluate what others say about properties of the language faculty on the basis of experiments that you can conduct in your single-reseacher-informant experiment, where you test definite predictions that you can deduce in part from the hypotheses under discussion against your own intuitions. If what you read or listen to does not provide an explicit formulation of the proposed universal hypothesis/ses or an explicit means to test its/their empirical consequences, you do not what to do. One of the aims of the methodology proposed in my CUP book for language faculty science as an exact science is to make a life easier for those who are internalists pursuing rigorous deducibility and testability.

(I have not come up with a tern that refers to someone who is committed to the Guess-Compute-Compare method. If I had a term for that, I could state the content of the if clause above as, "If you are both an internalist and a xxxist.")

Being a methodological naturalist does not necessarily mean commitment to deduction of definite predictions and pursuit of rigorous testability. (After all, many so-called natural sciences do not, including much of biology, as far as I know.) Adopting the "Guess-Compute-Compare" method, as Feynman puts it, does.

Chomsky's "methodological naturalism" is "counterposed to "methodological dualism": the doctrine that in the quest for theoretical understanding, language and mind are to be studied in some manner other than the ways we investigate natural objects, as a matter of principle." (Chomsky 1995: 28) Chomsky's naturalist approach is thus consistent with his stance over the years against the importance of methodology (not only for hypothesis-formation but also for hypothesis-testing, I understand), as stated in Chomsky 1988: 190, for example. See Schütze 1996: 210, footnote 1 for related remarks.

Chomsky, Noam. 1995. "Language and Nature," Mind 104: 1-61.
Chomsky, Noam. 1988. Language and Problems of Knowledge: The Managua Lectures, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Schütze, Carson. 1996. The empirical base of linguistics: Grammaticality judgments and linguistic methodology, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

What is stated in [44520] seems to represent the essence of half of what "defines" my research orientation. The other half is the desire and inclination to understand things in a categorical manner. And these are the internalist approach and the methodological naturalist approach as they are understood and characterized in my CUP book.

I have come to realize that the "Guess-Compute-Compare" method, as Feynman puts it, rather than the "methodological naturalist" approach, is more appropriate and accurate a "term" that characterizes the "other half" of what "defines" my research orientation. Being a methodological naturalist does not necessarily mean commitment to deduction of definite predictions and pursuit of rigorous testability. (After all, many so-called natural sciences do not, including much of biology, as far as I know.) Adopting the "Guess-Compute-Compare" method, as Feynman puts it, does.

I would like to point out that the essential aspect of an "ellipsis analysis" of the NOC (or the null argument in general, or any other empty category, for that matter) is (well, should be) that it is represented "fully" at LF, containing all the structural information (and presumably the relevant lexical information as well) being analogous to a phonetically fully represented structure, whether such is a consequence of PF deletion, LF copying, or some other means.

As such, we should ask what definite predictions, in the form of a predicted schematic asymmetry in the terms of my CUP book, we can deduce under such an analysis (based on a universal hypothesis and a language-particular hypothesis, along with a bridging hypothesis in the terms of the CUP book) and how we can design Experiments to test such predictions. If we were to state this independently of the terms of my CUP book, we should ask what definite and testable predictions one can deduce under such an analysis, where the prediction-deduction necessarily involves a hypothesis about a universal property of the language faculty and one about a language-particular property, and how we can design Experiments to test such predictions.

That is how one would (try to) proceed if one were interested in deducing definite and testable predictions, as a means to accumulate knowledge of our subject matter.

If one were not interested in doing that, I have little to no idea how one would proceed. The answer seems to me to be sociological rather than scientific.

I think it was a good talk.
What was most directly responsible for that was the Experimental results that I was able to refer to, as an illustration of the proposed methodology for language faculty science as an exact science.

Because of the time considerations, I was only able to address some Experimental results in English. That was really too bad because the audience was Japanese... But, it would not have been possible to give the presentation within the allotted time if I dealt with Japanese.

[For myself: Copied from the 7/28/2003 Science [43637] posting.]

Incidentally, when Feynman talks about "laws" (e.g., he says something like "They do not find any laws" talking about social sciences), he is talking about laws that relates two or more "numbers" (i.e., the numerical values of certain things, time duration, distance (the difference in two positions, for example), weight, etc.) They DO compute a consequence about numbers from "laws" about certain numbers (i.e., values of certain things). We do not compute a number by our hypotheses; we "only" deduce impossibility and the lack thereof from our hypotheses. And while the physicist checks to make sure that they do deduce the consequence correctly, we must check to make sure, as best we can, that we do deduce our consequences from our hypotheses. It is by doing so and by making sure, as much as possible, not to use hypotheses that have been shown to be invalid or those whose validity has not been checked before, that we can ensure the significance of the result of our Experiments and learn from errors (i.e., from the failure to obtain experimental results as predicted).

[For myself: Copied from the 7/14/2003 Science [43594] posting.]

Feynman Lectures on Physics Volume 1, 47.3 states, "We shall take the simplest example here―the propagation of sound in one dimension. To carry out such a derivation it is necessary first to have some kind of understanding of what is going on." But what Feynman says in the actual lecture, which is available as a CD or an audiobook, is much more interesting. Here is what he says (I am not trying to be completely accurate in writing down what I hear on the audiobook.):

"Now, in order to do any of these problems, in order to set up any of these laws, which is from other laws―we wanna understand sound from Newton's law―, the first thing you have to is to understand as well as possible more or less how the thing works. This aspect is usually forgotten when you read a book; the guy starts to write out the derivation. But when the first man did it, he sat down and he thought a long time about more or less what's involved, so you know what to leave out, what to include, and so on. This may not sound right when at the end it does not look that way, but the secret of all these things is to first get what might be called the feeling for the phenomenon. Now, in the case of sound, we would have to get some kind of understanding more or less. Now, the better the understanding, the easier it will be to set up the laws." ("More or less" and "feeling" are stressed in oral presentation although I did not indicate that here, HH.).

All of this nice point (well, what I consider a nice point) by Feynman is removed in the published version. Too bad. But, I somehow understand why they decided to do that. (I understand that Feynman gave lectures and others wrote them down and edited the lectures. I do not know how closely Feynman was involved in the editing process, but I would not be surprised if he did not listen to what he had said in the lecture and compare it with the edited version.

I think Feynman's point is SO TRUE in language faculty science because, after all, we are studying what "goes on" in our head although we usually do not understand exactly what goes on and we can only go with the judgments we have and try to guess what is behind those judgments as best we can so that the clear sets of those judgments make sense on the basis of a fairly small set of hypotheses and assumptions.

Just to make sure that there is no confusion about this, there is nothing wrong with not being an internalist (or not being a methodological naturalist as I understand the term, or not being an internalist and a methodological naturalist at the same time, for that matter).

It is just a matter of personal interest and personal taste, related to what one finds intellectually exciting, what one finds personally rewarding, etc.

[Postings from 2010, copied from my research website. 8/22/2014, HH]

Because of research of/for one of the USC students, who might be working on "rightward scrambling" in Bangla, I did some research about works on "A-ga V-ta, B-cm." At one point of the chain of reference-finding, I came across the following paper, cited in Takita, Kensuke. 2009. Argument Ellipsis in Japanese Right Dislocation. Ms. to appear in Japanese/Korean
Linguistics 18, ed. Marcel Den Dikken and William McClure, 380–391. Stanford, Calif.: CSLI.

Saito, M. 2007a. Notes on East Asian Argument Ellipsis. Language Research 43:
203-227.

http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/LINGUISTICS/staff/saito_mamoru/pdf/saito-2007-LangResearch.pdf

The paper contain remarks such as:

"Hoji 1998 contains illuminating discussion, but as far as I can see, his arguments against
the ellipsis analysis are not at all conclusive."

"Aside from this problem, Hoji’s (1998) approach raises an issue on how far we can
stretch the possible interpretation of pro. It is already non-standard to assume that pro can be
construed as indefinite. If pro is simply a pronoun without phonetic content, we would expect
it to be definite in interpretation."

"The discussion above, I believe, has shown that the ellipsis analysis covers a wide range
of data and has a firm empirical basis."

"Having confirmed the plausibility of the argument ellipsis hypothesis, I would like to turn
to the analysis"

I had to check and see if Hoji 1998 indeed proposed the "pro analysis" of the null object construction (NOC) in Japanese. Much as in the case of my Otagai paper in regard to its main claim, the main point of Hoji 1998 is to show that the NOC in Japanese cannot be analyzed on a par with VP Ellipsis in English (like otagai cannot be analyzed unambiguously as a local anaphor). Whatever the paper suggests as an alternative account of the NOC is not much of interest, as far as I am concerned. But Hoji 1998 now seems to be understood as claiming that the null object is pro; but it is already made clear in Hoji 1995 that I do not believe that empty nominals in Japanese are [+pronominal, -anaphor].

At any rate, with "the plausibility of the argument ellipsis hypothesis" re. the NOC in Japanese having been "confirmed" -- as far as I can tell, not on any *Schema-based predictions that get supported by a confirmed schematic asymmetry, but on some observations that are only (loosely) compatible with the hypothesis -- and with a number of works getting out that accept the main thesis and the research orientation in Saito 2007, it is no wonder that we see works that adopt "the argument ellipsis hypothesis" re. the NOC in Japanese. If someone points out, as a reviewer of a paper or as an author of a paper, that Hoji 1998 has already shown that it cannot be maintained, the authors of such works (or the reviewer) might as well say something like "Gee, the reviewer (or the author) does not seem to be keeping up with recent literature and seems to be unaware of all these recent works."

The thread under [40868] has been copied from elsewhere. In the postings under this thread, made in 2010, the term confirmed schematic asymmetry is used instead of confirmed predicted schematic asymmetry. I am not making "corrections" or qualifications in the original postings here.

So, again, we see that there are tons of works out there that we could discuss if we wanted to. But the question is whether it would be good use of our time to do that. Since that has reminded me of Weinberg's remark quoted in Tips [39809], I copy the posting here.

***Copied from Tips [39809] "Making a judgment as to what to work on"***

Weinberg, Steven 1992: 49-50.

"At any one moment one is presented with a wide variety of innovative ideas that might be followed up: not only astrology and such, but many ideas much closer to the main stream of science, and others that are squarely within the scope of modern scientific research. It does no good to say that all these ideas must be thoroughly tested; there is simply no time. I receive in the mail every week about fifty preprints of articles on elementary particle physics and astrophysics, along with a few articles and letters on all sorts of would-be science. Even if I dropped everything else in my life, I could not begin to give all of these ideas a fair hearing. So what am I to do? Not only scientists but everyone else faces a similar problem. For all of us, there is simply no alternative to making a judgment as well as we can that some of these ideas (perhaps most of them) are not worth pursuing. And our greatest aid in making this judgment is our understanding of the pattern of scientific explanation."

Weinberg, Steven. 1992. Dreams of a Final Theory: The Scientist's Search for the Ultimate Laws of Nature. New York: Pantheon Books.

Because I am not providing the parts that surround the quoted passage, what is given above may be somewhat misleading. In a nutshell, Weinberg is addressing what he calls "would-be sciences" (such as astrology, precognition, creationism, etc.) and answering the question: "what should a thoughtful citizen conclude when it is claimed by a professor or a film star or Time-Life Books that there is evidence for the validity of one of the would-be sciences?" and responding to "the conventional answer ... that this evidence must be tested with an open mind and without theoretical preconceptions."

At any rate, I liked "For all of us, there is simply no alternative to making a judgment as well as we can that some of these ideas (perhaps most of them) are not worth pursuing." Because it makes me feel much better not reading most of the papers published out there. Whether or not that is a good attitude, it indeed seems to be the case that [e]ven if I dropped everything else in my life, I could not begin to give all of [those papers published in linguistics, even restricting to the papers dealing with Japanese or issues that I work on] a fair hearing.
***End of the copied posting***

If "[the physicists'] greatest aid in making this judgment is [their] understanding of the pattern of scientific explanation," what might be our greatest aid in language faculty science at the current stage in making this judgment? I would say that we insist on paying attention to whether we are seeing in a given work (what promises to be) a confirmed schematic asymmetry and, perhaps more importantly, whether a given work seems to aspire to make *Schema-based predictions. (That is the essential aspect of research that pursues rigorous testability.) If we do not see (what promises to be) a confirmed schematic asymmetry or any sign of an attempt to make a *Schema-based prediction, that helps us make "this judgment," I think.

And, of course, there is a reason for my being silent about ellipsis-related issues. I find it to be much more difficult to conduct experiments on ellipsis-related predicted schematic asymmetries and obtain a confirmed schematic asymmetry.

In a few papers of mine on ellipsis-related issues in the late 1990s to the early 2000s, I tried very hard to come up with *Schema-based predictions involving ellipsis but it was very difficult. The best I could do in the end was to make recourse to "Mix readings," as in my "Deep and Surface ..." paper, and I doubt very much that we can obtain a confirmed schematic asymmetry there...

If one pursues the internalist approach to language and the language faculty, one naturally considers one's own linguistic intuitions as a main manifestation of one's object of inquiry, i.e., the language faculty.

So, it seems to me to follow: if a native speaker of Japanese (mainly) works on a language other than Japanese, s/he is not an internalist.

Being an internalist also has another consequence: when one puts forth hypotheses to account for a set of linguistic intuitions of one's own, one considers whether what is stated by those hypotheses (or perhaps more accurately, the empirical content/consequence of those hypotheses) indeed feels like what goes on in one's mind when one judges sentences. This is about psychological reality of hypotheses in a naive (but important) sense.

So, it seem to me to follow: if someone working on her/his own language puts forth hypotheses to account for her/his own intuitions, but is only concerned with how things "work," and is not concerned about the relation between one's hypotheses and what seems to go on in her/his mind, s/he is not an internalist, despite the fact that s/he works on her/his native language. I.e., working on one's native language does not by itself make one an internalist.

What is stated in [44520] seems to represent the essence of half of what "defines" my research orientation. The other half is the desire and inclination to understand things in a categorical manner. And these are the internalist approach and the methodological naturalist approach as they are understood and characterized in my CUP book.

The time/location of the talk is as follows:
(The talk will be in Japanese.)

日時：２０１４年９月１１日（木）１５：００〜１７：００
場所：神奈川大学横浜キャンパス　１７号館２１５講堂

I am hoping to have discussion after the talk, with interested people. If you are interested, please plan on joining the dinner after the talk.

Well, you can email me if you might join the dinner just in case there is a space issue...

I will/can be available after 17:00 until close to the dinner time, anyway. So, if you cannot join the dinner, you can still talk to me after the talk.

I will give a talk at Kanagawa University on 9/11/2014.

I have been told that the announcement has been made by the organizer(s), which contains the following information.

***
Language Faculty Science as an Exact Science:
An Illustration based on Experimental Considerations

Abstract

In this talk, I will try to present the essentials of my forthcoming book Language Faculty Science (Cambridge University Press). The book provides a conceptual basis for, and experimental demonstrations of, how the language faculty can be studied as an exact science. By an exact science, I mean a research program in which definite predictions are deduced from hypotheses and put to rigorous empirical test (and we expect the predictions to be supported experimentally). What I propose is a consequence of (i) taking as the object of inquiry the language faculty (I-language in the terms of Chomsky 1986) rather than language as an external or externalized object (E-language in the terms of Chomsky 1986), and (ii) adopting the methodological naturalist approach to the study of the language faculty―which maintains that we should approach our subject matter just as researchers in a natural science do (Chomsky 1986, 1993, and 1995, among other places).
This book has an accompanying website. The purpose of the website is to make it possible for others to critically examine the validity of the book's empirical claims more thoroughly than is made possible in the book. For each Experiment discussed in the book, the website provides a full description of its design, its Examples, and its result. The website also provides the "Raw Data" of the experimental results so that interested people can analyze them by the statistical techniques of their choice.
In this talk, I will try to go over the general design of our Experiments and how it reflects the proposed methodology. More in particular, I will addresses how experiments are designed and conducted in language faculty science and how the experimental results are interpreted, all in accordance with the proposed methodology for language faculty science as laid out in my forthcoming book. The talk is thus an attempt to introduce language faculty science as an exact science based on experimental considerations.

This handout gives you an idea about Language Faculty Science, from conceptual, rather than empirical or experimental, considerations.


If you are interested in learning more about Language Faculty Science as I am pursuing, please check the postings under:
[44350] "Language Faculty Science"
at: http://www.gges.xyz/hoji/discussions/public1j/bbs-f.cgi (which is part of this Homepage).
They provide excerpts of the draft of my forthcoming book.
***

The PDF file mentioned above is a modified version of the handout for my USC talk February this year, available here.

[44350] "Language Faculty Science" is in the "Remarks" board here.

I will post the time and the location of the talk later.

In other words we are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.

Suppose that we believe that what Feynman states is applicable to our research dealing with the language faculty. It then follows that the recognition of this point will affect various types of decisions we make, including:

--what kind of "phenomena" we want to deal with
--what kind of hypotheses we want to pursue
--what kind of experiments we want to conduct
--how we want to interpret the experimental results

My forthcoming book Language Faculty Science is an attempt to provide a concrete illustration of such decisions and how the decisions can be implemented.