[Lingtyp] comparative concepts

[David Gil]

On 24/01/2016 22:38, Stef Spronck wrote:
> Apologies for jumping into a discussion in which so many senior colleagues have made much more qualified comments. But surely the issue is not whether anybody believes that 'languages may differ without bounds'?
>   
> Don't the differences of opinion rather lie in whether in order to discover the nature of those 'bounds' it is most
> sensible to presuppose categories based on our deep analysis of the relatively limited range of individual languages we have at our disposal, or that we would like to treat the extent of the variation as an empirical question (and how to best do that)?
>
> Both positions would seem entirely defendable to me, but result in very different conceptualisations of typology.
>
> Best,
> Stef
Good question Stef (and no need for apologies!)

Since I was the one who introduced the issue of "differing without 
bounds" into the discussion, let me try and clarify.

First, I do believe that some of the participants in this discussion do 
subscribe to the notion that languages may differ without bounds, but 
since I state this based on impressions from casual conversations, I 
will leave it to the person(s) in question to fess up to this view if 
they so wish.

But secondly, if you do — like myself — believe that there are limits to 
how languages may vary from each other, or, to use an alternative 
formulation, that there exist exceptionless linguistic universals, then 
the existence of such limits impinges on the discussion of language 
specific categories vs. comparative concepts.  The question then arises 
why such bounds or limits exist, and, as has been amply discussed, there 
could be many different reasons, including but not limited to the 
following: • monogenesis (all languages inherited the putative universal 
feature from a shared protolanguage) • historical accident (languages 
violating the putative universal feature could exist, and indeed may 
have existed in the past, it's just that today's contemporary languages 
all accidentally happen to uphold the feature in question • diachrony 
(there is no plausible path for a language upholding the putative 
universal feature to develop into a language violating it) • cognitive 
constraints (our minds can't deal with languages that violate the 
putative universal feature – be it a general cognitive constraint or one 
specific to a hypothetical grammar module).  Now it seems to me that 
some of these reasons, in particular the latter one, involving cognitive 
constraints, might arguably entail that the constraint underlying the 
universal in question could be represented not only at the level of a 
cross-linguistic generalization but also within the grammars of 
individual languages.  Though I'm sure that such a conclusion can and 
will be contested ...

-- 
David Gil

Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany

Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-812-73567992