[Lingtyp] Structural congruence

Tue Jan 19 14:56:48 UTC 2016

Randy’s position sounds pretty reasonable to me.

Typological categories, like the phonetic categories of the IPA are idealizations, though based on data collected from a wide variety of languages. Thus a “p” in the IPA is a voiceless bilabial stop. However, a [p] in Pirahã is a voiceless bilabial stop with closure and flattening across the entire length of the lips. It is not the same as the “p” of the IPA. But clearly it is related to it as an individual dog is to the noun “dog.”

But we cannot call an alveolar stop a “p” nor a cat a dog. Idealizations do not mean that there is no empirical connection between a specific language and the typological category.

It is possible that we might have something that fails to correspond to any syntactic notion of subject in a particular language. But if the grammar-writer refers to it as a “subject” on semantic grounds this could be the equivalent of calling a “t” a “p” because it is the frontmost voiceless occlusive in a given language. So the grammar-writer would have introduced an error which could potentially be propagated throughout the typological literature. By the same token, calling that language SVO might not only obscure the actual facts of the language, but it would also be a disservice to typology.

In Pirahã, for example, the surface variants/allophones of /g/ are [n], a unique double-flap laminal, and [g] (which was historically a [d]). The n is not a velar simply because it is an allophone of a velar. And care needs to be used in describing the segmental phonology of the language.

Subtleties missed only confuse the field.

Dan

On Jan 19, 2016, at 9:44 AM, Randy John LaPolla (Prof) <RandyLaPolla at ntu.edu.sg<mailto:RandyLaPolla at ntu.edu.sg>> wrote:

Sorry, Matthew, no. I am arguing it is an empirical question, and am against the a priori assumption and imposition of categories on languages without any basis. This is what I have been fighting against for almost 30 years.

We seem to be talking past each other, as we each have our own way of understanding things, and assume the others are saying something they aren’t.  It seems impossible to post to this list without being misunderstood.  This is nice evidence for the theory of communication I’ve been flogging for 20 years, but it is very frustrating.

I was talking about the inductive analysis of individual languages. You are talking about cross-linguistic characterisations. I also argue there are no universal categories, and I think we need to understand each language on its own terms, and in a description of an individual language, which is what I am talking about, you need to give the facts of that language, not a cross-linguistic category that also happens to have the same name as a category that many people ascribe to individual languages, such that people reading that description will assume the language has that category.

Also, what does the category “subject” mean to you such that it would be cross-linguistically useful, to the point of even saying languages that don’t have such a category are subject-verb-object languages?

In terms of the correlations you talk about among languages that manifest what is (from my view problematically) subsumed under the VO or SVO rubric, my view is that we should look for the reasons why, in terms of information structure, structural pivots, historical development, or whatever, the languages manifest the particular patterns they do. Simply lumping them together under a single rubric does nothing but categorise them, and doesn’t explain anything.

Randy

On 19 Jan 2016, at 9:01 pm, Matthew Dryer <dryer at buffalo.edu<mailto:dryer at buffalo.edu>> wrote:

My point is actually independent of the question of whether there are crosslinguistic categories.  Even if there are/were crosslinguistic categories, it doesn’t follow that typological classification is based on those categories. My statement that “classifying languages typologically does not entail that the terms employed in the typological classification correspond to categories in the language” is consistent with a position that classifying languages typologically sometimes classifies them on the basis of crosslinguistic categories and sometimes on the basis of semantically-defined notions or other notions independent of crosslinguistic categories. Randy’s statement that classifying a language as SVO implies that the language has categories of subject and object seems to imply that typological classification MUST be based on categories that exist within the individual languages.

But there is a good argument that in the case in question, any typological classification that was based on categories that exist in individual languages and on languages in which word order codes subject and object would be inadequate. As I argued in Dryer (1989), languages in which word order does not code grammatical relations and in which the word order is not based on grammatical relations but in which VO word order is more common tend to have word order properties associated with VO  word order, like prepositions, while analogous languages in which OV word order is more common tend to have word order properties associated with OV word order, like postpositions. What this means is that the GRAMMARS of what I classify as VO languages have nothing in common. It is only the languages that have something in common at the level of usage. Hence any notion of SVO language restricted to languages in which there are subject and object categories and in which word order is determined by grammatical relations will necessarily fail as the basis of word order correlations.

The problem with Randy’s position (and perhaps Jan’s) is that he is making an a priori assumption on what is actually an empirical question.

Matthew

On 1/18/16 11:12 PM, Martin Haspelmath wrote:
Unfortunately, to many people (not only generativists) it isn't obvious at all that "classifying languages typologically does not entail that the terms employed in the typological classification  correspond to categories in the language" (in other words, that comparative concepts are distinct from descriptive categories).

It seems that the default assumption of many people when they hear a term like "dative" or "clitic" is that they are concepts like "copper" or "red fox", i.e. natural kinds that exist independently of individual language systems, just as red foxes can be recognized independently of their habitats, and copper can even be recognized independently of the planet on which is occurs. This is false, but it hasn't been very widely recognized.

In the 1980s, typologists discovered the important differences between agents, topics, and syntactic pivots (as noted by Randy), but such more fine-grained categories are still not sufficient for describing any language. Agents can be different across languages, topics can be different, and syntactic pivots can be different. Thus, even "agent", "topic" and "pivot" can only be used as comparative concepts, not as universally applicable descriptive categories that would somehow have the same meaning in different languages.

Thus, it is not just confusing terminology (like Y.R. Chao's "subject"), but also the presupposition that categories can be carried over from one language to another that has confused linguists.

Martin

On 19.01.16 07:52, Matthew Dryer wrote:
Randy says that calling Chinese SVO implies that Chinese has such categories. I am surprised that he would say that. I would have thought it was obvious that classifying languages typologically does not entail that the terms employed in the typological classification correspond to categories in the language. Nor does it mean that these categories determine or are determined by word order. I have certainly made that clear in my work that classifying a language as SVO makes no claim about the categories in the language, nor that these categories determine word order even if the language has such categories.

Matthew

On 1/18/16 7:42 PM, Randy John LaPolla (Prof) wrote:
Dan’s point is very important. For example, most people describing languages do not know how to distinguish agents, topics, and syntactic pivots (“subject”), and just call anything that occurs initially as “subject”. Sometimes even when the linguist is clear on the difference, they still use the word “subject”. E.g. Y. R. Chao, in his grammar of spoken Chinese, clearly stated there is nothing like what is referred to as “subject” in English, as all clauses are simply topic-comment, but he still used the term “subject” for what he said was purely a topic. This has confused generations of linguists, and they call Chinese SVO, which not only implies that Chinese has such categories, but also that these categories either determine or are determined by word order. See the following paper arguing against the use of such shortcuts, and arguing for more careful determination of the factors determining word order in a language:

LaPolla, Randy J. & Dory Poa. 2006. On describing word order. Catching Language: The Standing Challenge of Grammar Writing, ed. by Felix Ameka, Alan Dench, & Nicholas Evans, 269-295. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
      <http://randylapolla.net/papers/LaPolla_and_Poa_2006_On_Describing_Word_Order.pdf> http://randylapolla.net/papers/LaPolla_and_Poa_2006_On_Describing_Word_Order.pdf

Randy
-----
Prof. Randy J. LaPolla, PhD FAHA （羅仁 地）| Division of Linguistics and Multilingual Studies | Nanyang Technological University
HSS-03-45, 14 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 637332 | Tel: (65) 6592-1825 GMT+8h | Fax: (65) 6795-6525 | <http://randylapolla.net/> <http://randylapolla.net/> http://randylapolla.net/

On 19 Jan 2016, at 10:21 am, Everett, Daniel <DEVERETT at bentley.edu<mailto:DEVERETT at bentley.edu>> wrote:

One of the biggest problems in this regard that I have noticed is in grammars of individual languages. Fieldworkers sometimes confuse semantic and formal categories in the grammars, classifying as a syntactic structure a semantic category. If typologists are not careful writers/readers of grammars they may bring such confusions into their typological studies. Sounds obvious. But not always so.

Dan

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 18, 2016, at 21:11, Matthew Dryer <dryer at buffalo.edu<mailto:dryer at buffalo.edu>> wrote:

I agree entirely with Jan on the need to distinguish semantic categories and formal categories. In fact, in a paper of mine that is I have nearly completed revising, I have an entire section arguing that generative approaches fail to note the fact that a given semantic category often has many different formal expressions over different languages and that this is problematic for implicit assumptions that equate semantic categories with formal categories.

But Jan seems to think that this presents some sort of problem for the work I have done in word order typology.  He says “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”. But this is false. They stand for semantic categories.

Jan seems to think that it is somehow a problem that a given semantic category may have many different formal realizations across different languages. However, neither in his email nor in his 2009 paper in LT does he explain why he sees this as a problem.

There is, I admit, a potential problem.  Namely, it might be the case that for the purposes of word order correlations, the syntactic realization of a semantic category makes a major difference and that lumping the different syntactic realizations together is obscuring these differences. That is why I have spent considerable time over the years collecting data, not only on word order in particular languages, but also on the syntactic realization in these languages, precisely to examine empirically whether the syntactic realization makes a difference. The result is that while the syntactic realization sometimes makes a small difference, it is overall irrelevant: by and large, generalizations over semantic categories apply the same, regardless of the syntactic realization.

Matthew

On 1/18/16 4:41 AM, 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) te      uee      ae    e          tikiraoi         (relative clause)
     art  flower  rel  3sg.s   be.pretty
     ‘a pretty flower’ (lit. ‘a flower that pretties’)

Makwe (Devos 2008: 136)
(2)   muú-nu      w-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

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From: Lingtyp [<mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>] on behalf of Alan Rumsey [<mailto:Alan.Rumsey at anu.edu.au>Alan.Rumsey at anu.edu.au<mailto:Alan.Rumsey at anu.edu.au>]
Sent: Monday, January 18, 2016 12:23 PM
To: <mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> <mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto: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

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

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