Concerning WALS

[Tom Givon]

I think Martin, perhaps inadvertently, articulated the concern that some 
of us have felt about the WALS project from its very inception--it's 
relentless a-theoretical perspective. To me, this project has chosen to 
follow the old empiricist lisonception  (vis Bloomfield,  Carnap, etc.) 
that facts are, somehow, theory- independent, and that one can do a 
theory-free typology. This is done by two implicit moves: First, by 
defining grammatical phenomena purely structurally, rather than grouping 
them by the* grammaticalized functional domains* that underlie them And 
second, by leaving *diachrony* out of the equation. To my mind, the 
geographical distribution of grammatical phenomena is neigh meaningless 
without considering the diachrony of the particular languages (or 
families) in the region. It is of course true that a project could 
choose to be less ambitious, and simply give us "pure facts", perhaps in 
anticipation that theory-oriented people would later on use those facts 
to build their theories. But I have to agree with Hanson (and, for that 
matter, Chomsky, perish the thought...) that in science facts are never 
theory-neutral, and that to propose to do a science of "pure facts", 
even as a preliminary exercise to  subsequent theory-building, is the 
height of self delusion.

Cheers,  TG

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Martin Haspelmath wrote:
> Dear Esa,
>
> Thanks a lot for writing this detailed commentary on the World Atlas 
> of Language Structures (WALS). This is the most detailed review that 
> has been written, and we are very grateful for it. Many of the 
> individual points of criticism are well-taken, and the WALS authors 
> should take them into account in future editions. (We're planning 
> future online editions of WALS, see the free online version at 
> http://wals.info.)
>
> Just one comment, concerning one of your major points:
>
> You write (p. 1): "The reader of WALS is encouraged ... to seek 
> *correlations* between the results of different chapters, and this 
> clearly presupposes a high degree of compatibility between the views 
> of different authors."
>
> Well, I would say: To find true correlations, the chapters must be 
> sufficiently correct, but they don't necessarily have to be very 
> compatible, certainly not in terminology. Suppose you want to link 
> case-marking and plural marking, and ask whether affixal case-marking 
> (as opposed to adpositional marking) correlates with affixal plural 
> marking (as opposed to pluralization by number words). Then even if 
> the two chapters use different definitions of "affixal", you might 
> still get a true correlation. But it will of course be a correlation 
> between affixal(1) case-marking and affixal(2) pluralization, not 
> between "affixal (tout court) case-marking and pluralization".
>
> My view is that typological definitions are inherently 
> linguist-specific, and as such the typological concepts of different 
> linguists are bound to be different (unless a Chomsky-like figure 
> comes along and imposes widespread "agreement by authority"). So care 
> has to be taken in interpreting WALS correlations, of course. But this 
> is not a flaw in the design of the project.
>
> Typology cannot be based on some kind of "definitive" set of 
> grammatical concepts, because there is no such list (or if there is, 
> i.e. if UG exists after all, we're so far away from knowing what it is 
> that it's irrelevant for practical purposes). Each language has its 
> own categories, so typologists necessarily have to make up their 
> comparative concepts that give them the most interesting results.
>
> (For more on this, see my paper "Comparative concepts and descriptive 
> categories in cross-linguistic studies", on my website under "Papers 
> and handouts".)
>
> Martin Haspelmath
>
> Esa Itkonen wrote:
>> Dear Funknetters: By all accounts, World Atlas of Language Structures 
>> (= WALS) is a monumental achievement. Still, two intrepid Finnish 
>> linguists (= myself & Anneli Pajunen) have ventured to write a 
>> 30-page commentary on it, available on the homepage below. Enjoy!
>>
>> Esa Itkonen
>>
>>
>> Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen
>>   
>