The Good, the Bad, and the Yucky: Valenced Linguistic Intuitions and Linguistic Methodology

Abstract

Linguistic intuitions are a central source of evidence for linguistic claims. One under-appreciated feature of linguistic intuition is its normative character, including positive or negative valence, motivational force, and prescriptive content. Esa Itkonen and others have argued that these normative features provide one justification for a normative interpretation of the project of generative linguistics more generally. In this chapter, I review contemporary philosophical debates about the nature of linguistic intuition and argue that despite significant disagreement about what intuitions are and why they count as evidence, the normative features of those intuitions can be accommodated within a descriptive approach to linguistics. What’s more, those normative features shed light on the very mechanisms involved in producing those intuitions.