[Lingtyp] Structural congruence

[giorgio.arcodia at unimib.it]

Dear colleagues,

This is a most interesting and enlightening discussion on 
some of the most fundamental issues in the field of 
typology (and linguistics at large, indeed).

I offer the following suggestion: why not turning this all 
into a proposal for a special issue of LT? Each of the 
major contributor to this discussion could write an 
article on her/his own position.

Best,

Giorgio F. Arcodia

-- 
Dr. Giorgio Francesco Arcodia
Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca
Dipartimento di Scienze Umane per la Formazione
Edificio U6 - stanza 4101
Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo, 1
20126 Milano

Tel.: (+39) 02 6448 4946
Fax: (+39) 02 6448 4863
E-mail: giorgio.arcodia at unimib.it
On Wed, 20 Jan 2016 20:54:03 -0500
 Matthew Dryer <dryer at buffalo.edu> wrote:
> On 1/20/16 6:59 PM, Peter Arkadiev wrote:
>> Going back to word order, if we say that a language has 
>>prepositions we already know something about this 
>>language's grammar, moreover, we are able to make 
>>predictions about what else can be found in this language 
>>and with what probability, aren't we?
> 
> Actually, if we know that a language has prepositions, 
>we can only make limited predictions about the grammar of 
>the language. If we know that a language has 
>prepositions, we can predict that it is either a language 
>whose grammar specifies the word order as VO or a grammar 
>that has no rule governing the order of verb and object 
>but where the factors conditioning the choice between OV 
>and VO word order result in more frequent. But since the 
>latter is not a fact about the grammar, you can make 
>fewer predictions if you restrict attention to grammar.
>