[Lingtyp] What's the point of the phonological phrase? (and some questions about p-linguistics)

[Haspelmath, Martin]

On 07.01.20 11:42, TALLMAN Adam wrote:
The distinction between p-linguistics and g-linguistics is useful because it allows us to avoid potentially pointless debates about whether some purported "universal" category is really there in some language and just get on with description and comparison. But I don't think this means "anything goes" in p-linguistics. I think we should favor more surfacy descriptions if the abstract categories require analytic shortcuts to get off the ground. We should wonder whether our analyses in p-linguistics are just expositionally useful or whether they can be thought of as motivated generalizations across the grammar. To take an extreme example, I think it would be wrong to insist that a descriptions isn't "typologically informed" because it does not refer to phases, little vP structures, movement operations etc. But what distinguishes the "phonological phrase" and other categories from the prosodic hierarchy from these other ingredients from generative linguistics?

I don't think there's any difference, other than perhaps the explicitness of the innateness claim. However, generative grammarians (especially those of the younger generation) often say that they don't want to commit themselves to an innateness claim, which makes the difference even less clear.

So for some linguists, "typologically informed" may mean referring to "vP" or "uninterpretable features", while for others it may mean referring "phonological phrase" or "ergative alignment".

But if this leads them to describe a language in a way that is not motivated by the language itself, it is not the right way to go about description (or p-theory). There is no reason to assume that "vP" or "phonological phrase" will be applicable to any language other than the one it was originally employed for, and little reason to hope that this will eventually be shown (given the many unsuccessful attempts).

Best,
Martin

--
Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at shh.mpg.de<mailto:haspelmath at shh.mpg.de>)
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10
D-07745 Jena
&
Leipzig University
Institut fuer Anglistik
IPF 141199
D-04081 Leipzig
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