The Problem of Explanation in Generative Linguistics

ADRIANA GONZALO; GRISELDA PARERA

Philosophy of Science in the 21st Century. Contributions of the Metatheoretical Structuralism

Prensa de la Universidad de Santa Catarina

Lugar: Santa Catarina; Año: 2021;

The paper presents the problem of explanation within the framework of Generativist Theory, particularly in the Chomskyan approach. From a reconstructive diachronic perspective, we offer an answer to the question of what is the explanatory proposal according to the perspective of the Minimal Program. Our purpose is to show that since the emergence of biolinguistics as part of the explananda of linguistics theories some problems rise in the epistemological area: the relations with the explanatory field of psycholinguistic and computational theories. The problems are presented as "explanatory level problem". Some recent perspectives of the problem are given and discussed, and a programmatic way of research is presented, making explicit the importance of a metatheoretical elucidation in order to clarify the problem of linguistic explanation in the frame of cognitive science and their relations to computer sciences and neurobiology.