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Explorations in Navajo Poetry and Poetics (review)

Explorations in Navajo Poetry and Poetics (review) 2011 BOOK REVIEWS 289 vis genitives) read harmonic regimes (descent and residence). For the World Atlas of Language Structures read the Human Area Relations Files. For Chomsky read Levi- Strauss. We have seen this movie before, perhaps more than once (Linnaeus?). By the time the movie ends, we realize that typology has had its heyday in the early development of the field, in the age of discovery when large amounts of exotic data suddenly became available and had to be processed and organized. As classification later yielded pride of place to integrative theorizing and the shift from wide-ranging syn- chronic comparison to local historical dynamics, it lived on in introductory textbooks, in practical tools that help point scholars to research topics, and as a warning against ethnocentrism. The singularity of linguistic as opposed to other typologies is the puzzling per- sistence of Chomskyan formalism, as opposed to the abrupt fall from grace of Levi- Straussian structuralism. Is there any hope that the findings of typologists will lead to a new synthesis? A long-time observer is inclined to be pessimistic, given the separate planets (conferences, journals, entire university departments) that formalists and non- formalists inhabit, and the fact that linguistic http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Anthropological Linguistics University of Nebraska Press

Explorations in Navajo Poetry and Poetics (review)

Anthropological Linguistics , Volume 53 (3) – Jun 30, 2012

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Publisher
University of Nebraska Press
ISSN
1944-6527

Abstract

2011 BOOK REVIEWS 289 vis genitives) read harmonic regimes (descent and residence). For the World Atlas of Language Structures read the Human Area Relations Files. For Chomsky read Levi- Strauss. We have seen this movie before, perhaps more than once (Linnaeus?). By the time the movie ends, we realize that typology has had its heyday in the early development of the field, in the age of discovery when large amounts of exotic data suddenly became available and had to be processed and organized. As classification later yielded pride of place to integrative theorizing and the shift from wide-ranging syn- chronic comparison to local historical dynamics, it lived on in introductory textbooks, in practical tools that help point scholars to research topics, and as a warning against ethnocentrism. The singularity of linguistic as opposed to other typologies is the puzzling per- sistence of Chomskyan formalism, as opposed to the abrupt fall from grace of Levi- Straussian structuralism. Is there any hope that the findings of typologists will lead to a new synthesis? A long-time observer is inclined to be pessimistic, given the separate planets (conferences, journals, entire university departments) that formalists and non- formalists inhabit, and the fact that linguistic

Journal

Anthropological LinguisticsUniversity of Nebraska Press

Published: Jun 30, 2012

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