Talk:Functional linguistics

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B.F. Skinner

B.F. Skinner should be mentioned on this page, because he wrote "Verbal Behavior" in 1957 which is a thorough analysis of language from a functional perspective based on principles derived from his empirical research on non-verbal behavior.

Less confrontational

The title of this entry sounds to my ear like it's not written or chosen with traditional naming logic, but rather to distinguish it from other origin of grammar theories. Perhaps giving it another name would prevent a lot of wasted time and energy due to the problems that arise when disciplines are universally divided into the "does God necessarily exist or necessarily not exist" confrontational parts. - Dirtclustit (talk) 08:08, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

LFG

LFG doesn't really seem to fit into the 'functional' classification described in the article. The 'functional' in LFG refers to grammatical functions (subject, object, complement phrase etc.) These are treated as primitives in LFG, unlike in Chomskyan theories. Kayau (talk · contribs) 02:14, 5 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Polysemy

User:OpenNotes1, thanks for your edits! I see you're advocating the view of linguistics as divided into two types: functionalism and formalism. However, if you read this article as it is, you will learn that the term functionalism is disputed. This article has been written from the point of so-called European functionalism which is contrasted with so-called American functionalism. But you are now re-writing it from the point of the so-called American functionalism (Croft, Bybee, Langacker etc.). Can I ask you why?

The difference between the approaches has been discussed e.g. in Bybee 1999 Usage-Based phonology and Croft 1995 Autonomy and functionalist linguistics. As you see, the latter approach defines itself no only in opposition to Chomsky, but also in opposition to Saussure, Martinet and the Prague school. This is because we are now talking about three different schools of linguistic thought. There needs to be some disambiguation. I think it's best that Darwinian evolutionary linguistics (i.e. 'American functionalism') will have its own article, and we can move Croft & Cruse there. What's more, the claim that Mathesius was first to use the term function~~alism~~ is quite obviously wrong even though it comes from a published source. Saussure, for example, used the term extensively but even he clearly did not invent it. Weidorje (talk) 09:42, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Weidorje, feel free to add more sources and clarifications to the article. About moving content to a separate article, I think that if the term functionalism is used differently in different contexts, it should be reflected in this article, representing, historicizing and contextualizing all perspectives rather than just one (European or American functionalism).--OpenNotes1 (talk) 10:28, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, but then of course the article will have to be split internally. Weidorje (talk) 11:03, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]