I will be visiting Kyoto University Feb-May next year.
I am hoping to be able to hold workshops and seminars to disseminate the idea of language faculty science as an exact science during my visit in Japan then.

If there is anyone who is interested in language faculty science as an exact science, please email me.

Somewhat surprisingly, Feynman's point in [44446] seems to some people to be new or something not easy to accept. If one only has a vague understanding of science, based on what is typically given in the "mass media," that is not so surprising. If one is engaged in pseudo-science (or something like social and behavioral sciences) and think that what one does is science, that is not surprising, either. Finally, some may think that the use of statistics is what makes their research "scientific," point to the use of statistics in quantum physics and object to my pursuit of definite and categorical predictions and their deduction from hypotheses and my attempt to obtain experimental results in accordance with them.

It seems that what must be understood in this connection is as follows: (i) the use of statistics/probability in quantum physics is due to the uncertainty principle, according to which we cannot predict, with the same high degree of precision, the exact position and the exact momentum of a single particle simultaneously, (ii) but they do make definite predictions, with amazing precision, about the behavior of a large number of atoms and their predictions have been supported experimentally over the years, and (iii) finally, in relation to language faculty science, we do make a definite and categorical predictions about the behavior of a single/individual informant, not about the average behavior of a group of informants. It may be necessary to make the third point very clearly and loudly; unless we did that, those engaged in what I consider to be a pseudo-science may well think that they can still defend what they do and call it a science.

Of course, what is to be considered a science is just a matter of definition. So, they can call what they do whatever they want. But they should understand that it is not an exact science in the sense I use the term (which is characterized by (i) deducing definite predictions and (ii) putting them to rigorous empirical test).

Finally, well, really finally in this posting, some might well say, as has in fact been suggested by Chomsky himself, for example, what people do in generative grammar, minimalism, or bio-linguistics is more analogous of chemistry before quantum physics -- they do not yet "deduce" definite and rigorously testable predictions; they are (just) trying to do some descriptive (and speculative) work hoping that someday the results of their work will contribute to the establishment of an exact science (in my sense). In relation to such possible reactions to my work, I would say that my proposal is an attempt to do an exact science NOW, without having to wait for a future point in time.

"You can see, of course, that with this method we can attempt to disprove any definite theory. If we have a definite theory, a real guess, from which we can conveniently compute consequences which can be compared with experiment, then in principle we can get rid of any theory. There is always the possibility of proving any definite theory wrong; but notice that we can never prove it right. Suppose that you invent a good guess, calculate the consequences, and discover every time that the consequences you have calculated agree with experiment. The theory is then right? No, it is simply not proved wrong. In the future you could compute a wider range of consequences, there could be a wider range of experiments, and you might then discover that the thing is wrong. That is why laws like Newton's laws for the motion of planets last such a long time. He guessed the law of gravitation, calculated all kinds of consequences for the system and so on, compared them with experiment--and it took several hundred years before the slight error of the motion of Mercury was observed. During all that time the theory had not been proved wrong, and could be taken temporarily to be right. But it could never be proved right, because tomorrow's experiment might succeed in proving wrong what you thought was right. We never are definitely right, we can only be sure we are wrong. However, it is rather remarkable how we can have some ideas which will last so long." (Feynman 1965/94 (The Character of Physical Law): 151-152)

The paragraph that immediately follows this starts with:

"One of the ways of stopping science would be only to do experiments in the regions where you know the law. But experimenters search most diligently, and with the greatest efforts, in exactly those places where it seems most likely that we can prove our theories wrong. In other words we are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress."

In Language Faculty Science, I do not address issues like this almost at all, because the book is concerned with how language faculty science can be pursued as an exact science (a scientific issue), not with how the field is (or has been) (which I think is more of a sociological issue, about which one may find insightful discussion in Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions).

My (published) works for the past 10 years often address both the scientific issues and the sociological issues (if only indirectly). And I think that that was related to the fact that the level of conceptual articulation of the methodology for language faculty science as an exact science was qualitatively lower then than it is now. (One tends to talk loud when one does not have a strong basis for what one has to say...)

Some people (faculty and students) have told me that it would be useful (for them) if I presented language faculty science as an exact science in relation/comparison to what is being practiced in the field. I understand their point.

I have, however, made the tactical decision to focus on the scientific issues in Language Faculty Science mostly because I do not have enough space for sociological discussion, in accordance with the page limit imposed by the contract with the publisher. The tactical decision was made in part because I feel that the scientific issues and the sociological issues should be addressed separately especially when the field at large does not seem to understand how language faculty science can be pursued as an exact science.

In What Do You Care What Other People Think? (pp. 217-218), Feynman remarks:



"The only way to have real success in science, the field I'm familiar with, is to describe the evidence very carefully without regard to the way you feel it should be. If you have a theory, you must try to explain what's good and what's bad about it equally. In science, you learn a kind of scientific integrity and honesty.

In other fields, such as business, it's different. For example, almost every advertisement you see is obviously designed, in some way or another, to fool the customer: the print that they don't want you to read is small; the statement are written in an obscure way. It is obvious to anybody that the product is not being presented in a scientific and balanced way. Therefore, in the selling business, there's a lack of integrity."



The remarks are made in the context of discussing the cause of the space shuttle Challenger's explosion in 1986. Feynman makes the same point in his 1974 Caltech Commencement Address "Cargo Cult Science, and in quite a few other places. If you have not read "Cargo Cult Science," I highly recommend it; you can search "Cargo Cult" in the Remarks board to see some relevant remarks, as well as where to find the paper "Cargo Cult Science"on-line.

Feynman's remarks above remind me of what I heard from a physicist who I happened to sit next to at some dinner party. He said something like, "In social sciences, they argue for things, make arguments for this and that, and I always find that amusing. You see, we do not "argue" for things in physics."

I suppose social sciences are closer to business than to physics.

Of course, I thought about linguistics when I heard that.

As noted in [44414], I do not address issues of this sort almost at all in my forthcoming Language Faculty Science (for the reason stated there) although I have written quite a bit about them in the past, as can be seen in some of the postings in the Remarks board.

One might find it difficult to imagine how one can pursue what is suggested above in research that deals with the language faculty. (That seems understandable in light of how research has been done in the past and how students are trained in the field that deals with language and the language faculty.)

As an illustration of the point in the parentheses above, if you are familiar with the field, you can ask how often you read a paper in which conscious efforts seem to be exerted to make it transparent how the proposal(s) therein can be put to rigorous empirical test and can be shown to be invalid.

In The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: 108-109 in the section "What is and what should be the role of scientific culture in modern society," which is a talk that he "gave to an audience of scientists at the Galileo Symposium in Italy, in 1964," Feynman states:

"Now I am going to mention still another thing which is a little more doubtful, but still I believe that in the judging of evidence, the reporting of evidence and so on, there is a kind of responsibility which the scientists feel toward each other which you can represent as a kind of morality. What's the right way and the wrong way to report results? Disinterestedly, so that the other man is free to understand precisely what you are saying, and as nearly as possible not covering it with your desires. That this is a useful thing, that this is a thing which helps each of us to understand each other, in fact to develop in a way that isn't personally in our own interest, but for the general development of ideas, is a very valuable thing. And so there is, if you will, a kind of scientific morality. I believe, hopelessly, that this morality should be extended much more widely; this idea, this kind of scientific morality, that such things as propaganda should be a dirty word. … This immorality is so extensive that one gets so used to it in ordinary life, that you do not appreciate that it is a bad thing. …"

In Linguistics, well, at least in the generative research that I am familiar with, I wonder what people could do if they were not allowed to advertise the merit of their work and if they were allowed to only present research results disinterestedly. I suppose that it would be difficult to do so without having "hard facts" you can report on. And, since people do not seem to yet understand what can constitute a "hard fact" and a "hard prediction" and how we can aspire to understand the relation between the two, they feel that they have to do advertisement. Well, that is what I think.

In Language Faculty Science, I do not address issues like this almost at all, because the book is concerned with how language faculty science can be pursued as an exact science (a scientific issue), not with how the field is (or has been) (which I think is more of a sociological issue, about which one may find insightful discussion in Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions)

See also [44416] under this posting for Feynman's remarks on business and advertisement, as opposed to science.

The language faculty is internal to, and shared by, each of us (members of the human spices). Discovery of its properties necessarily involves discovery of universal aspects of the language faculty, i.e., aspects of the initial state of the language faculty (borrowing Chomsky's exposition). If we try to discover aspects of the initial state of the language faculty by the most widely accepted method in a natural science (the hypothetico-deductive method -- dubbed by Feynman (in Lecture 7 of his 1964 Messenger Lectures at Cornell University) as the "Guess-Computer-Compare" method), our predictions must be based on hypotheses about universal aspects of the language faculty and they must be as definite as possible. We must also articulate exactly how such hypotheses, combined with other hypotheses, give rise to definite predictions and how such predictions can be tested experimentally. This then means the need to articulate various aspects of prediction-deduction, experimental design, interpretation of experimental results, among other issues.

One of the basic issues has to do with what we should consider as evidence for or against our hypotheses in language faculty science. I state in the draft of Chapter 1 of Language Faculty Science: "There are no restrictions, determined prior to our empirical investigation, as to what can be regarded as evidence for or against our hypotheses about any subject matter. This applies to the study of the language faculty. But, no matter what kind of evidence we might consider, it should be revealing about the subject matter―in our case about universal properties of the language faculty. Since the language faculty is, by hypothesis, what underlies our ability to relate linguistic sounds and meaning, it seems reasonable to consider the informant judgment on the relation between linguistic sounds and meaning as something that we can use to test the validity of our hypotheses about the properties of the language faculty. We leave open, of course, the possibility that other types of evidence may serve the same purpose and provide converging evidence for our hypotheses."

This leads to the position stated in [44337] "Anaphora, inside or outside the language faculty," under [44324] "Some Chomsky videos":

Being an internalist, I ultimately do not believe anything unless I can test it in my own Lab (i.e., against my own judgments) and unless I see the proposed hypotheses in fact deduce definite and testable predictions that get supported experimentally (i.e., in a single-researcher-informant experiment with myself being the sole informant).

An empirical generalization, claimed, adopted, or predicted, in a given work, about any language must be stated at least in part in terms of a hypothesis about universal properties of the language faculty in such a way that, combined with other hypotheses, it gives rise to a definite and testable prediction. If I fail to see that, I do not know how to evaluate it, as a language faculty scientist.

In language faculty science as an exact science, it is not good enough to state empirical generalizations in "theoretical (and presumably, universal)" terms. Empirical generalizations and predictions must be stated crucially on the basis of a hypothesis about universal properties of the language faculty (combined with other hypotheses). Furthermore, not only is it necessary to clearly state how exactly the predictions are deduced from hypotheses and can be tested experimentally, it is also of utmost importance to try to put forth hypotheses in such a way that it would be as easy as possible for others to show them to be invalid. That is a key feature of testability-seeking research, if we take the methodological naturalist approach seriously, and hence adopt the hypothetico-deductive method (i.e., the Guess-Compute-Compare method).

One might find it difficult to imagine how one can pursue what is suggested above in research that deals with the language faculty. (That seems understandable in light of how research has been done in the past and how students are trained in the field that deals with language and the language faculty.) My forthcoming book Language Faculty Science addresses how we can do that.

My editor also likes Language Faculty Science better than the other alternatives. So, I am pretty sure that the title of the book will be Language Faculty Science.

In that part of the video, we see an exchange like the following between Chomsky and one of the members of the audience. (I am copying this from the Appendix in the Ludlow book (p. 187).)

***
Audience: ...what kind of empirical evidence would count in adjudicating between those.

NC: ... What is the empirical evidence that bears on whether anaphora is on one or the other side of the border of the language faculty? Well, part of the empirical evidence -- in my mind at least -- turns on whether in fact there's a single cycle derivational process that goes by, what I call phases, stepwise. That's an empirical question but all kinds of things bear on it coming from everywhere. And once that empirical question is sharpened, you can ask whether the global property of anaphora is inside or outside.
***

That's an empirical question. Perhaps it is. But how can we go about answering it on the basis of rigorous experiments? My book proposes what I consider to be the first step toward doing that.

35:10-37:00 (and also up to 38:00) of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HfEKKkaTdk&index=3&list=PLeXljLyrouzdmJ29eYOZgQ3jE5MZcy7jX

is also interesting.

The latter video is reproduced as the Appendix of Ludlow's The Philosophy of Generative Grammar.

I have things to say about the relevant issues from the perspective of language faculty science as I pursue it in my forthcoming book, and I will try to make some postings later.

Chomsky once said, 20+ years ago, as in the "Generative Enterprise" interview, that anaphora is one of the few effective probes into properties of the language faculty.
His current position, as stated in the interviews in "Science of Language" and also in the above interview with Peter Ludlow is that anaphora is right on the border between the inside and the outside the language faculty, being on the outside. I understand that his conceptual reason is that it seems to involve a non-local relation. I also understand that his empirical reason is that the informant judgments can be affected by pragmatic considerations.

Being an internalist, I ultimately do not believe anything unless I can test it in my own Lab (i.e., against my own judgments) and unless I see the proposed hypotheses in fact deduce definite and testable predictions that get supported experimentally (i.e., in a single-researcher-informant experiment with myself being the sole informant). (For the reasons alluded to in the paragraph quoted below, which is the last paragraph of Appendix II of my book draft, the relevant testing can involve a rather complicated network of judgments, along with an interaction of several or more interrelated hypotheses.) I thus naturally look at works that deal with Japanese. Based on what I have been able to determine, there is no compelling evidence in Japanese in support of the manifestation of local operations of the sort that Chomsky has been addressing, if we are engaged in testability-seeking research rather than compatibility-seeking research. The research that deals with Japanese either fails to deduce definite and testable predictions (or fails to articulate how such predictions can be put to rigorous empirical test) or the predictions they make fail, rather miserably, to be supported experimentally.

The only area where we can deduce definite and testable predictions (that have a promise of surviving a (minimally) rigorous empirical test) in Japanese, as a manifestation of universal properties of the language faculty, has to involve dependency interpretation (based on the LF c-command relation), as far as I can determine at this point. The definite prediction is about the complete impossibility of a certain dependency interpretation corresponding to any Example instantiating a certain schema and the absence of such complete impossibility corresponding to some Examples instantiating a schema that is minimally different from the first schema. The schemata are constructed on the basis of the hypotheses under discussion.

I have been able to replicate the results in my single-informant-researcher experiment in multiple-non-researcher-
informant experiments -- crucially making reference to the results of Sub-Experiments that serve as a basis of informant classification. And that will be part of the empirical discussion in my book.

I would like to note that I have also been able to obtain experimental results in accordance with our definite predictions with regard to the Weak Crossover cases in English -- with a language-particular hypothesis that the dependency interpretation in question is an effective probe into properties of the language faculty at least for many speakers of English. None of the informants who have been classified as "reliable informants" with regard to the validity of the hypotheses under discussion, on the basis of the relevant Sub-Experiments, accept the Example sentences that are predicted to be impossible with the relevant dependency interpretations. It is interesting to note that some of those informants accept the coreference that is predicted to be impossible, such as the cases of Condition C/D violations. (It is possible that one might be able to devise more effective Sub-Experiments that would allow us to focus on the informants whose reported judgments are significant with regard to the validity of Condition C/D. But because of the absence of clear effects of Condition C/D in Japanese, I do not think such will turn out to be the case in the end.)

My position at this point is that:
(i) anaphora (and scope dependency as well, as Chomsky pointed out years ago) will in fact be an effective probe into properties of the language faculty although much more rigorous and careful work has to be carried out than we typically see practiced in the field, if we are to obtain experimental results in accordance with our definite predictions, which would involve an articulation of how our predictions are deduced and how our experiment is designed accordingly
(ii) it is only through such rigorous and careful research we will be able to determine whether something that seems to involve non-local relations is indeed part of the language faculty and/or how it can be revealing about properties of the language faculty.

As I state in my book, I understand this to be a consequence of taking the internalist view and the methodological naturalist view seriously.


The last paragraph of Appendix II of my book draft.
" As stressed above, the replication of particular judgments by informants on a set of particular Examples is not our concern. We are concerned ultimately with the replication of our experimental results at a more abstract and general level. We are interested in finding out universal properties of the language faculty. We have chosen to work with a dependency interpretation as a probe for that purpose; see Chapter 3 for a conceptual basis for our choice. What type of dependency interpretation can be a good probe for the purpose may differ among languages, and even among speakers of the "same language." In our experiments dealing with individual speakers of a particular language, we check predicted schematic asymmetries given rise to by universal hypotheses, language-particular hypotheses and bridging hypotheses. It is the universal hypotheses among them that would help us see what universal properties underlie individual informants' judgments on Examples of "different constructions," with "different dependency interpretation," in "different languages." Before we begin to be able to address replicability of our experimental result at such an abstract and general level, however, a great deal of work has to be carried out dealing with particular languages, starting with the establishment and the accumulation of confirmed predicted schematic asymmetries, first in a single-informant experiment and ultimately in multiple-non-researcher-informant experiment."

I find Chomsky's remarks from 1.07.00 to 1.08.10 of:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDCQZj7_Tho

interesting.


35:10-37:00 (and also up to 38:00) of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HfEKKkaTdk&index=3&list=PLeXljLyrouzdmJ29eYOZgQ3jE5MZcy7jX

is also interesting.

The latter video is reproduced as the Appendix of Ludlow's The Philosophy of Generative Grammar.

I have things to say about the relevant issues from the perspective of language faculty science as I pursue it in my forthcoming book, and I will try to make some postings later.

Under this heading, I will make postings about the content of the book manuscript Language Faculty Science: Methodology and Empirical Demonstration.

Here is another paragraph that I think represents the main idea of the book.

"It may not be an easy matter to obtain an experimental result that constitutes a confirmed predicted schematic asymmetry even in a single-researcher-informant experiment. But it is, ultimately, the replication of a confirmed predicted schematic asymmetry in a multiple-non-researcher-informant experiment that makes us confident about the validity of our hypotheses that have given rise to the predicted schematic asymmetry. It is also such replication that would prompt us to pay serious attention to the empirical and "factual" claims put forth by others dealing with a language about which we do not have native intuitions. One may in fact suggest that it is the replication of a confirmed predicted schematic asymmetry in multiple-non-researcher-informant experiments that would make us hopeful that language faculty science as an exact science may indeed be possible."

Roughly speaking, a predicted schematic asymmetry is a prediction deduced by our hypotheses. We say that we have obtained a confirmed predicted schematic asymmetry if we have obtained experimental results in accordance with the predicted schematic asymmetry.

The above remark should be understood with the clear understanding of the point made in:

"Taking the internalist approach to language, we consider the obtaining of a confirmed predicted schematic asymmetry in a single-researcher-informant experiment as the first step toward establishing a fact in language faculty science as an exact science. A confirmed predicted schematic asymmetry is based on a predicted schematic asymmetry. Predicted schematic asymmetries are given rise to by universal hypotheses, along with language-particular hypotheses and bridging hypotheses. It is in this sense that an individual informant's judgment is revealing about universal properties of the language faculty. It is also in this sense that facts in language faculty science as an exact science are closely related to our hypotheses about universal properties of the steady state of the language faculty."

As noted in "Whats New," I wanted the title of the book to be:
Language Faculty Science as an Exact Science but I had to change it because the publisher has the policy against having the same word appearing twice in a title. There is something unsatisfactory about the title. I am thinking of changing it to:

Language Faculty Inquiry as an Exact Science

I am now inclined to go simply with Language Faculty Science.

The book's main conceptual claim is summarized, to a pretty good extent, by the paragraphs mentioned at the top page of this website, which I repeat here.

The last paragraph of Chapter 1:
"It is generally agreed that it is not possible outside physics and its closely related fields to deduce definite predictions and expect them to be borne out experimentally. I am going to argue that it is indeed possible. The book's slogan is: language faculty science as an exact science is possible; yes, it is. Some may say that I am a dreamer. But I am not the only one. I hope upon reading the rest of the book some of the readers will join us."

The last paragraph of Chapter 8: Summary and concluding Remarks):
"What I envisage is a time when we will be able to deduce hard predictions (predicted schematic asymmetries) in various languages, will be able to evaluate by experiments the validity of our universal and language-particular hypotheses, and will be able to formulate hypotheses of a successively more general nature, without losing rigorous testability. When something like that has become the norm of the research program, an experiment dealing with one language can be understood clearly in terms of the universal hypotheses (along with language-particular hypotheses) in question so that the implications of the result of an experiment dealing with a particular language can be transparent with respect to other languages. Researchers "working with" different languages will at that point share (many of) the same puzzles and issues pertaining to universal properties of the language faculty. They will know precisely what necessary care and checks they need to do in order to design effective experiments for testing the validity of the same universal hypotheses. That will enable us to proceed in a way much more robust than what has been presented in the preceding chapters, still on the basis of confirmed predicted schematic asymmetries. The field will at that point be widely regarded as an exact science, and everyone will take that for granted. And I also suspect that, at that point, other fields of research that deal with the brain and the mind pay close attention to the research results and methodology in language faculty science as an exact science because they find it useful to try to learn from the categorical nature of the experimental results in language faculty science and its methodology that has guided its research efforts.²¹³"

FN 213: This reminds us of Chomsky's (1975: 5) remark that "it is not unreasonable to suppose that the study of … the ability to speak and understand a human language … may serve as a suggestive model for inquiry into other domains of human competence and action that are not quite so amenable to direct investigation."

The last two paragraphs of Appendix: the accompanying website:"It may not be an easy matter to obtain an experimental result that constitutes a confirmed predicted schematic asymmetry even in a single-researcher-informant experiment. But it is, ultimately, the replication of a confirmed predicted schematic asymmetry in a multiple-non-researcher-informant experiment that makes us confident about the validity of our hypotheses that have given rise to the predicted schematic asymmetry. It is also such replication that would prompt us to pay serious attention to the empirical and "factual" claims put forth by others dealing with a language about which we do not have native intuitions. One may in fact suggest that it is the replication of a confirmed predicted schematic asymmetry in multiple-non-researcher-informant experiments that would make us hopeful that language faculty science as an exact science may indeed be possible.
As stressed above, the replication of particular judgments by informants on a set of particular Examples is not our concern. We are concerned ultimately with the replication of our experimental results at a more abstract and general level. We are interested in finding out universal properties of the language faculty. We have chosen to work with a dependency interpretation as a probe for that purpose; see Chapter 3 for a conceptual basis for our choice. What type of dependency interpretation can be a good probe for the purpose may differ among languages, and even among speakers of the "same language." In our experiments dealing with individual speakers of a particular language, we check predicted schematic asymmetries given rise to by universal hypotheses, language-particular hypotheses and bridging hypotheses. It is the universal hypotheses among them that would help us see what universal properties underlie individual informants' judgments on Examples of "different constructions," with "different dependency interpretation," in "different languages." Before we begin to be able to address replicability of our experimental result at such an abstract and general level, however, a great deal of work has to be carried out dealing with particular languages, starting with the establishment and the accumulation of confirmed predicted schematic asymmetries, first in a and ultimately in multiple-non-researcher-informant experiment."

The old versions of "Research Interests" are posted under this.

2/28/2012

It is an indubitable fact that, once they have reached a certain maturational stage, the members of the human species, barring any serious impairment, are able to produce and comprehend sentences of the language that they are exposed to. The existence of the language faculty has been assumed by many and it has been the point of departure of Chomsky's research program although there is also a contrary view accepted by many, as indicated in N. J. Enfield's recent (2010) review article in Science "Without Social Contexts?."^FN1 Chomsky has maintained over the years that we should approach the language faculty just as natural scientists approach their subject matters. It has, however, remained unclear how hypotheses about the language faculty can be put to rigorous empirical test. The problem manifests itself most acutely once we consider how the hypothetico-deductive method―the most commonly acknowledged hypothesis-testing "method" in a mature science such as physics―can be applied to language faculty science.

　　　In my ongoing work, I try to articulate how predictions about the language faculty can be deduced from our hypotheses, how such predictions can be tested against experimental results, what should count as the relevant data in language faculty science, how such data can be of a categorical nature, what kind of experimental design would maximize the significance of the experimental results, how we can make various aspects of experimental devices maximally effective, how rigorous a match we could expect between the prediction and the experimental results, along with many other related issues. I try to pursue and defend the thesis that it is possible to investigate the language faculty by applying the hypothetico-deductive method, i.e., by rigorously comparing the predictions deduced by our hypotheses with experimental results and observations. Insofar as we can carry this out successfully, with compelling empirical demonstration, that will constitute support for the existence of the language faculty.

　　　In physics, what is predicted and compared with experimental results (or observations) is something that is measurable (ultimately in terms of temporal and spatial values). The measurability of the relevant "data" is what makes it possible to compare a prediction with an experimental result and also to determine how much reproducibility there is to the experimental results and observations. Given that reproducibility and measurability are two prerequisites for effectively adopting the hypothetico-deductive method, it follows that predictions in language faculty science must be about something reproducible and measurable as long as we adopt the hypothetico-deductive method.

　　　One may wonder whether it is reasonable to apply the hypothetico-deductive method to research concerned with the language faculty. After all, it is commonly understood that the "predictions" in fields outside the extremely limited domains of inquiry including physics are about differences and tendencies and that it is not possible to deduce point-value predictions in such fields. One may thus object that physics is not the right field for us to turn to as a model of our research program. One may also point out that the hypothetico-deductive method is not the only method adopted even in physical sciences. My response, briefly put, is: if it is possible to get to know something by following the hypothetico-deductive method, why would one want to adopt a less rigorous method?^FN2

　　　There are various types of evidence that we can in principle bring to bear on the validity of our hypotheses. Some are "experimental" while others are not.^FN3 Whatever type of evidence one wishes to consider, it has to be articulated how the predicted "value" can be deduced from a set of hypotheses, how a particular experimental result or an observation can be understood as a reflection of properties of the language faculty, and finally, how we can rigorously compare the prediction and the experimental result or the observation. Without minimally satisfactory answers to such questions, it remains unclear what significance can be assigned to the experimental result or the observation in a research program that is concerned with a discovery of properties of the language faculty.

　　　Given the assumption that the language faculty underlies our ability to relate a sequence of sounds/signs to a "meaning," it makes sense to ask informants, including ourselves, about possible correspondences between sounds/signs and "meanings." However, in light of the fact that the informant judgments, especially when "meanings" are involved, have been known to be extremely slippery, one should naturally wonder how we can justify the use of informants' introspective judgments as crucial evidence, let alone the use of the researcher's own judgments. The present work proposes a specific way to make informant judgments qualify as evidence in language faculty science, as something measurable and reproducible.

　　　My main concern is how we can deduce definite predictions and test them experimentally in accordance with the research heuristics in (1).

(1)　a.　Secure testability.
　　b.　Maximize testability.
　　c.　Maximize the significance of the experimental result.^FN4

　　　I take it for granted that, regardless of the object of inquiry, one should like to adopt the research heuristics in (1) if it is at all possible to do so. The methodology I am proposing in my ongoing work is a consequence of having the language faculty as the object of inquiry and adopting (1). Unless we start accumulating results in language faculty science based on research that rigorously pursues testability, the research program initiated by Chomsky in the mid-1950s will most likely remain to be regarded as a metaphysical speculation, at least by those outside the field. The goal of my current work is to articulate how it is possible to pursue language faculty science as an exact science^FN5, by providing a conceptual basis for how that is possible in principle and empirical illustration of how that has actually been done.^FN6


　　FN1: See Chomsky's response to it in his lectures in April and June of 2011, available at the following sites:
(i)a."Language and the Cognitive Science Revolution(s)" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbjVMq0k3uc (at Carleton University, April 8, 2011)
b."Language and other cognitive systems: What is special about language?" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v6XFkSwVys. (at the University of Cologne, June 6, 2011)
　　FN2: Social and behavioral sciences adopt a method of evaluating hypotheses where the significance test on the so-called null hypotheses plays an enormous role. That is because it is deemed impossible in such fields to deduce point-value predictions.
　　FN3: "Experimental" evidence is based on various types of reactions by the informants (e.g., introspective judgments, reading time, eye movement, etc.) to stimuli (typically a sentence (with a specified intended interpretation)). "Non-experimental" evidence is based on observations of (linguistic) behavior of the subjects, without involving any stimuli provided by the experimenter.
　　FN4: The heuristic in (1c) subsumes the "Maximize our chances of learning from errors" heuristic.
　　FN5: As I noted above, what is meant by an "exact science" is a research program in which we can deduce definite predictions and rigorously compare them with experimental results (and expect them to be supported experimentally).
　　FN6: For further remarks/discussion, please see my "Hypothesis testing in generative grammar: Evaluation of predicted schematic asymmetries" Journal of Japanese Linguistics vol. 26, pp. 25-52, available here, and the postings in the Methodology board.

An earlier version of "Research Interests" as of 11/7/2008.

A fundamental working hypothesis in generative grammar is the existence of the language faculty, understood as an algorithm whose input is a set of items taken from the mental Lexicon of the speaker and whose output is a pair of mental representations - one underlying 'meaning' and the other 'sounds/signs'. The main goal of generative grammar can thus be understood as demonstrating the existence of such an algorithm and discovering its properties. Construed in this way, it is not language as an external 'object' but the language faculty that constitutes the object of inquiry. In the terms of the distinction made by Chomsky in the 1960s, generative grammar is concerned with competence rather than with performance.
　　　The data in actual research activities in generative grammar, however, is based on acceptability judgments on a given sentence, whether they are introspective judgments by the researchers or their informants or observation of various other types of reactions by 'subjects' in an experimental setting. I.e., what we deal with in an attempt to discover the properties of the speaker/hearer's competence (the Computational System) is his/her performance (i.e., language use, in a broad sense). This makes it crucial, in the context of generative grammatical inquiry as construed above, to articulate how we can extract from performance data evidence for a hypothesis about the properties of the Computational System. The absence of a minimally satisfactory articulation of how to do this is likely to lead to a situation where different (groups of) researchers base their proposals about the Computational System on different sets of speaker judgments, collected in a variety of ways, that are not necessarily uniform or robust, being subject to a great deal of fluctuation and variation not only among speakers but also within a single speaker. This makes it difficult to evaluate competing proposals in a reliable and objective manner. Recent debates in leading journals (e.g., Language, Lingua and Natural Language and Linguistic Theory) about what should qualify as data, about the use of introspective judgments as crucial evidence for or against a theory, etc. seem to suggest that we have not yet developed a means to evaluate the empirical bases of hypotheses in generative grammar that is compelling enough to the majority of the practitioners. An evaluation of a given hypothesis thus tends to have an arbitrary aspect to it, influenced by such factors as whether or not the terms and concepts utilized are of a theory currently in fashion and whether or not it endorses the standard view concerning the validity of alleged empirical generalizations, regardless of how much (or how little) 'repeatability' obtains in regard to the predicted speaker judgments on the crucial sentence forms.
　　　I have been working over the past decade to overcome the problem just noted, trying to articulate a concrete means to evaluate (not to arrive at) hypotheses in generative grammar, making specific reference to Japanese as its empirical basis for an illustration of the methodological points, which should be applicable to research on other languages, as long as it deals with interpretations that are claimed to be based crucially on properties of the Computational System.
　　　When one aims at discovering the properties of the language faculty as construed above, one must recognize the following: the Computational System's yielding something as its output does not guarantee that the speaker finds it (more precisely, finds its surface manifestation) to be acceptable; after all, non-grammatical as well as grammatical (i.e., the Computational-System-based) factors must contribute to the ultimate acceptability judgment by the speaker on a given sentence form under a specified interpretation (e.g., the memory limitation, familiarity with a particular sentence pattern, one's knowledge about the world, one's belief system, and the like, may be among the contributing factors). The Computational System's failure to yield something as its output, on the other hand, should necessarily mean that the 'sentence form' corresponding to such a 'failed representation' should be judged unacceptable under the specified interpretation. If something is predicted to be impossible due to the hypothesized formal properties of the Computational System under discussion, how can some pragmatic adjustment save it? Only by taking this point to heart and by putting forth a hypothesis so as to yield a negative prediction (the prediction that something is impossible (under a specified interpretation)), do we have a hope of making generative grammar an empirical science or of making it a progressive research program in the sense of Lakatos 1970.
　　　Properties of the Computational System can be best detected when we observe 'phenomena' where something has to be the way it is without any conceivable communicative or pragmatic reasons. And that is why researchers have focused on 'phenomena' of various forms of 'agreement' (e.g., he is sick … but not *he are sick) and cases where certain linguistic form must occur in some designated position in relation to other elements in the sentence in which it occurs (e.g., I wonder what John bought but not *I wonder John bought what). The forms prefixed by "*" are judged to be unacceptable by native speakers of English and their judgments are quite robust and uniform despite the fact that nothing seems to be terribly wrong with such forms from a communicative perspective – in fact when a non-native speaker makes such an utterance, the native speaker would most likely understand what is intended.
　　　If a language does not have what is responsible for such 'agreement' or 'obligatory (dis)placement of elements', as I assume/maintain is the case for Japanese, following Fukui 1986, we must look elsewhere in the language to find a reflection of the Computational System, and that is the area that has been called the interface between the language faculty and the faculty of mind that is responsible for interpreting the output of the Computational System. As briefly noted in [29940] in the Further Discussion board, the speakers' judgments (i.e., performance) is bound to be affected by factors that are independent of the Computational System, whether we consider their introspective judgments on the acceptability of a given sentence (under a specified interpretation) or some other form of their linguistic performance). Only by adopting the thesis that what the Computational System fails to give rise to never has the chance to be judged acceptable, can we have a hope of emerging out of the mud of this inherent difficulty with which we are faced, I maintain. Suppose we proceed to discover, on the basis of the hypothesis testing that has been suggested in Hoji 2006 and is currently being further developed and articulated, that some properties of Japanese are indeed due to the Computational System. We will have then learned that such properties are due to the Computational System but not due to what is responsible for 'agreement' or 'obligatory (dis)placement of elements'. It has been a rather common research practice in recent years to assume that all the properties that arguably stem from the Computational System are due to what is responsible for 'agreement' or 'obligatory (dis)placement of elements'. The general research program in which my 2007 Kyodai lectures (cf. the thread under [29940] in the Further Discussion board, which contains much of what is stated here) are embedded should therefore play a corrective function to such simple-minded approaches to the properties of the Computational System. Research on a language like English, where we seem to observe two types of reflections of the Computational System, is faced with an inherent difficulty in teasing the two apart. One might thus suggest that the general significance of research on a language like Japanese lies in the prospect of its providing new insight that is difficult to come by from research on a language like English.
　　　(1) has been demonstrated over the years. And I maintain (2).

(1)　　The Speaker judgments can converge as 'clearly unacceptable/impossible' under a specified interpretation on any instantiation of the schematic sentence form that is hypothesized to correspond to an impossible output of the Computational System.

(2)　　The research that aims to demonstrate the existence of, and discover the properties of, the Computational System (that is hypothesized to be at the core of the language faculty) must assign a special and central role to the sentence forms that have the property noted in (1), not only in the context of hypothesis testing but also in determining what 'phenomenon' most likely qualifies as an object of explanation, i.e., speaker intuitions as a reflection of the Computational System.

　　　(1) goes directly against a widely accepted (in a sense, pessimistic) view that we cannot expect to obtain a uniform or robust acceptability judgment since our judgment is affected by various factors of language use, the view that is based on the frequent observation that there is a great deal of variation and instability in speakers' acceptability judgments, especially when the sentence forms and the intended interpretations in question become complex and involved. The research that has led to (1), by myself and my students and colleagues, has made it clear that it is possible to obtain convergent judgments by proceeding in accordance with (2), even in 'areas' where judgmental variation and fluctuation have been notoriously common and pervasive.
　　　In summary, the major concerns underlying my research include (3).

(3) 　a. 　How can we try to ensure and measure progress in what we do in generative grammar?
　　　b. 　How can we tell whether or not given intuitions of ours are likely to be a reflection of properties of the Computational System?

　　　Not every observation qualifies as something that must be accounted for by a theory about the Computational System; it must first be demonstrated that it is most likely a reflection of properties of the Computational System. And, for the reasons briefly noted above and further elaborated elsewhere (e.g., Hoji 2006), to do so would require the recognition of the significance of negative predictions insofar as the research in question is aimed at demonstrating the existence of and discovering properties of the Computational System. This is the central methodological claim I am making and is the guiding thesis for the research projects I have been engaged in.

Lakatos, I. 1970. "Falsification and Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes," in I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave (eds.), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge. Cambridge University Press. pp. 91-195.

For the specific research topics of mine and my students' and colleagues', please visit the "Downloadable Papers" page, the Discussion boards, and the "Works by other linguists" pages.