[Lingtyp] Structural congruence
Volker Gast
volker.gast at uni-jena.de
Tue Jan 19 10:19:42 UTC 2016
Dear all,
when I studied Linguistic Typology in the 1990s (with W. Bisang), one of
the first things I learned was that, for non-nativists, linguistic
categories are language-specific, and that the definition of 'tertia
comparationis' for language comparison is one of the major difficulties
of the discipline. Twenty years later, I think the problem is still with
us. (Paradoxically, typology has been rather successful, however.)
Personally, I have to say that I don't regard Martin's "comparative
concepts", Paolo's "linguists' categorizations" or Gilbert Lazard's
''cadres conceptuels arbitraires" as the ultimate solution to the
problem. In my view, they fail to meet one of the three widely
recognized quality criteria of empirical research, objectivity (the
other two criteria are validity and reliability). Note that objectivity
issues may multiply in the process of data collection: Grammar writers
interpret the raw data in a specific way, and typologists interpret the
grammars in their own ways (unless they have acces to the primary data).
That introduces a lot of subjectivity into the data.
Anyone who has ever tried to build a typological database would probably
agree that this is not just an 'academic' problem, but a very practical
one. I remember spending hours and hours discussing the appropriate
classification of reciprocal strategies with colleagues when we created
BURS (http://languagelink.let.uu.nl/burs/database/). I assume that word
order typology is seemingly simpler than semantic typology -- but
probably the adverb 'seemingly' is important here.
Best,
Volker
Am 19.01.2016 um 10:25 schrieb Paolo Ramat:
> Martin Haspelmath has written (Jan.18.): “I find it important to
> recognize that typology works with a heterogeneous class of
> comparative concepts, which may be defined in a variety of ways
> (formally, functionally, with respect to discourse, with respect to
> translation equivalence, etc.). Typology does not (necessarily) work
> in terms of the descriptive categories that are the most useful in
> analyzing languages, and it need not define its concepts in a uniform
> way.”
> I agree. All the subsequent interventions in the discussion seem to
> ignore the concepts of ‘prototype’ and ‘tertium comparationis’. As I
> tried to argue in my 1999 article on /Linguistic categories and
> linguists’ categorizations/. “Linguistics” 37: 157-80, there are
> semantic/functional concepts which are universal (e.g. ‘attribution of
> a quality to an X’ : you may call it “ADJ”). These concepts (‘tertia
> comparationis’) may be implemented in different languages via
> different strategies (e.g. via a relative clause) and it is by no
> means said that the category ADJ is present in language A or B [see
> Rijkhoff’s ex. from Ross :
>
> _Kiribati _(Ross 1998: 90)
>
> (1)///teueeaeetikiraoi/(relative clause)
>
> artflower rel 3sg.s be.pretty
>
> ‘a pretty flower’ (lit. ‘a flower that pretties’)]
>
> On its turn a prototypical ADJ will be formally defined by a series of
> properties (‘features’ having different /values/), like +/- agreement
> with its head, Consequently, there are forms which are more or less
> adjectival, according to the grammars of individual languages.
>
> *From:* Martin Haspelmath <mailto:haspelmath at shh.mpg.de>
> *Sent:* Monday, January 18, 2016 9:20 PM
> *To:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> <mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> *Subject:* Re: [Lingtyp] Structural congruence
> Jan Rijkhoff and Randy LaPolla are completely right that word order
> studies have sometimes been based on formally defined comparative
> concepts. This has long been recognized (but perhaps not emphasized
> sufficiently), e.g. in Dryer's (2005) WALS chapter on relative
> clauses, he defines a relative clause as follows: " A construction is
> considered a relative clause for the purposes of this map if it is a
> clause which, either alone or in combination with a noun, denotes
> something and if the thing denoted has a semantic role within the
> relative clause" (http://wals.info/chapter/90). Thus, relative clauses
> must be clauses, i.e. simple adnominal adjectives do not count.
>
> (This is in contrast with Comrie's (1981) definition of relative
> clause, which is purely semantic and thus (counterintuitively)
> includes adnominal adjectives. This worked for Comrie's purposes,
> because he was not interested in the ordering possibilities of
> relative clauses, and for the generalizations that he considered, the
> inclusion of adnominal adjectives did not make a difference.)
>
> By contrast, Dryer indeed includes relative clauses in his chapter on
> the order of adjective and noun. For example, he says about Ojibwa,
> which lacks a dedicated class of adjectives: "Because words expressing
> adjectival meaning are really verbs iin Ojibwa, instances in which
> such words modify nouns, like (6a), are, strictly speaking, relative
> clauses" (http://wals.info/chapter/87).
>
> Here it might have been better to use the term "property word" rather
> than "adjective", but in practice, it is often very hard to say
> whether a language has a "dedicated" class of adjectives (Dixon 2004
> even claims that all languages have one, even if the distributional
> differences may be very small). Thus, it is not the terms that count,
> but the definitions, and these are generally very clear in Dryer's
> WALS chapters.
>
> When Dryer says that adjectives are non-branching elements, as opposed
> to relative clauses which are branching elements, he evidently means
> the most frequent types of adnominal property words and adnominal
> clauses. Adjective phrases can be long ("very proud of his
> achievements"), and relative clauses can be short ("who left"), but it
> is clear that overall, relative clauses (a formally defined concept)
> tend to be longer than property-word modifiers (a semantically defined
> concept).
>
> In general, I find it important to recognize that typology works with
> a heterogeneous class of comparative concepts, which may be defined in
> a variety of ways (formally, functionally, with respect to discourse,
> with respect to translation equivalence, etc.). Typology does not
> (necessarily) work in terms of the descriptive categories that are the
> most useful in analyzing languages, and it need not define its
> concepts in a uniform way.
>
> Best wishes,
> Martin
>
> On 18.01.16 13:41, Jan Rijkhoff wrote:
>>
>> I think the last word has not been said about Greenbergian word order
>> correlations, mainly because semantic categories and formal
>> categories have not always been clearly distinguished in
>> post-Greenberg (1963) word order studies (Rijkhoff 2009a).* For
>> example, both Hawkins (1983: 12) and Dryer (1992: 120) claimed that
>> they followed Greenberg (1963: 74) in ‘basically applying semantic
>> criteria’ to identify members of the same category across languages,
>> but in practice these semantically defined forms and constructions
>> are treated as formal entities.
>>
>> If Hawkins and Dryer applied semantic criteria in their
>> cross-linguistic studies, this implies, for example, that their
>> semantic category Adjective must also have included verbal and
>> nominal expressions of adjectival notions (such as relative clauses
>> and genitives), which are typically used in languages that lack a
>> dedicated class of adjectives:
>>
>> _Kiribati _(Ross 1998: 90)
>>
>> (1)///teueeaeetikiraoi/(relative clause)
>>
>> artflower rel 3sg.s be.pretty
>>
>> ‘a pretty flower’ (lit. ‘a flower that pretties’)
>>
>> _Makwe_(Devos 2008: 136)
>>
>> (2)/ muú-nuw-á=ki-búúli/(genitive)
>>
>> nc1-person pp1-gen=nc7-silence
>>
>> ‘a silent person’ (lit. ‘person of silence’)
>>
>> Relative Clause and Genitive are, however, also semantic categories
>> in their own right in word order studies by Dryer and Hawkins.
>>
>> When these authors subsequently formulate rules and principles on the
>> basis of the data they collected, the semantic category labels
>> (Adjective, Genitive, Relative Clause, but also e.g. Demonstrative
>> and Numeral) appear to stand for _formal_ categories, i.e. categories
>> whose members are defined on the basis of structural or
>> morphosyntactic criteria. This apparent change of category is not
>> explained, but can be seen in the case of the ‘Heaviness
>> Serialization Principle’ (Hawkins 1983: 90-91) and the ‘Branching
>> Direction Theory’ (Dryer 1992).
>>
>> Hawkins defined ‘heaviness’ in terms of such non-semantic criteria as
>> (a) length and quantity of morphemes, (b) quantity of words, (c)
>> syntactic depth of branching nodes, and (d) inclusion of dominated
>> constituents.
>>
>> (3)///Heaviness Serialization Principle/: Rel≥_R Gen≥_R A≥_R Dem/Num
>>
>> Thus a member of the (semantic? formal?) category Relative Clause is
>> ‘heavier’ than a member of the (semantic? formal?) category
>> Adjective. But Hawkins’s semantic category Adjective must also have
>> included members of the ‘heavy’ formal categories Genitive and
>> Relative Clause (see (1) and (2) above). It is not clear whether the
>> original members of the single semantic category Adjective were later
>> ‘re-categorized’ and distributed over the formal categories
>> Adjective, Genitive and Relative Clause in the /Heaviness
>> Serialization Principle/.
>>
>> Dryer’s ‘Branching Direction Theory’ refers to a structural feature
>> of the internal syntactic organization of a constituent. According to
>> the ‘Branching Direction Theory’, relative clauses and genitives are
>> phrases, i.e. members of a branching category, whose position
>> relative to the noun correlates with the relative order of Verb and
>> Object, whereas adjectives are non-branching elements, whose position
>> relative to the noun does not correlate with OV or VO order (Dryer
>> 1992: 107-8, 110-1). In this case, too, one may assume that the
>> semantic category Adjective also included members of the formal
>> categories Genitive and Relative Clause (see examples above). Again
>> we do not know what happened to the branching/phrasal members of the
>> erstwhile(?) semantic category Adjective (relative clauses,
>> genitives) when this category was turned into the formal
>> (non-branching) category Adjective that is part of the ‘Branching
>> Direction Theory’.
>>
>> So as to avoid categorial confusion in cross-linguistic research (and
>> so as to make it possible to produce more reliable results), it is
>> necessary to keep formal and semantic categories apart, as members of
>> these two categories have their own ordering rules or preferences. I
>> also think it is an illusion to think we can give a satisfactory
>> account of the grammatical behaviour of linguistic units -including
>> word order- without taking into consideration functional
>> (interpersonal) categories or ‘discourse units’ (Rijkhoff 2009b, 2015).
>>
>> * Greenberg (1963: 88) made it clear that he sometimes used formal
>> criteria to remove certain members of a semantic category before he
>> formulated a universal, as in the case of his Universal 22.
>>
>> *References*
>>
>> Devos, M. 2008. /A Grammar of Makwe/. München: Lincom Europa.
>>
>> Dryer, M. S., 1992. The Greenbergian word order correlations.
>> /Language/ 68-1, 81-138.
>>
>> Greenberg, J. H. 1963. Some universals of grammar with particular
>> reference to the order of meaningful elements. In J. H. Greenberg
>> (ed.), /Universals of Language/, 73-113. Cambridge MA: MIT.
>>
>> Hawkins, J. A., 1983. /Word Order Universals: Quantitative analyses
>> of linguistic structure/. New York: Academic Press.
>>
>> Rijkhoff, J. 2009a. On the (un)suitability of semantic categories.
>> /Linguistic Typology/ 13-1, 95‑104.
>>
>> Rijkhoff, Jan. 2009b. On the co-variation between form and function
>> of adnominal possessive modifiers in Dutch and English. In William B.
>> McGregor (ed.), /The Expression of Possession/ (The Expression of
>> Cognitive Categories [ECC] 2),51‑106. Berlin and New York: Mouton de
>> Gruyter.
>>
>> Rijkhoff, J. 2015. Word order. In James D. Wright (editor-in-chief),
>> /International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences
>> (Second Edition)/, Vol. 25, 644–656. Oxford: Elsevier.
>>
>> Ross, M. 1998. Proto-Oceanic adjectival categories and their
>> morphosyntax. /Oceanic Linguistics/ 37-1, 85-119.
>>
>> Jan Rijkhoff
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> *From:* Lingtyp [lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] on behalf
>> of Alan Rumsey [Alan.Rumsey at anu.edu.au]
>> *Sent:* Monday, January 18, 2016 12:23 PM
>> *To:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>> *Subject:* Re: [Lingtyp] Structural congruence as a dimension of
>> language complexity/simplicity
>>
>> Many thanks to all of you who responded to my posting on this topic,
>> both online and off. All the readings you have pointed me to have
>> indeed been highly relevant and very useful, including an excellent
>> recent publication by Jennifer Culbertson that she pointed me to in
>> her offline response, at
>> http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01964/abstract
>> <wlmailhtml:redir.aspx?REF=sGl5RomnpE-BF3Bt1foWHNs4EZ9sLFpNokQs5Y0pxDO6ZjPcAyDTCAFodHRwOi8vam91cm5hbC5mcm9udGllcnNpbi5vcmcvYXJ0aWNsZS8xMC4zMzg5L2Zwc3lnLjIwMTUuMDE5NjQvYWJzdHJhY3Q.>
>> Thanks especially to Matthew Dryer for pointing out that the
>> Greenbergian ‘universal’ I had used as an example – the putative
>> association between VSO and noun-adjective order — had been falsified
>> by his much more thorough 1992 study “The Greenbergian Word Order
>> Correlations”. My reading of that article and further correspondence
>> with him has confirmed that, by contrast, Greenberg’s universals no 3
>> and 4 were solidly confirmed by his study, namely that SOV languages
>> are far more likely to have postpositions than prepositions and that
>> the reverse is true for VSO languages.
>> Drawing on all your suggestions, Francesca and I have now finished a
>> draft of the paper referred to in my posting, called 'Structural
>> Congruence as a Dimension of Language Complexity: An Example from Ku
>> Waru Child Language’.**If any of you would like to read it please let
>> me know and I’ll send it to you.
>> Alan
>>
>
> --
> Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at shh.mpg.de)
> Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
> Kahlaische Strasse 10
> D-07745 Jena
> &
> Leipzig University
> Beethovenstrasse 15
> D-04107 Leipzig
>
>
>
>
>
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--
Prof. Volker Gast
English and American Studies
Ernst-Abbe-PLatz 8
D-07743 Jena
Fon: ++49 3641 9-44546
Fax: ++49 3641 9-44542
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