universidade federal de santa catarina pós-graduação em letras ...

281(p.33). As battles about internal borders in linguistics have grown in intensity andamplitude, disputes ‘concerning the definition of the entire field, the scope of languagestudy, the answer to the question, What is linguistics?’ (p. 7) has come to encompass allthe basic premises of the discipline.Linguists, have, from the start, concentrated their efforts on searching for atheoretical backbone for their discipline that would adhere to the basic principles ofempirical research of observable phenomena of modern science (p.22). This, however,would neither spare them internal struggles nor attacks from outside the discipline:That linguistics is a natural science, employing the methods of the wellestablishednatural sciences, is an article of faith of the mainstream of moderntheorists of language. It conducts its investigation, so it is claimed, in the‘Galilean style’, hoping (and claiming!) [to develop abstract models, movingbeyond superficiality] Baker & Hacker 1984:307) (italics mine).Chemists, on the other hand, practitioners of a prototypical science, seem to haveovercome their basic differences a long time ago, at least since Lavoisier laid down thebasic premises of modern chemistry in the late eighteenth century (Hudson, 1992).Modern chemistry (as well as modern science in general) has been shaped after theadvances in the physical sciences first by scientists such as Galileo and later on byresearchers such as Newton (Baker & Hacker 1984:14). Perhaps what Becher(1987:263) has pointed out about physics, may be said of chemists in that they