Scientific approaches (research traditions) and linguistic theories

In chapter 1, it was observed that typology is an empirical approach to the study of language, beginning with a cross-linguistic survey of language structure. In §1.2, and also §3.5 and §7.1, the typological approach was compared to the structuralist–generative approach to language. This book has illustrated how the typological approach analyzes a wide range of phenomena in morphosyntax and phonology. In this concluding chapter, we look again at the way in which typology is an approach to the study of language.

Philosophy of science presents a means to understand the nature of scientific theories or approaches. Philosophy of science is often invoked in linguistics in terms of falsificationism (Popper 1934/1959). Falsificationism is the doctrine that no piece of empirical evidence can prove a theory, while a single piece of evidence can falsify it. However, it has been recognized in the decades since Popper's work that acceptance or abandonment of a scientific theory is not an all-or-none affair; judgment of a theory is based not only on empirical problems (putative counterexamples) but also on conceptual problems (Quine 1951/1961; Kuhn 1962/1970; Lakatos 1970; Laudan 1977). In other words, there is no recipe for choosing a particular scientific theory, and in fact the evolution of scientific theories involves a substantial amount of interplay among parallel competing theories (Laudan 1977; Hull 1988).